Photos by Tom Campbell Nancie Corum is the assistant winemaker at St. Julian Wine Co.

Emily Kennedy says the best thing about working for the Oliver Winery is its family atmosphere.

Emily (Younce) Kennedy and Nancie Corum realize they are fighting an uphill battle.

“It doesn’t have to come from California or Oregon to be a good wine,” says Kennedy, laboratory manager at the Oliver Winery in Bloomington, Indiana’s largest winery.

“But there is that perception that if it comes from the Midwest, it can’t be very good,” adds Corum, assistant winemaker at the St. Julian Wine Co., Michigan’s largest winery.

Both are committed to changing public perception, one customer at a time.

“I always wanted to stay in the Midwest to help the wine industry,” says Kennedy, who grew up in Warsaw, Ind. “The Midwest always gets the short end of the stick when its wines are compared to California wines.”

A 25-foot-high wall inside the St. Julian Wine Co. in Paw Paw, Mich., is covered with medals and ribbons the company has won since it started selling wine in 1936.

“We enter about 15 wine competitions a year,” says Corum. “We take pride in our awards and what other people think of our wines. St. Julian has been known for its Solera Cream Sherry, but now we are really getting recognized for our Riesling, Pinot Grigio and many red vinifera varietals. I think they are as good as wines produced anywhere in the country.”

But when they started their college careers at Purdue, neither thought they would ever get closer to the wine industry than the beverage aisle of their local grocery store.

As an undergraduate in the School of Pharmacy, Kennedy wasn’t sure what she wanted to do for a living. But she knew what she didn’t want to do: “I didn’t want to stand on my feet all day counting pills.”

So she got some counseling.

“Why don’t you go talk to the people in food science,” suggested Joanie Younce, Emily’s mom and a Purdue Extension agent in Kosciusko County.

“I wasn’t really sure what food science was,” Kennedy admits. “I thought it was how to cook, take out stains in clothes, things I already knew.”

But mom knew better.

So Kennedy talked, looked and listened a lot. In a small lab in the gleaming, new Food Science Building, Kennedy found Ellie Butz. A lab technician, Butz was up to her elbows in the sweet smell of bubbling, fermenting batches of wine.

“It was kind of magical,” Kennedy recalls. “There were all kinds of wines made from Purdue grapes in these 5- and 10-gallon batches, all different colors and different smells as they fermented and released carbon dioxide.”

Kennedy loved it.

“I begged Ellie to let me work with her in the lab. I didn’t know anything about wines,” Kennedy says, “it just looked like so much fun.”

Corum grew up in Tippecanoe County in the shadows of Purdue and in the heart of the Corn Belt.

“I always thought I would be involved in corn and beans in some way,” she says, “perhaps in research and development. But I never thought wine could be a career.”

Then she took Richard Vine’s wine appreciation course. Corum became Vine’s teaching assistant, helping coordinate the Indy International Wine Competition.

She interned at Geyser Peak Winery in Sonoma County, California, from August through December of 2001. During the grape harvest, Corum worked 10-hour shifts, seven days a week for eight weeks.

And that, oddly enough, got her hooked on the wine industry.

“When I came back, I knew working in a winery was exactly what I wanted to do. Wine,” Corum says, “became my passion.”

Like Kennedy and Corum, Justin Casterline hopes to leave his mark on the Midwest wine industry. After graduation, the biology senior plans to open a winery in northern Indiana quicker than you can say Cabernet Sauvignon.

“I have a lot to do first,” says Casterline, who is in the process of lining up financing. “It may happen really soon, or it may not happen for 20 years, but I know this is what I want to with my life. And I can’t wait to get started.”

Casterline, whose hometown is Blissfield, Mich., has had enology on the brain since taking Vine’s wine appreciation course in 2002.

“It was a great course,” Casterline says, “the best I’ve taken at Purdue. Everybody who took it got really involved in the course. I think a lot of people sign up for it because they think it is an easy course, but it’s not. It is a lot of work, but it came easy to me, since I enjoyed it so much. That course really sparked something in me that I haven’t been able to let go of since.”

For the past few months, Casterline has been driving 156 miles north to Oswego, Ill., every Thursday to work at the Fox Valley Winery, gaining practical knowledge of what it takes to operate a winery. On that long drive to and fro, Casterline eyes the farmland along each side of the I-65 corridor he thinks could be potential locations for his winery.

“I want to get started as soon as I can,” says Casterline. “I’ve already drawn up a business plan, I’ve done some research and I already have a name picked out for the winery, ‘Stoney Run,’ named after a creek that runs through the land my wife’s family owns.”

Casterline plans to buy grapes from other producers to make his Stoney Run wines until his vineyard can be established.

“I’ve got my fingers crossed right now, just hoping everything works out,” he says.

Contact Corum at nanciec@stjulian.com

Contact Kennedy at ekennedy@oliverwinery.com

Contact Casterline at casterjm@purdue.edu