TRIPOLI - It takes real passion and drive to own your own business, but one Northwoods family is showing how they're growing theirs when the cards are stacked against them.

David Welbes tasted the sweetness young, "I started drinking red wine when I was about five, that's the start."

Now decades later Welbes has turned a dream into a reality with his family's Brigadoon Winery,

"Waking up every morning. Coming outside. Our job, three quarters of it is outside in the summertime."

But what may feel nice for the winemaker isn't always best for the vine, "Because we are in such a cold climate we have to do things a little bit differently."

There are countless challenges to growing grapes here in the Northwoods.

You have things that can affect the vine, like slugs or bacteria that can get in and infect the growth.

To something like the sun coming out and being either too hot in the summer, or too cold in the spring and the fall.

But in the end a handful of these little guys make it off the vine and into a fine homemade wine.

Welbes says it's a special pairing, "You, as a winemaker. Mother nature with the fruit to make a nice meld of the product."

Of course Mother Nature's plans may not always align with your own though, "The longer we can keep them hanging on the vine, the better we are because our acids drop."

Acid is only the beginning of this equation, now the science starts to get complicated, "A lot of laboratory work, a lot of testing."

The sweetspot, low acids, high sugars, "It's a labor of love."

Showing the world how sweet and satisfying it can be to bear the fruits of your labor.

Especially when those fruits are bottled at Brigadoon Winery.

Related Weblinks:
Visit Brigadoon Here

Story By: Michael Crusan