You may not know it, but Boone County is home to an award-winning winery and vineyard called Gunpowder Creek Vineyard. This year, the business took home best red wine in the state in the Kentucky Commonwealth Commercial Wine Competition for their Norton line of wines.
“We entered first in 2020,” said Gena Ward, one of Gunpowder Creek’s partners. “We had 11 wines at the time. We entered 11, and we medaled every one, silver and bronze.”
The winery started when Jeff Ogden, the other partner in the business, bought about 1,000 grape plants from Indiana. Odgen’s family has been farming in the region for three generations, but this was the first time he’d considered wine.
In a past life, Ogden owned a fabricating shop in Newport for 33 years. Ward, on the other hand, owned a barbecue restaurant in Rabbit Hash called the Scalded Hog.
Gunpowder Creek has its main growing and production facilities in Union along the true-to-life Gunpowder Creek, which is a tributary to the Ohio River. Their tasting room and primary consumer-facing operation, however, is located in Rabbit Hash.
Gunpowder Creek is one of four wineries in Boone County. They have 17 varieties of wine, all of which are made locally. They’re also the only Northern Kentucky winery to use muscadine grapes, the sole species of grape native to North America, in some of their wines, although they have brought them in from North Carolina as they can’t grow in the local climate.
When LINK nky visited the Union vineyard, the growing season had passed, but Odgen and Ward allowed us to tour their facility and learn about their production process.
Besides dealing with what Odgen characterized as onerous regulations around wine production, permitting and distribution, the most peculiar thing about making wine, Ogden said, is finding the right balance of techniques to pique people’s interest. This is especially true with the sweet wines.
“Little variances in residual sugar on your sweet wines makes all the difference in the world,” Ogden said.
With the red wines, it’s more about timing the grape harvest with when the grapes reach the right acidity levels.
“If you got to pick them when the numbers aren’t perfect, then it’s a little struggle to make good wine,” Ogden said.
This year’s award is only the beginning of what Gunpowder Creek has in store for the future. They’re currently in the process of constructing a whole new tasting room next to their wine-making facility.
The new tasting room will run alongside Gunpowder Creek. It’ll feature a bandstand and should be able to hold about 60 people inside and about 100 on the deck outside.
Ogden had done about “80%,” Ward said, of the construction on the new building.
Ogden said he “can’t wait” to get a band in the tasting room, adding that “I work on building it everyday.”
You can learn more about Gunpowder Creek Vineyards and sign up for their newsletter at their website: gunpowdercreekvineyards.com.