Prairie Moon Winery casts a growing light

Fourteen years ago, before wineries were a boom business in Iowa, before his kids were out of college and before a major stroke in 2008 that impaired his movement and took his speech, Steve Nissen planted some grapevines at his Ames home. Fifteen rows of different varieties. Just because he was interested. The former Iowa State University professor, discoverer of the HMB amino acid (found in weight maintenance products like Ensure), founder of a company that makes and sells HMB and lifelong learner is one of those kind of guys.

Then he planted a couple more acres. Then he bought some nearby land that had once been home to a seed-corn company and had three buildings on it and planted some more.

When his son Matt was about to graduate from ISU in December of 2005, Steve suggested they open a winery. Matt spent the winter filling out paperwork and getting things set up. In August of 2006, the Nissen family opened Prairie Moon Winery.

Family-owned and operated

Though the winery belongs to Steve and his wife Holly, Matt Nissen, 34, runs the vineyard and winemaking end of things, playing a larger role since his father's stroke. Matt's wife Janet, 31, is the event/wedding coordinator and keeps things running in the tasting room and office. Janet has a degree in elementary education "and I had not intended to stop teaching, but in a family business, you can't ever step away completely. So I could have two jobs that I couldn't give 100 percent to, or just one that I could." That degree however, has not gone to waste. She does work with brides after all. "There is a lot of overlap in skills," Holly said, smiling. "I had no idea how much."

Matt and Janet's son Hudson, 6 months, just keeps things cute and Holly, Steve's wife and Matt's mom, has the most important job of all — keeping Hudson happy.

Steve remains its heart, its "creative director" and artist in residence. Though his stroke makes him unable to participate in the physical labor and day-to-day operations, it has not dampened his need to do. He is a doer, everyone agrees.

"He wouldn't just get an idea and then talk to someone about it," Matt said. "He would just do it. If he decided he wanted a hole, he'd get a Bobcat and dig a hole. And we'd come home and there'd be a hole." Holly tells a story about looking out her window and seeing her big landscaping stones being hauled away by Steve. "I guess he needed them in the vineyard," she said, shrugging. ("I might have been a little mad at the time…")

That energy and drive has now been channeled into something new: painting. The Nissens' daughter Lyndsay is an artist, and after her dad's stroke, she set him up with painting supplies. The walls of Prairie Moon's tasting room are now lined with Steve's incredibly detailed, multi-layered paintings — which he paints with his left hand; he was right-handed before the stroke. Holly said, "He's always got about three paintings going at a time, and he just keeps adding to them."

Honey Moon red is their most popular

Even though the Nissens mostly prefer to drink dry wines, that is not the case for most of their customers. Their most popular wine is Honey Moon red, made with Concord grapes and honey produced by a neighbor. ("The neighbor wants to sell me the beehives — 'cause I need something else to do," Matt said. Still, he's considering it.)

But they make wines that range from a dry red to their increasingly well-known Winter Moon ice wine, a dessert wine made from Vidal Blanc grapes, frozen on the vine and pressed to extract the syrupy, sweet juice. "The ice wine is our most decorated. It took Best Iowa Wine at the 2011 Mid-American wine competition," Matt said. "I really think it has a big future in the niche wine world."

The winery produces about 2,000-3,000 gallons of wine a year, which is about 40 to 45 thousand pounds of grapes. Prairie Moon's vineyard produces about 60 percent of those grapes and Matt buys the rest (most Iowa wineries need to buy grapes from vineyards besides their own, especially if they make a fairly large quantity). "But we're transitioning toward using more and more of our own," Matt said. "We're replanting some of the vineyard with the varieties we like better and that grow better." Right now they grow 11 varieties, mostly French-American hybrids and native North American ones like Concord and Niagra. "In the future, I'd like to just sell estate wines," Matt said.

Longtime customer John Skerritt started visiting the winery shortly after it opened. "I liked their Marechal Foch wine (a dry French hybrid grape) at the outset and we have been going there ever since, particularly once the music Sundays came about."

Skerritt knows that the Iowa wine industry has its detractors; a big part of the business is in the often-maligned sweet wines. "In most wineries you should be able to find one or two wines you like as long as you have an open mind .. .and recognize there are ... limitations that do not make this California ... and recognize that the long-standing Midwest love affair with sweet Concord wines, is still very alive."

Tasting room events booked through 2015

Prairie Moon has kept growing over its eight years in business. The Nissens added an event venue on to the tasting room, which is now booked on weekends through 2015. And last year, they added an outdoor wood-fired pizza oven (bought from a friend who won it on The Price is Right), which they fired up on summer Sundays to serve pizza during their Sunday afternoon music-on-the-lawn events. They also will rent the oven for events. "The pizza has been a huge hit," Matt, who mans the oven, said. "We got 200 to 300 hundred people out here every Sunday."

Skerritt and his wife, Pam Hawhee, are also big fans of the pizza. "They are using the double zero grade flour from Italy and doing all the right things to get those dough rounds proofed and ready to build upon. It's ust a very simple product, well-made and with nice ingredients," Skerritt said.

The latest project is Alluvial Brewing Company, a five-barrel brewery set to come online in November. The brewery is housed in a building, finished last spring, that Janet describes as "Steve's baby. He had a vision for this building," which was originally constructed to support Lyndsay and her future husband's CSA business. "It really gave him a project to focus on and he's not the kind of guy to sit back and let someone else do it. It was a labor of love," for the whole family, she said.

Both inside and out are covered in reclaimed barnwood and beams, as are the taproom's fixtures. This year, Alluvial will sell growlers to go, but Matt is hoping that next year, they can do some bottling. Lyndsay will grow some of the hops that will go into what Matt said will be "hoppier styles of beers like IPAs. And a lot of stouts and porters." Janet says she's just glad that she'll get her garage back – where Matt has been experimenting with recipes for months.

Meanwhile the grapes keep growing, as does the family, as does the workload. Thinking about what lies ahead — a whole new aspect to the business, raising a son, keep on top of the business already built – Matt said, "We work a lot of hours. Weird hours. Late hours. It definitely has to be something you really want to do." And as in every family, there are inevitable conflicts. "We all have different opinions sometimes, but it always works out in the end.

Prairie Moon Winery

FIND IT: 3801 W. 190th St., Ames; 515-232-2747

INFO: www.prairiemoonwinery.com