It seems like only yesterday (it was almost 4 years ago) that my wife and I decided to exit retirement and start our own Iowa winery.

Before we even opened the door for the first time we had ventured off course and had decided that we should open a store which also offered homebrew supplies and wine making supplies.  My first order for home brew ingredients and brewing equipment was a shot in the dark as I knew little about making beer.  I had been making wine for several years from wild grapes picked here in Iowa so my order for wine making ingredients and winemaking equipment was slightly more educated.

Deciding to open the home brew equipment and winemaking ingredients store delayed the start of wine production here at BlueStem Winery.  This delay was compounded when we decided that the only way to do it right was to have our own presence on the web.  Websites take time to develop and this, too, delayed the winery.  The delay was compounded by the fact that we knew little about building a website and chose a very, very poor company to build our site. Click here for the story of our first website and who not to have build yours.  We actually built a second website (another delay!) because the quality of our first site was so poor and the people we were working with were even worse.

Our inventory of wine making equipment, homebrewing ingredients and brewing supplies has increased exponentially since we opened and our customer base has grown steadily as we continue to expand our store sales and our web presence.

We have developed our own line of home brewing ingredients kits known as BlueStems Best.  About 75% of these kits are clones of Brewer's Best kits and 25% are recipes that we have developed here at BlueStem Winery.

The website is 98% finished and will probably always be 98% finished!  We work on it daily but a continual stream of new homebrewing equipment, brewing supplies, beer brewing ingredients, Cellar Craft and WinExpert wine kits and other new wine making accessories keeps us from ever being completely finished.

Interested in learning how to make your own wine or beer?  Home wine making classes and home brewing classes are available (follow the links for more information) and all of the beer brewing supplies and wine making ingredients you need are available in the e-Store section of our website.

BlueStem Winery is your quintessential small town business.  Located in the quiet farming community of Parkersburg, Iowa, we are not the first place you would normally look for a homebrew equipment / wine making supplies / winery!.

Although you wouldn't expect to find us here, what you can expect to find is reasonably priced winemaking and brewing ingredients sold with a personal touch.  We offer knowledgeable advice, friendly service and if you are a web customer, prompt (and inexpensive) shipping.

We are not nor will we ever be the Wal-Mart of wine making and home brewing supplies.  We just do not want to operate like that.  People ask us whether we sell the wine that we make through any distributors and the answer is and always will be no.  Market share is not what we are about.  We will continue to sell our home brewing equipment to one customer at a time.  Our brewing ingredients kits will be fresh, hand ground and packed just for you and our wine making and home brew supplies will be packaged and delivered promptly after your order is received.

Our estimate was right on the nose!  Previously we had published that our third wine should be out on the shelves by May 1 and that is exactly when it went out.  The labels arrived on April 29th and we managed to get a couple of cases labeled and out for sale.

This third wine is named Dark Side and is a Chilean Montepulciano.  Montepulciano is originally an Italian grape but the ones used in our wine were grown in the Andes of Chile. Dark Side joins our wine number 1 (Once in a Blue Moon) and number 2 (Red Crescent) which are a Riesling dessert wine and a Cabernet Franc dessert wine.

Other wines which will be available yet in 2008 will be a Riesling, a Gewurztraminer, a Gruner Veltliner, and another white dessert wine using Gewurztraminer grapes.  We possibly will have a sweet Riesling and a Zinfandel blush available by the late fall of 2008 and should have an Austrian Zweigelt ready for sale sometime in mid-2009.

Besides making our own wine, we absolutely love helping people get started in either home winemaking or home brewing.  To help get our home wine making enthusiasts get off to a great start with their wine making hobby we stock a large inventory of WinExpert wine ingredient kits and also a good supply of Cellar Craft ingredient kits.  Our lineup of Cellar Craft kits has expanded greatly as our spring order has arrived.

Our WinExpert inventory includes kits from the Island Mist, Selection Original (also known as Selection Premium), Selection Estate, Selection International and near the end of every year the Selection Limited Edition series kits.

Our Cellar Craft line includes many of their Showcase kits, a few of their Cellar Craft Classics series, the Cellar Craft Limited Edition kits and just a few of their dessert wines.