Jean was born in Seoul, Korea and I was born in Kankakee, Illinois. Missionary parents brought me to Korea where I met Jean and we became high school sweethearts. Since then we have lived on three different continents and four different countries, and more states than most anyone we know. Lots of different jobs, big and small houses, even tried to retire a couple of times and now we are surrounded by God’s abundant beautiful creation in Cortez, Colorado. 

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We began our wine journey while working with the military in Germany. We had a friend who had a vineyard and winery in the heart of the Mosel wine region. His family had been in the wine business for over 100 years, and we had the fortune of being taught the ins and outs of wine making from him.

 

In 2016, wine making for us went from fascination to dream to reality. It started with a 1 gallon container and we made apple wine from too many apples picked that season. We hesitantly shared with friends...and nobody died. So we made more, this time with cherries. And we all lived.

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Instead of slug bug, Jean invented a game called "Yellow Car" and gave a kiss on the cheek every time she saw one. It became our family tradition and made long road trips fun.

 

When we started with the idea of making fruit wines, of course the first name that we came up with was Yellow Car. It was still only a dream, but we knew our motto would be "a kiss on the cheek."

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In Christmas of 2016, our children bought us a 1 gallon fruit wine making kit that had a recipe book. and the rest is history. We started making various flavors, mixing flavors, and adding our own unique recipes. Our list of people that we gave away the wine to started to grow also, and our friends began encouraging us to get a license so that we could sell it. Our final state license was finally granted in September 2019, and Yellow Car came into being.

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Just 4 days after we got licensed, we did our first debut at the Dolores Harvest Fest with amazing success and feedback. I was blown away counting the empty bottles and how many people walked away with full bottles. This gave us the confidence that Yellow Car Country wines could be a success. We hope you can come visit us and try them out for yourself.