Moving on to another important wine competition that focuses solely on wines made in the Midwest is the Mid-American Wine Competition. The Mid-American Wine Competition focuses only on the wines of the Midwest. The competition is open only to commercial wineries of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas and Oklahoma
An impressive panel of wine judges, possessing tremendous depth and breadth of knowledge, is topped by Doug Frost (chief judge) and Bob Foster (competition organizer), and skilled panelists with experiences ranging from winemaker, sommelier, food and wine writer, enology professor, and wine enthusiasts.
For this series of Midwest Wine Review, we’ll spotlight the top 5 placing wines for the 2010 Mid-American Wine Competition.
Prairie Moon Iowa Winter Moon Ice Wine (2007)
Mid-American Wine Competition
Dick Peterson Trophy, Best Iowa Wine
The Wine – Vidal Blanc: As Iowa’s ONLY Ice Wine Maker, Matt Nissen strives to create the best. Winner of the 2010 Dr. Dick Peterson Award and voted Best Iowa Wine 2010, Winter Moon gives you the ultimate dessert wine experience. Made from 100% Vidal Blanc grapes, frozen on the vine and pressed to extract the syrupy, sweet juice, creates a taste like no other. The palate will be teased with a spectrum of tastes from a warm earthiness to the sweetness of the tropical lychee fruit. Best enjoyed ice cold and complimented by dark chocolate. Not for the faint of heart.
Purchase Prairie Moon Wines: Click Here
The Winery: “Welcome to Prairie Moon Winery and Vineyards. Located in Ames, Iowa, we started with a passion for fine wine and a need for expansion in Iowa's agricultural diversity.
In 2000,Steven Nissen planted the first vines of what now has become an eighteen acre vineyard. The dream was to grow high quality grapes, in order to create fine estate wines, without having to buy grapes from established growing areas like California. It has been a slow process, but we believe our products reflect the care and precision put into the raising the grapes and making the wine.
Not only is the quality of grapes a main concern for us, but also the land on which they are grown. It is said that 80% of making a great wine is the quality of the grape you start with; therefore we take great pride in doing what we can to ensure this quality with our main asset, Iowa soil. We emphasize this through the practice of Organic Viticulture. This includes no use of insecticides, pesticides, or herbicides on our grapes. Even though this is a challenging task we know this will contribute to a quality product for generations to come, not to mention it keeps our precious waterways clean and protects the natural balance of our fragile eco-system.
Our mission is to produce the finest wines in Iowa through this and other methods such as, small batch fermentation, Iowa-grown French Varietals, knowledge of fine wine making, and using local Iowa made products in order to support the economy which we are concerned with.”
In 2000,Steven Nissen planted the first vines of what now has become an eighteen acre vineyard. The dream was to grow high quality grapes, in order to create fine estate wines, without having to buy grapes from established growing areas like California. It has been a slow process, but we believe our products reflect the care and precision put into the raising the grapes and making the wine.
Not only is the quality of grapes a main concern for us, but also the land on which they are grown. It is said that 80% of making a great wine is the quality of the grape you start with; therefore we take great pride in doing what we can to ensure this quality with our main asset, Iowa soil. We emphasize this through the practice of Organic Viticulture. This includes no use of insecticides, pesticides, or herbicides on our grapes. Even though this is a challenging task we know this will contribute to a quality product for generations to come, not to mention it keeps our precious waterways clean and protects the natural balance of our fragile eco-system.
Our mission is to produce the finest wines in Iowa through this and other methods such as, small batch fermentation, Iowa-grown French Varietals, knowledge of fine wine making, and using local Iowa made products in order to support the economy which we are concerned with.”
Visit Prairie Moon Winery Website: Click Here
