Oklahoma vineyard takes root

FREDERICK, Okla. (AP)--Clusters of plump grapes hang camouflaged in the greenery of Sam Ard's vineyard west of town like a miniature army preparing to invade the red dirt of Southwest Oklahoma.

But rumor has it these little fellas won't go unnoticed for long.

Sure enough, a snip of the scissors and Ard's teenage granddaughter, Katy, brings a bundle of the tart soldiers down, tossing them into the plastic bin at her feet.

It's harvest time at Windy Lanes, Tillman County's lone vineyard, and Katy is one of more than a dozen family members and friends of Ard's who have come to Oklahoma to help her grandfather.

"We're lucky today because we have a nice cool breeze and it's a little overcast," Ard said as he weighed one of the plastic bins full of green grapes. "That makes a big difference."

Ard is a longtime area businessman and former president of the Lawton-Fort Sill Chamber of Commerce and Industry, but his latest occupation is viticulture.

He planted about 1,200 vines on two acres seven years ago, but only during the past couple years have the plants come to full fruit.

Windy Lanes is still not at full production, he said.

"They say you can get around 3,000 pounds of grapes out of an acre," he said. "We're getting about 2,000 pounds per acre, so we're short of what we should receive. It increases every year, though."

Walking between the rows and rows of perfectly pruned vines, spread out like a grid and heavy with grapes, Ard slips one in his mouth.

"This is not as good a harvest as I had expected," he said. "I thought we'd do better, but grapes are fickle."

But pushing business is the last thing on Ard's mind.

Sure, he will sell most of the grapes to wineries in Norman and Tulsa for a moderate profit, at about 50 cents per pound, but as for the rest--Ard and his wife, Jane, plus friends Joe and Kitty Dutcher, will treat, ferment, store and, in time, drink at family gatherings and special occasions for years to come.

"It's a family operation," he said. "We primarily give it to our kids, friends, and that's it."

Ard and crew spent most several morning recently collecting and boxing the green grapes, and they will do the same again when the red grapes ripen later in the season.

After the grapes have been harvested and weighed, the group heads back to its operation headquarters in Frederick, where the workers dump their personal stash into a crusher and destemmer, then pour it through a filter and into a sanitized steel vat housed in a refrigerated storeroom.

Ard said he will come back the following day to mix in some yeast packets and sodium dioxide, and then the fermentation process will begin.

After mixing in some other additives and "racking" the developing wine a few times, the white wine will sit until it can be bottled in February; red wine takes even longer than that, he said.

Joe Dutcher said a special blend of two different grapes last year--a Pinot Grigio and a Savignon Blanc--has made for an excellent wine to sip on this year.

Dutcher said they got the creative blend professionally graded and it scored a 90 out of 100.

"That's pretty damn good," he said. "It was delicious, and this year we're going to do the same thing."

Ard said turning his small-scale, mostly personal operation into a retail outfit is not out of the question.

"I have all the equipment to put a winery in; the only difference is I don't have a license (to sell it)," he said. "If our volume grows here, and I think it will, then we might consider at some point putting in a winery and selling it."

Running a vineyard has become a retirement hobby for the Ards and the Dutchers, but it's certainly not a cheap hobby.

Aside from the cost of the land and the equipment--including general agriculture machinery, the storage and bottling equipment and a complex irrigation system that drips a half-gallon of water on each vine every hour--running a vineyard takes hours and hours of care, from pruning each spring to spraying after every rain.

And it takes at least three full seasons--and sometimes much longer--to achieve a harvestable crop.

"It's an expensive hobby," Ard said. "But I wasn't really doing anything, and you really shouldn't sit and do nothing."

Ard said Tillman County is a great place to grow grapes because the soil is rich, it drains quickly, and the climate is arid, meaning fewer problems with disease and pests.

"You can grow grapes anywhere if you've got water," he said.

Katy and a friend she brought along on the trip talk about college life at Penn State University while they move from vine to vine clipping grapes. The 18-year-old said she likes to visit her grandparents in Oklahoma every year and that picking the grapes has become a part of the annual tradition.

"Where we're from in Pennsylvania can get pretty boring in the summer," she said. "So we get a general idea of when the harvest is going to be, and that's when we plan our trip."

Grandpa throws a little money the kids' way, opens up the backyard pool at his Lawton home, and another summer passes.

"We've had an opportunity to have grandkids around us that normally we wouldn't," he said. "That, by itself, makes it all worthwhile."

8/18/08
3 Star CO\12-B

Date: 8/13/08

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