Today we’d like to introduce you to Tamara Bredeson.
Hi Tamara, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My husband and I lived in Baudette MN on the Canadian border. We were pretty much box wine and Labatt’s Blue drinkers until my husband received a bottle of Opus One from a customer. He is a woodcarver and had carved a mantel for the Mondavi corporation. A card in the package stated, “Our masterpiece, for your masterpiece.” It came in a beautiful wooden box with a full color guide to every vintage of Opus One ever made. Upon further research, we learned it was worth almost $300! That was more than we had spent on wine in our lifetime – much less one bottle!
What could make one bottle so valuable? We had to learn. We tucked the bottle away and began a journey to learn more about wine. We went to wineries. We purchased a corkscrew. We started buying wine in bottles. Then lo and behold, one day, shortly after our nest had emptied of children, a classified ad appeared in the MNPL Star Tribune. “For Sale. Minnesota’s Largest Winery.” I looked at my husband and said, “wouldn’t that be fun?” To which he immediately responded, “why in the world would we want that?”
After some effort, I convinced him that we needed to check it out. We both LOVED the grounds. The location. The business. We made and offer, found a bank that would finance us, and after signing pretty much our life away, we toasted our new venture with that bottle of Opus One.
That was back in 2008. The winery made 7000 gallons of wine, and had 5 full-time employees. 13 years later, our production will reach 40,000 gallons, we have 25 full-time employees, we host 50 plus weddings annually and we’ve added a craft brewery.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Purchasing the winery was a challenge for a number of reasons. Carlos Creek was the first winery to change ownership in the history of Minnesota. Getting a value for the sale was difficult, due to no comp sales. We also needed to use the Small Business Administration Finance Program for part of the financing, which does not allow stock purchases. But, in order to meet Federal (TTB) licensing requirements to assume the inventory of wine, we had to keep the “Carlos Creek Winery, Inc.” entity in place by purchasing all the stock! What a conundrum. By placing a nominal value on the stock, and the vast majority of the value on real estate, buildings and equipment, the SBA allowed the purchase – to our knowledge, the first of its kind.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
My husband and I are co-owners of Bold North Cellars, which includes Carlos Creek Winery, 22 Northmen Brewery, Grand Hall Events, and Stoke & Sizzle restaurants. The business has expanded over our 13 years of ownership from its beginnings as just a Farm Winery, which we purchased in 2008.
I think we have been particularly good at creating brands that have done well. In the business plan we submitted to potential banks, we identified a need for a wine brand that would really resonate with Minnesotans and proposed the idea of “Minnesota Nice” wines. I had discovered that mark was available to register, and applying for that trademark was one of the first things we did after buying the winery. We make three wines under the MN Nice label: Hot Dish Red, Wobegon White and You Betcha Blush. We’ve trademarked all 3.
Hot Dish Red was our first. We introduced it in 2008 hoping the fun name would help to increase the percentage of MN grown wine that sold by our winery. (At the time of our purchase, less than 20% of wine purchased, was grown in Minnesota, which was 30% below the state required 50%). It worked! Hot Dish Red quickly became our best-selling wine. We created a great label featuring Ole and Spike, the winery moose, and vinted a non-aged, fruity red wine from estate-grown Valiant grapes. The combination has been our best-selling wine ever since, currently making up about 25% of our sales.
Wobegon White quickly followed Hot Dish Red. It is made primarily from Brianna and Frontenac Gris grapes, which are widely grown in Minnesota. Wobegon is our second best-selling wine. You Betcha Blush was the last of the series and was named by our customers in a Facebook contest. As blush wines rise in popularity, You Betcha is challenging Wobegon in sales.
Other wines we have developed and trademarked are our Minnescato (A moscato style wine made from MN grapes) and our SolMani (Old Norsk for Sun and Moon) which is a blend of California and Minnesota grapes and which includes a Red, White and Blush.
When we decided to open a brewery, we wanted to tie it to the Scandinavian roots of both the winery and our family. The name 22 Northmen comes from the inscription on the Runestone which Alexandria is famous for. It is a stone that legend says was left here by Scandinavian travelers in the 1300s. The inscription begins with “22 Northmen and 8 Swedes passed this way . . “. We figured those 22 Northmen must have been pretty thirsty by the time they arrived from Norway, so a brewery in their honor seemed highly appropriate. Since the names of the Northmen were lost to history, we decided to sell the rights to name the 22 Northmen to local businesses. These investments became the seed money we needed to finance the brewery. In addition to naming their Northman, each investor got to design a Norse shield. A local artist created these shields which are prominently displayed inside the brewery. Each investor also gets to work with our brewer to create a beer, named for their Northmen. The beer is released at a private investor’s party and subsequently tapped in our brewery. A few investor’s creations have been repeat brews that have graced our menu multiple times.
What most sets Bold North Cellars apart, is that we are truly a destination. Located on 200 acres in the Alexandria Lakes Area, there is plenty of room for outdoor seating, walking around the surrounding vineyards, cross country skiing or snowshoeing through our woods and returning to enjoy a wood-fired pizza and an adult beverage in front of a roaring fire in our long hall inspired brewery or Tuscan style winery.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
Pivot. We have learned to pivot. We learned our business model can (and did) change from week to week. We dug down deep in our creativity bucket to find financial opportunities that would also keep our employees on the payroll.
A few examples:
Though our revenues dipped 80% at times, we never laid off staff. During 3 of our darkest months, when no customers were coming through the doors, we had our staff think of a way we could film everything we needed for training and then we set them to writing scripts, and filming videos. We kept our staff busy, and we now have most of our trainings readily available on video any time we have a new hire.
When pouring individual samples of wine into glasses became an impossibility, we changed to offering flights of 4 wines served in compostable cups and held in a custom cardboard holder. What initially we saw as a negative, became a huge positive. Customers raved about how efficient this was and how they enjoyed having all 4 samples at once so they could more easily compare the flavors of each.
We also created “COVID SURVIVAL KITS” which were 3 packs of wines (Noir D’ Negative, The Antibody and the Vaccinator). We weren’t sure how these would go over, but we ended up selling well over a pallet of these wines.
Contact Info:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carloscreekwinery | https://www.facebook.com/22northmenbrewingco
- Website: www.boldnorthcellars.com
Image Credits
Exterior Photography of Brewery by Graddy Photography
