Panel 13 - Wine Industry | From Grapes to Apples... and Back to Grapes

As previous Panels have shown, Manson's agricultural roots were planted long before

today's wineries, tasting rooms and vineyards covered our hillsides.

And interestingly enough, this story begins with grapes.

The First Grapes

In the late 1800s, immigrant and pioneer families were settling around Lake Chelan and discovering what could grow here. On the south shore, Italian families, including the Falettos, planted grapes. Native Americans John and Peter Wapato were also among the valley's earliest fruit and grape growers, with historical accounts connecting their agricultural knowledge to Jesuit priest Father Urban DeGrassi.

On the north shore, Henry and Lydia Schultz arrived in Manson from Missouri in the late 1890s with their four children, Millford, Margaret, Alma and Salome.

And they brought something else with them.

Concord grape vines.

Those vines became part of the Schultz family farm. Daughter Alma continued working the family grape vineyard, while her husband planted apples. The family was involved in the beginnings of "The Unit," which handled the many kinds of fruit being grown around Manson and eventually became the Manson Growers Co-Op.

It was an early lesson in something Manson farmers would learn again and again: survival sometimes means being willing to grow something different.

Concords, Prohibition and a Changing Valley

By the early 1900s, Concord grapes could be found on numerous Manson properties, often grown for juice, the family table and homemade uses.

Then came Prohibition.

From 1920 to 1933, Americans couldn't legally buy their usual alcoholic beverages, but federal law did allow households to preserve fruit and produce non-intoxicating cider and fruit juices. Plenty of fruit had possibilities beyond its originally intended purpose.

Let's just say Manson farmers were seldom ones to let perfectly good fruit go to waste.

Grapes weren't the only fruit that found its way into homemade wine. Strawberries, peaches and even apples had their turn.

But those Concord grapes weren't finished with their Manson story.

By 1949, growers in Chelan and Manson, including the Freers, were selling grapes to the Welch Company. Grapes that didn't make the cut could head to Valley Evaporating Company's fruit dryer at Chelan Falls and become raisins. By that year, the Chelan and Manson areas had approximately 154 acres of juice-grape vineyards.

Still, another crop had become king.

The Century of Apples

For most of the twentieth century, orchards dominated our hillsides, our economy and our way of life. Apples weren't simply something Manson grew. They paid mortgages, raised children, supported businesses and passed farms from one generation to another.

That promise brought a young couple named Steve and Bobbi Kludt from Lake Tahoe to Manson in 1975. They wanted to farm and raise a family here. A handshake at Buddy's Tavern helped get them started in the orchard business.

Little did they know that one day they would help start something much bigger.

For many years, apple growing was good to the valley.

Then the market changed.

By the late 1990s, apple growers were losing money. Land that had supported families for generations suddenly couldn't support the debt against it. Farmers took jobs in Wenatchee.

Good farmers watched family ground disappear.

For many, everything seemed to fall apart at once.

The Kludts describe 1998 as the year their world "came crashing down" with the collapse of the apple market. Like their neighbors, they had to find another way forward.

Thinking Outside the Wine Box

The next chapter didn't begin in a corporate boardroom.

It began in living rooms.

Maybe ten or twelve growers at first, sitting together and asking the most important question a farmer can ask when the old way no longer works:

What else can we do?

The conversations grew. Living rooms led to larger community meetings at Campbell's hotel. People talked, listened, researched, brainstormed and learned.

One idea kept surfacing: agritourism.

And then another: grapes.

Concord grapes had already proved that vines could survive here. What if the valley could grow commercial wine grapes?

What if Manson could make wine?

Steve and Bobbi Kludt joined with fellow orchardist Bob Christopher and took the chance.

In 1998, Christopher and the Kludts converted orchard ground to wine grapes, beginning

the valley's first modern production vineyards.

This wasn't simply about starting a winery.

It was about finding a way for agriculture to survive.

The Rebirth of the Grape

Once the idea took root, things moved quickly. There was a tight group of fledgling winemakers working hard to accomplish big things!

In 1999, the Lake Chelan Wine Grape Growers Association was formed. In 2000, the Kludt family licensed and bonded Lake Chelan Winery, the first modern bonded winery in Chelan County. Other growers followed.

Across the lake, Dr. Robert Jankelson replaced acres of Red Delicious apples with vineyards that became Tsillan Cellars.

By 2006, the valley had 15 wineries and roughly 140 acres of vineyard.

Then, on May 30, 2009, the Lake Chelan American Viticultural Area officially became Washington's 11th AVA.

It turned out those early growers had good ground beneath their boots. Lake Chelan's immense body of water moderates temperatures, while distinctive glacial soils contain quartz and mica along with volcanic ash and pumice. Unlike most Columbia Valley appellations, Lake Chelan does not sit on basalt bedrock. All of this creating the unique taste of the wine.

Today, more than 40 wineries and tasting rooms are associated with the Lake Chelan wine region.

But the bigger story isn't really the number of wineries.

It's what happened to the community.

Agritourism grew beyond wine. U-pick flowers, fruit and vegetable farms, restaurants, live music, festivals, events and fabulous stories now complement the agriculture that still surrounds Manson.

And the families are still here.

Henry and Lydia Schultz's descendants, including the Freer and Elliott families, have reached a fifth generation in Manson. Their family legacy also lives through a scholarship

trust benefiting generations of Manson High School students.

The Kludt family, now extending into the Williams family, is three generations strong, with their pioneering spirit carrying beyond Lake Chelan and into Idaho.

Maybe that is the real heritage of farming here.

You plant. You work. You hope. And when life changes, you plant again.

Manson went from grapes to apples... and back to grapes.

And those Concord vines Henry and Lydia Schultz carried all the way from Missouri more than a century ago?

They're still here.

Look behind today's Lake Chelan Casino, on the old England orchard ground, and the Schultz homestead Concord vines can still be found growing.

After apples, Prohibition, market crashes, courthouse steps, living-room meetings, vineyards, wineries and an entirely new industry, perhaps those old Concords knew something all along.

Sometimes survival isn't about abandoning your roots.

It's about finding your way back to them.

*Note: Personal stories from the Schultz and Kludt families used in creating this blog will be added to our website soon. The details and mages from their own feelings as they tell their story, is wonderful!