Hidden Legend Winery - Victor, Montana Pt. 1

10/16/20 • 5 min

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Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all, grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure. Our featured winery is so basically I opened the Hidden Legend Winery for at Harvard Business School would call the worst possible reason to open a business, and that's because the neighbors thought it was a good idea.

In this episode, we head to the state that has the largest migratory bird in the nation, the only state with a triple divide allowing water to flow into the Pacific, Atlantic and Hudson Bay. We head to Victor, Montana. I'm Ken Shultz and I am the founder and winemaker at Hidden Legend Winery in Victor, Montana. Ok, Ken, let's go back to the beginning. Where did this spark come from? Well, when we were kids, I had an uncle that was a research chemist and a serious hobby winemaker, friends with the head of the technology department at Purdue and various vineyard owners. And things of that nature in his basement had all the right glassware. It was like Frankenstein's laboratory. So I guess that was the spark. Oh, yeah, that was early. You know, under 13, I turned 21. I was going to school in Lausanne, Switzerland. I worked overseas for a number of years and I came back. I got married when I was twenty three and the very first time I owned a closet I made. Me personally, I've lived all over Montana and I just love the big sky. But how about, you know, I was still in Ohio when I got married and we came out here, we got married in seventy five, came out to Montana, saw it, fell in love with the place in seventy six and finally moved here in seventy nine. Well my wife is Norwegian and she thought it looked like Norway and because I had worked there I thought it looked like northern Pakistan but no monkeys or water buffalo. There's something captivating about the Bitterroot Mountains.

You can look off in the distance and see a whole train. Well, you know, at some point when hiking and fishing and vistas and all of you know, the alluring things of Montana kind of settle down to a little bit.

I thought I'd make some wine and evidently I hadn't thought it through very well because there's no grapes. However, I had read The Hobbit and I knew what meat was. And so I came across a bucket of honey that somebody was just disposing of and I thought I'd make mead. I mentioned it to my peers in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and they were like, oh, my God, can no, don't make me. It's horrible. It's thick. Vikings drank it. You'll give winemakers a bad name. I thought, well, you snob's, I'll show you that I can make a mead every bit as complex as your wines. And so I made mead in the mid eighties. Let me just put it this way. I have a driveway that's a half a mile long, three switchbacks up a mountainside. And the guy that used to keep it clear for me in the wintertime would do it twice for a for a bottle.

Ok, let's rewind just a little bit without getting technical, but getting technical just to fill everybody in and be especially neat is often referred to as honey wine, but that's not really accurate. You make the wine with honey water and yeast rather than fruit. So technically meat is kind of in its own category of an alcoholic beverage.

Well, the word mead goes way back to the Sanskrit and the word Megu is honey in Sanskrit. And it's where the English word Medo comes from, which doesn't mean field of flowers. It means we're nectars gathered. And so Mead is actually a shortened meadow.

Well, I imagine that the chemical process is very similar. You're dealing with sugars, but just different kinds of sugars. So are there some nuances to the whole process?

The process is very similar, although we do have to create an environment for the yeast in honey because there's nothing in it but sugar and a grape contains just the right amount of nutrients and trace minerals and acids and sugars in it to make wine. And the powder on the outer outer skin is yeast. So if you break a grape, you can't stop it from making wine, whereas honey needs to be adjusted a bit before it'll ferment. Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of The Best Five Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHYSM If you like the show, please tell your friends and pets and subscribe until next time pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.

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Well, I imagine that the chemical process is very similar. You're dealing with sugars, but just different kinds of sugars. So are there some nuances to the whole process?

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Previous Episode

Summerhill Pyramid Winery-Kelowna, BC Canada Pt. 4

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Our featured winery is we conclude our interview with Stephen Cipes, proprietor of Summerhill Pyramid Winery in Kelowna, British Columbia. As we've learned in past episodes from Stephen, it's all about making wine to its purest form, and that includes serving local and organic food in their restaurants. And what exactly does local and organic mean, and why is that so important?

It's the largest impact on global warming is the food production for the eight billion of us. This business of 30-mile-long, that's a death in the oceans. And the sprays that come over on the jet streams from Asia to North America and the amount of carbon footprint to move all these, you know, thousands of tons of food everywhere. It's got to stop. It's ruining the earth at an astounding rate. If we go back to local and organic, we're going to have a much bigger difference in our breathing the air and keeping the planet alive. One of the biggest things that impacted us is the tractor. By going up and down in the fields, all the topsoil disappeared, and now we have to put chemicals to top topsoil and these pesticides. Already, according to The New York Times, 90 percent of the insects on the planet are gone, including the bees and the butterflies. And these are our pollinators. You know, I can understand why people don't realize that every time they buy something that's not organic, they are contributing to pesticides that are killing our insect. And if we don't have our insects, we are in big trouble in our conversation.

