Pecan Creek Winery - Muskogee, OK Pt. 2

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, we continue our conversation with Bob Wickizer owner-operator of Pecan Creek Winery in Muskogee, Oklahoma.

How do we get to your place? Well, first of all, you come down, I think one of the bumpiest roads on the planet, outside of the roads in the rainforest in Costa Rica. Once you've managed to traverse three or four miles of you, first see the vineyard on my partner's ranch. And a lot of people want to turn in there. But there are signs that say wineries another mile. We have about two or three hundred grapevines, cab, and Tempranillo around the winery. But the big vineyards down the road, the winery is in a 5000 square foot converted garage. I proudly tell the story of the origin of the word and the wine industry, Garagistes, it's a French or Italian word literally means someone who works in a garage like a mechanic. Then the big wineries picked it up to disparage the up and coming young winemakers who were, you know, they couldn't afford the Chateau and Napa or wherever. So they get a car garage, start making wine in it. So the Garagistes was originally a derogatory term. And lo and behold, over the last 10 or 20 years, people are paying attention. These small, artisanal wineries are making some pretty darn good stuff. And it might be worth visiting the small guys next time you go to Paso Robles and then then the giant places. And we're one of those. So we're proudly one of the Garagistes. We make wine in a car garage. Gosh, it was six bays or a couple of brothers and a big body shop in the back. And so they kept their high-end race cars, and they actually had a John Deere antique tractor collection as well in the garage where a winery is. So you'll see it, a nondescript metal building with a red door for the tasting room. And eventually, we're going to get our name on the building. But there's a sign out front on the road. But that's where we are for now. I mean, if we're in a wildly successful days, we could move over to the farm next to the vineyard. And we've got some really cool space over there that would be great to expand into. But we just have to run the business conservatively and make it all work.

So when you started the winery, were you at all hesitant about whether it would work in your climates and your soil? They say if it grows peaches, it'll grow grapes. And where our vineyard is part of a former six hundred acre ranch. Our consultant came out there that first day, and we said, well, meet us in the peach farm.  And he said, oh, you won't even need it to get soil samples. If you had peach trees here. You're good to go. We took soil samples anyway, but you'll see that like the Palisades in California, I think there are some vineyards in South Africa like that where you'll see vineyards and peach orchards next to each other. So there's something about that. I guess the conditions are comparable, were favorable for both. We have a great site for a vineyard, and we grow about 30 percent of our production is hybrids.

It's time, boys and girls for our listener voicemail. Hi, this is Judy from North Carolina. How do you choose the right wine glass? Me personally, I don't even use a glass. I just drink straight from the bottle. But if you're going to be sophisticated, you want a wide glass for reds, narrow for whites, tall, narrow flute style for sparkling. Thank you for your question, Judy. I'll get your free T-shirt out to you as soon as possible. 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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