Fisher King Winery.
Not many vintners can say they were inspired to open a winery by a country music song.
But that’s the story, at least in part, behind the creation of the award-winning Fisher King Winery, which recently moved from Mount Horeb to Verona on the southwestern edge of Madison.
“I’d been toiling away in the corporate world for 35 years and was making great money — but my heart wasn’t in it,” said owner Alwyn Fitzgerald, who added that the lyrics from the honky tonk tune “Is That All There Is?” sometimes rolled around his brain while he worked as marketing director for a large engineering company.
What really made his motor race, though, was making batches of wine, often as much as 50 gallons at a time, in his basement.
“I didn’t want to be one of those guys who got to 85 and regretted he hadn’t done what he’d truly wanted to do with his life,” said Fitzgerald, who opened Fisher King five years ago in a storefront on the main street of Mount Horeb.
“I was in my 50s, avidly taking winemaking courses as a hobby and hanging out with vintners,” he said. “At the same time, I was tired of keeping the boss happy, tired of company politics and dealing with other people’s agendas and egos. I had to build up my enthusiasm to go work because it wasn’t my passion.
“I said, all right, I’ve been dreaming about running a winery for a long time. I figured if I didn’t do it soon, it’d be a lot harder in my 60s and it sure ain’t happening in my 70s. So I rolled my entire 401K of 35 years into this undertaking, which, ahem, remains an ongoing dialog with my wife.
“And the jury is still out (financially) on whether this was foolishness or a brave, wise move,” he said.
“But it was absolutely what I needed to do,” said Fitzgerald, who has a small vineyard on the west side of Madison where he can experiment with varietals developed for this region.
If awards are a measurement of Fisher King’s success, Fitzgerald has done well, winning contests on both coasts for his wines, many of which are made from cold-hardy hybrids that do well in southern Wisconsin’s sometimes harsh winters.
In addition, the Friday (and sometimes Saturday) evening performances by local musicians have attracted a regular following, he said. With room for just 45 in Mount Horeb, he often had to turn people away. But at the Verona winery, he has space for around 155 patrons.
Fitzgerald, who grew up on the East Coast, said he’s been drinking wine for nearly as long as he can remember because it was a regular part of his family’s meals.
“My mother was fresh-off-theboat German and my father was Irish,” he said. “So we always had wine with dinner, though my parents cut it with water when I was little.”
When he was a teenager, he told his mother he wanted to make wine and asked her how to do it. He recalls her responding in the thick accent she never lost and shaking her finger at him as she said sternly:
“‘Go buy a book, get some equipment and make it yourself.’ The irony is that this woman was telling her son to make an alcoholic beverage. So I started playing around with making wine, though I have to admit my standards were pretty low back then.”
While in college, where he worked toward a biology degree — followed by an MBA — he made beer because it was “faster, cheaper and the process was more forgiving.”
But he preferred grapes, so he switched back to winemaking as a hobby, which he pursued for more than three decades.
He said he chose the name Fisher King because the mythological character of pagan and Arthurian legend represents the rebirth of life after winter. The nobleman was also the last in the long line of kings who was charged with protecting the Holy Grail.
“During my hobby days, I toyed around with the Fisher King label because I’d read a number of books where he was mentioned,” he said. “But the choice wasn’t terribly profound. I just liked him.”
Fitzgerald said he chose Mount Horeb as the location for his winery because he wanted to have a downtown setting where people walked. He cashed out his 401K, obtained a revolving loan from the Village of Mount Horeb and borrowed money from a bank and several backers to get things started.
He made 4,000 gallons of wine the first year and has been increasing that amount by about a thousand gallons annually. The winery took off and by 2016, he was running out of space. Though he wanted to stay in Mount Horeb “because that’s where we’d built our brand,” a deal with a developer renovating a downtown building fell through and he had to look elsewhere.
“In our original location, we couldn’t do concurrent events like wedding receptions or parties because we didn’t have enough space, and events are how a lot of wineries make money, especially if they are in rural areas,” he said.
Though at first he had qualms, Fitzgerald said he lucked out in finding a spot in a new retail area on the outskirts of Verona just off the heavily traveled Highway 151 and County Roads M and PB.
“I had to find a landing spot and this was the next best option,” he said. “What I first saw was a building in the middle of a field, so I had concerns. But the more I looked into it, I saw that this is an area that’s growing rapidly and will soon have a plaza.
“There is a Hyatt Hotel that’s going in across the street with 160 rooms that will open in May. There are a couple of restaurants here and the Wisconsin Brewing Co. is across another road nearby and it brings in thousands of people in the summer.”
In addition, he said, Verona is next to Madison and on the Military Ridge Bike Trail, and the winery is only a short distance from Epic, the fast-growing medical records software company, and its 8,000-person campus.
“I did like the walkability of Mount Horeb, but the size of this place is better and its location can’t be beat. I can expand here, too, so I plan on being here for a long while.”
More information: The tasting room serves about a dozen wines, as well as beer. It also has cheese and sausage sampler plates, as well as truffles, chocolates and artisan breads. Visitors can sample five wines for $5. The tasting room is open noon to 7 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, noon to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday.
For more, see the Fisher King Winery website at fisherking
winery.com or call (608) 497-1056. Getting there: Fisher King Winery, 1105 Laser St., Verona, is about 90 miles west of Milwaukee via Interstates 94, 90 and Highway 18 and 151.