Stephen, I could tell that you're very progressive in that you're continually moving forward and trying to perfect whatever process you're in the middle of. But in the upcoming years, what kind of goals do you have?

I would say my goal is to get other wineries to convert to organic and other food producers to convert to organic. And I've started a declaration which has a website, organic, Okanogan dot com, organic Okanogan dot com. And you can sign the declaration online. And it's even if you're from California or Brazil or wherever you're from. It shows that you know, we are anxious to be a model and make a model of being organic. So that would be my wish is that our properties with some real property are a model to the world of man and nature and the beautiful wines we produce and also then, you know, the healthy wines that we make. I see the correlation in France, the amount of cancer in children of people living near vineyards there, and their population is so much higher than ours. And I have the link on our website. It's pathetic to see all these children with their hair shaved off, and you see the coffins going down into the earth. Children, you know. For what? For chemical wine. It's ridiculous. I can't believe that one child's life, to me, is worth all the wine in the world.

The world is the way it is. And I'm sure I can't change it all in one and one day. But I'm going to try.

Well, that's good, because you're trying makes me try. And then collectively, we start to make an impact on this whole thing, start to improve the planet for everybody. All right. As we close it out, let's get all of your contact information, Stephen, and you can contact me, Steve. I'm the proprietor at 250. 764.8000 ext 199 or ext. 11. Our websites are, https://www.summerhill.bc.ca/I also have http://organicokanagan.com/ and http://alloneera.com

That's the precious one that I'm working on with my Book, All One Era, which you can get on Amazon.com. Twelve dollars and 21 cents. Wonderful. Bless your heart. Thank you for all you do. Thank you very well.

Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.

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Next Episode

Hidden Legend Winery - Victor, Montana Pt. 2

In a winery, grapes come ripe in the fall. Of course, there are things to do all year, but that's called the crush. They harvest the grapes, they crush them, they press them, they get them in the tanks and they ferment. And then they sit in the tanks for a while. Then they look to finishing the wines and the whites come first and they're usually in the bottle before Christmas. And then the reds sit all winter and they're in the bottle by June. They really only make wine once a year. And that's during the fall. I make wine continuously. I buy honey twelve to thirty thousand pounds at a time and I am continually if I get an empty, empty tank, I fill the tank. That can be a couple of times a month. And so I don't have to once a year look up how I did it last year. What kind of honey are you dealing with in Montana? Oh yeah. We have basically two types here in Montana. We have wildflower honey in western Montana, I should say, up and down the western side of the Great Divide. We have five valleys and there's probably five major producers up, say, half a million pounds a year. Most of it is a wildflower, which used to be before the state declared war on it. Most of it was spotted in. And then there's a fair amount of clover, honey, and we use both. And we have two very distinct styles of meat that we make from each. And the clover honey here is entirely different. I grew up on Clover Honey in Ohio and I thought it was a trap. I hear it's very exciting. The national blenders just take everything they can get their hands on. It poured into a big battle. Honey bears. Oh no, that's hard work. Yeah, that's very easy. You don't hear much out of beekeepers because they're always working. We've all had honey crystalize in the cupboard and then with Montana winters I imagine you get honey in all different varieties of stages and things. How do you deal with that? Montana is second in the nation in honey production. When we get it in the drums, it's rock-solid, it is barely filtered. There are bee parts floating around in there and in raw honey in that sugar is very quickly so you can knock on it. It's like knocking on wood. So the first thing I have to do is put a strap a heater on the drum and raise it. And I do it over a four or five-day period very slowly to about 100 degrees. Let it melt. Now, I really try to be careful with the natural properties of honey. I want it to come through in the mid, whatever those properties may be, magical or medicinal. And both played a big part in historical meat make Out of the whole process. What is your favorite part? I'm going up to the mountain cabin and kicking back in front of the fireplace and having a horn of mead with friends. You say a horn of not Just a horn that fits into advanced meed enthusiasts. Yeah, we import horns from England Cups, mugs, and natural horns, just like in the Thirteenth Warrior or Robin Hood or Game of Thrones. Yeah, two of my three sons are principals in the company and a sort of a half son, a young fellow that we took in at an early age and raised along with our boys, so and my wife. So there are five of us principally. We say you have to be related to work here or somebody else. And it's time, boys and girls for our listener voicemail. Hi. I was wondering, did anyone besides the Vikings first make mead? At the risk of upsetting a Viking? I would have to say yes, only because Mead is the oldest known alcoholic beverage in world history. However, I would say that the Vikings did enjoy meed the most. Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of The Best Five Minute Wine Podcast was produced by IHYSM. If you like the show, please tell your friends and pets and subscribe until next time or the wine and ponder your next adventure.

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