The destination that is now End of the Road Winery had been home to a family that for generations had made grape jam as a hobby. As the story goes, eventually a family friend suggested that the Barkers “make some wine with them grapes!”

Jim and Robin Barker – but primarily Jim – began making wine recreationally back in the 1980s. It took a while before they decided to actually develop a winery and vineyard into a business in 2015 during retirement.

On the property in Germfask in previous generations was just a “25-foot roll of grapes,” not a whole vineyard, Robin explained. Her husband (Jim)’s family taught her how to make jelly from the Concord grapes, as had been their tradition.

Concord is a common cultivar of grape, widely-grown in the United States, but the long growing season it prefers can be difficult for colder regions to provide. For this reason, researchers at the University of Minnesota launched breeding programs to develop cold-season grape varieties.

After deciding to produce wine following generations of making grape jam, one U.P. family converted their garage into the tasting room of End of the Road Winery. (Photo courtesy of Robin Barker)

According to the American Society for Horticultural Science, “the development of grape cultivars has been a goal at the UMN for 110 years; since the 1980s, the primary focus has been on wine grape cultivars.”

Several decades later, cold-weather grapes have been adopted at a number of wineries in the Midwest. End of the Road is one of them.

“Just when we were starting to look into opening the winery … we went to a grape grower’s conference over in Minnesota, and that’s where the cold-climate grapes originated,” Robin shared.

After deciding to launch their winery in 2015, the Barkers expanded their vineyard by planting additional types of cold-climate grapes.

End of the Road Winery – so named because it’s found at the end of Burns Road, located between Germfask, Curtis and Blaney Park – opened in 2016. Because it takes a number of seasons for grape vines to become established, the winery sourced their grapes from other producers for their first few years.

The logo for End of the Road Winery features a bottle, a glass, and a lane curving into the distance. (Courtesy photo)

The first year End of the Road Winery was in business, they made about 400 cases of wine. That number climbed in successive years.

Now, the vineyard hosts three-and-a-half acres of grapes. In addition to the Concord they started with, the Barkers grow cold-weather varietals Frontenac, Marquette, La Crescent, Prairie Star and Frontenac Blanc. Raspberries and apples are also cultivated on the property and make their way into the wines, as do unique local ingredients like rhubarb, jalepeno and maple.

“We specialize more in the fruity wine, but we do have a lot of grape wines as well,” Robin said. “When you start hitting the grapes, you have reds, and you got your whites, you’ve got your dry and you’ve got your sweets, and then some that are in between. …We will have, when we open in May, at least 24 varieties of wine.”

Robin said that one of her favorites is Sunburst, a sweet and fruity raspberry wine, while Jim enjoys La Crescent, a dry white. One that’s especially popular with customers is Mount Me Cherry, made with Montmorency Cherries picked in Central Lake, Mich.

The building that serves as the tasting room of End of the Road used to be a garage before the Barkers converted it. Manufacturing of the wine is done in back virtually year-round. Before bottling, depending on the style, a single batch may be held in a fermentation tank for about three months for a fruit wine to over six months for a grape wine.

The patio was added outside End of the Road Winery about five years ago. (Courtesy photo)

Visitors to the winery, open seasonally, often try the tasting flight of four wines of their choice. Many leave with bottles. The tasting room store also sells merchandise.

As it grew, End of the Road Winery increased its production capacity. Robin said they learned quickly that they needed to scale up their stainless steel wine fermentation tanks, and now they have 80-gallon and 160-gallon tanks.

“We needed bigger tanks than what we ever anticipated, but our building is small, so that’s about as big as we can go,” she said.

As indoor capacity is limited, the business added an outdoor patio about five years ago.

End of the Road has hosted live music, painting nights, music bingo, and wine yoga. There are multiple dates this year that the winery is planning to have both food trucks and music – May 25, June 20, July 3, Sept. 5 and Oct. 10.

The event on June 20 will also serve as End of the Road’s 10-year anniversary celebration.

After its opening to the public for the year on May 19, End of the Road Winery’s hours will be from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. It will close in mid-October.

In the fall, the Germfask winery will put out a call for volunteers to help them harvest grapes. In past years, friends, family, customers and volunteers have aided in hand-picking from the vines and enjoyed food and drink afterwards.

Sometime in the not-so-distant future, the Barkers will be aiming to sell the winery and enjoy a relaxing retirement.

End of the Road Winery is found at 6917 Burns Rd. in Germfask and may be contacted at 906-450-154​1.

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R. R. Branstrom may be contacted at rbranstrom@dailypress.net or 906-786-2021, ext. 140.