Here in Ohio, people have been making wines for over 100 years, so I suppose my late partner Tim Hubbard and I can hardly call ourselves pioneers because we had guidance from Dr. Konstantin Frank. Yet we've often felt that way since Markko Vineyard's beginnings in 1968.

Getting Markko off the ground meant turning my back on a 17 year career as an industrial engineer. Somehow transforming myself from a desk-bound paper-pusher into a living breathing dirty fingernail farmer.

But the real pionering came with the vines themselves. Because Markko Vineyard represented one of the first serious attempts by an Ohio winemaker to grow European Vinifera grapes on the shores of Lake Erie. Other winemakers had had some success with the hardier French-American hybrid grapes. But now, we were setting out to pour heart and soul into two of the world's great Vinifera-Chardonnay and Riesling varietals.

Today that pioneering effort has borne fruit.

Our Chardonnay and Riesling wines can hold up their heads proudly in the company of America's finest white wines. They're recognized and acclaimed for their fine varietal character by some of the country's leading wine experts.

The Cabernet Sauvignon, an experiment of more recent vintage, is coming into its own as well. Blended with Chamborcin, Cabernet Frank, and Merlot, our Cabernet is a hearty-mouth-filling red wine.

We're enormously proud of every one of these wines. They are perhaps our greatest satisfactions, but not our most fundamental. For this venture that has been Markko Vineyard has enriched our lives in other unexpected ways.

It has, for example, given all of us the satisfaction of working together in the vineyard.

It has given each of us the satisfaction of participating in a tradition almost as old as mankind itself - the making of wine, the blood of life.

But most importent of all, it has given us renewed faith in the Lord and our purpose for living-meaningful work producing a food, the beverage of moderation.

And thus each year, as we prune the vines, care for them, and watch the grapes turn into wine, we are thankful for the wondrous workings of God's world. We are especially grateful to all of you, our customers, for your support as we have grown up. We could not have done it alone.

Now, our future is with people like you - people who love wine, the good earth that produces it, and the companionship that surrounds it - so come, bring your friends and share these Markko Wines with us.