Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

WORLAND - If you could list all the agriculture grown in Wyoming and the Big Horn Basin, grapes likely would not make the list. The climates of Napa Valley and Bordeaux grapes are better suited for vineyard. However, you might be surprised to learn that grapes not only can be grown here in Wyoming but can thrive.

Worland's Lyle and Shelley Spence and others have proven as much. The Spences not only successfully grow grapes on their property outside of Worland. But their vineyard is just as stout and hardy as the Wyoming people when it comes to dealing with the harsh seasons in the state. On average, the Spences harvest around 700 pounds worth of grapes a year.

"A lot of people have trouble believing that," said Lyle Spence when asked if he receives any quizzical looks that he has a vineyard. "The key to it is you have to select the right varieties. We tried a number of varieties and failed with a large number of them. Until we found the two that seemed to work well in our location here. We found those in the fifth or sixth year, it takes three or four years for it to really bear fruit."

Trial and error was the name of the game for the Spences starting out. It took several attempts to find the perfect species of grape. It was common to have a vine make it through spring and summer, only to have the late fall and winter be too much. And while some vines died, others had to be pruned to the ground only to go through the same cycle and never have the opportunity to bear fruit.

It wasn't until Lyle and Shelley grew Valiant and Frontenac grapes that their vineyard took off.

Valiant and Frontenac species were specifically designed to handle the harsh, cold-weather climates like Wyoming's. The Valiant was created at the University of North Dakota and the Frontenac was developed at the University of Minnesota. Both have a royal blue, deep purple coloring to their grapes, and the Frontenac vine can grow anywhere 10 to 15 feet in a year.

"They're fun to watch grow. Some of them, I think you could tie a ribbon on the end of the vine and watch it physically grow during the day," said Spence.

Before settling on the Valiants and Frontenacs, the Spences started small, growing about a dozen vines. After the success with those two species, they expanded to 30 vines.

While they have 30 vines, there hasn't been a season where all 30 are producing. Some vines will have to take a year off, so to speak, before they're back to their fruitful ways.

The usual cycle for maintaining the vineyard is similar to many other garden maintenance. Pruning is in the spring, summer watering and making sure the vines are looking healthy, then in the fall they harvest.

Harvesting 700 pounds of grapes, immediately sounds exhausting. The grapes aren't like other berries, you can grab handfuls at a time and fill up bucket after bucket.

"We fiddle around with them a lot, you have to prune them in the spring and you have to remove 70 to 80 percent of the wood from the prior year. Then in the fall, we're picking grapes and it gets to be a little labor intensive when you're harvesting to extract the juice.

"You can pick a lot in a hurry, the other day we picked 170 pounds in about two and a half hours," said Spence. "You can get a lot of grapes in a hurry, it's not like picking raspberries or strawberries."

Spence continued, "As long as the vine stays alive we'll keep it going. We had some die to the ground last year, so we cut them back and started to regrow them. We're not getting any fruit from them this year but they should be fruitful next year."

Bringing in 700 pounds of grape a year, you would think requires tons of water, fertilizer and a goodnight story. Yet, these grapes were created to be survivors. They need full sun, well-drained soil and not much water.

Deciding what to do with that much harvest is another process the Spences have down pat. On their own, the Valiants and Frontenacs are not great to eat due to their small size and large seeds. But, they do make for excellent jellies and juice.

"We've been picking around 700 pounds a year off of about 30 vines. It's been pretty consistent the last few years," said Spence. "After we pick what we can use, Shelley has a calling list of friends who will take the rest of the crop to make jelly or juice. I'm not a wine drinker, but I know some have used them to make wine."

Spence added, "They make really nice juice and jelly. They are very flavorful but they're not very fun to eat. The berries are very small and the seeds are big. We pick them, steam them, then press them for the juice, and Shelley makes a lot of grape jelly that we give away. Then we can a lot of juice for our own use. It's a great juice concentrate as it turns out almost like a syrup. You dilute it with water to drink it and it's really healthy and flavorful."

Of the entire process, pruning, tending to the vines and harvesting. Getting juice from the grapes is the most demanding aspect.

"The juice extraction is laborious. You put them in a steamer which breaks down the skins. Then we put that steam product into a basket press with a ratchet on top, like a wine press and extract the rest of the juice that way," said Spence.

As for why the Spences chose grapes, Lyle's maternal grandfather grew them. While he never met his grandfather, who passed away before he was born, it was a goal of theirs when they had their spot out in the country to cultivate a vineyard.

Then when the vineyard was thriving they could show Lyle's mother that they grew grapes just as her father did.

"My maternal grandfather was a great farmer, he died before I was born so I never learned anything from him about it. But we thought when we bought a place in the country that we might try to impress my mother - who was still living at that time - and see if we could grow some grapes like her dad did.

"That was the impetus and we planted some of the varieties that he grew in his vineyard. And over the years, they didn't fair very well in our climate here. So we replaced them with the more cold-hardy varieties," said Spence.

As for the future, do the Spences plan on searching out new varieties to add to their successful vineyard. Short answer, no. They are perfectly happy with their current vineyard and those experimental days are behind them.

"We've had all the fun we need searching for new varieties. At our age we're both retired and we found something that works for us and we're going to stick with that. We're through with the experimentation state," said Spence.