Prairie Moon Winery & Vineyards

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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.