Pleasant View’s Purple Sky Winery seeks to pioneer Northern Utah winemaking
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- Pleasant View’s Purple Sky Winery, photographed Monday, Sept. 16, 2024.
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- Grapevines at Pleasant View’s Purple Sky Winery, photographed Monday, Sept. 16, 2024.
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- Fermentation tanks at Pleasant View’s Purple Sky Winery, photographed Monday, Sept. 16, 2024.
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- Fermentation tanks at Pleasant View’s Purple Sky Winery, photographed Monday, Sept. 16, 2024.
PLEASANT VIEW — A local company is seeking to shake up the regional wine scene in the unlikely locale (and harsh climate) of Northern Utah.
Purple Sky Winery, located in Pleasant View, is the brainchild of Simon Goe, owner of the Snowville-based brine shrimp egg harvester Ocean Star International. The fledgling operation has wine in tanks right now with the aim of beginning the bottling process in 2025.
“We’re figuring out that exact timeline … going through the final stabilization processes. So, that’ll take a few months, but we’re looking to start bottling next spring,” winemaker David MaKieve told the Standard-Examiner.
MaKieve says Purple Sky has some 7,000 gallons of wine fermenting right now after beginning the winemaking process last month. It’s an eye-catching number considering the operation’s humble beginnings.
“They did their first planting of grapes in 2019,” MaKieve said. “A pretty small planting at first, about 5 acres — saw some initial signs of success that they took as enough to just go forward and plant a bunch more.”
Those first 5 acres ballooned to 200 planted acres across four vineyards in Snowville, Honeyville and Deweyville, according to MaKieve.
However, getting to this point has hardly been easy. Northern Utah’s extreme weather doesn’t exactly lend itself to winemaking.
“Grapes are a Mediterranean plant,” MaKieve said. “They’re meant for a Mediterranean climate with pretty hot summers and pretty mild, mellow winters that are just rainy and wet, but not actually too cold.”
To combat the climate, Purple Sky is using hybrid grape varieties that combine the characteristics of those produced by Vitis vinifera vines native to Europe and those produced by more cold-hardy North American plants.
“It’s gone well so far (but) not without its challenges,” MaKieve added. “A brand-new facility put together by a lot of different minds. And we don’t have a ton of wine background here in Utah in general, just to kind of help support the process.”
MaKieve says the majority of the wine Purple Sky is currently working to produce is geared toward “the Utah palate,” which he describes as “easy drinking” with a “fresh, fruity profile” and “lower alcohol, less aggressive.”
In addition to putting out product, Purple Sky’s facility eventually will include a dine-in restaurant. For now, though, the focus is on making great wine with grapes grown in the Beehive State.
“This project is really motivated by that sort of pioneer spirit that, really, is kind of at the core of Utah,” MaKieve said. “We’re really embracing that spirit, looking to pioneer this new region and really establish a new grape-growing and wine production region out here in the Mountain West.
“We’re really hoping to bring something new to not just this region, but to the U.S. and to the world of wine in general.”
