MARINETTE – As summer approaches and planners begin to fill up, the Forgotten Fire Winery is sharing their event calendar to invite local families and visitors to stop by the winery. With a wide range of events scheduled, even a casual wine enjoyer can become a season enthusiast after a visit to the Forgotten Fire Winery.
Approaching 14 years of business, owner Melissa Joppe took this time spent planning for the months ahead as an opportunity to reflect on how they got where they are today.
In October, 2011 Forgotten Fire Winery was started by then-owners Lindsay and Joe Callow, who drew inspiration from the Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871 for the business name.
Joppe was close with the business even in these early days as her husband, Chris, was Joe Callow’s coworker and helped behind the scenes with startup ideas and winery preparations.
While the couple did move away from Wisconsin for a few years, they ultimately came back home and became involved with the winery once again.
In 2017 Joppe and her husband became co-owners of Forgotten Fire Winery with the Callows, and by 2021 they were the primary owners.
“So, my background is in supply chain management and leadership. My husband’s background has been in sales management, so not necessarily the wine business. That’s where we lean on the team, who’s been at the winery from the beginning, to help with a lot of the day-to-day details,” she said.
Many of the daily tasks that Joppe and the team work on are outside of the view of their customers, such as connecting with local businesses, purchasing grapes from different suppliers and planning the inventory.
When it comes to planning the inventory, she said that the winery looks at both pricing and marketplace trends.
“Part of what we’ve done over the last few years is create local relationships with bourbon distilleries where we partner with the distilleries to get their barrels that we then age wine in. So, it’s a combination of what’s happening on site at the winery, what we see in the marketplace and how we can create partnerships to expand our portfolio,” Joppe explained.
After all of the combined effort to craft these wines, which can take anywhere from months to years, Joppe joked that “the fun part comes” when the Forgotten Fire Winery team can sample their products.
The winery offers a wide range of products for all different wine preferences. Some of the bestsellers include Nice Rack, a sweet cranberry raspberry fruit wine; Menominee River Red, a semi-sweet red blend; and Cabernet Franc Aged in Bourbon Barrels, a dry oak-aged.
“The nice part about our wine portfolio is that there’s a little bit for everyone,” Joppe said. “Becuase maybe today we have a lot of sweet fruit drinkers who come to visit us and maybe tomorrow they’re looking for a dry red and their friend wants a dry white, so we have a lot of variety in our menu that kind of appeals to most wine drinkers.”
Although Forgotten Fire Winery’s main product is wine, they offer much more.
Different types of mead and locally-sourced beers have been a point of interest for many as well as the hard apple cider. A few different flavors are sold year round, including the fan-favorite Brown Sugar Cinnamon Apple, but this year’s seasonal flavors are cranberry, cherry, watermelon and green apple.
Those not drinking alcohol can order a root beer or lemon lime craft soda while enjoying the many events scheduled for the summer.
Event Manager Katie Wagner shared that the summer concert series will begin in June. These concerts take place during the afternoon and welcome leashed pets for a relaxing, community-oriented show.
Wagner shared that with this concert series they “always try to have a food vendor and we wanted to partner with local charity. It’s always been kind of our goal.”
Forgotten Fire Winery has been able to combine these goals by having volunteers from charities work the food stands to raise money for programming.
The current lineup includes:
All concerts run from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and picnic table seating is available, but attendees are encouraged to bring their lawn chairs.
Wagner and Joppe are excited to see familiar and new faces while making lasting memories this summer at Forgotten Fire Winery.
Forgotten Fire Winery is located at N2393 Schacht Rd, Marinette.
To learn more about drink offerings and summer events, visit www.forgottenfirewinery.com or Forgotten Fire WInery on Facebook.
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