ALUMNI PROFILE
Winery really rocks
Joe Herman, Jour ’77, and his family own a vineyard that’s a little bit rock ’n roll.
By Joni Moths Mueller
 From their tribute to Don McLean bottled as Starry Starry White to a blush table wine named Pink Side of the Moon, Karma Vista Vineyards and Winery has fun assigning rock themes to the season’s harvest. Real music aficionados — the type who studied liner notes on album covers in a search for deeper meanings — may spot the cryptic connections to music Herman works into the description of every wine. True Marquetters, he says, will catch the link between Watusi Red and campus. The names of the wines and descriptions come from Herman, who draws from his background as a journalist and interest in philosophy. “It’s a lot like writing a haiku,” he says.
Herman’s family is the sixth generation to work the farm just 90 miles from Chicago. But he was the first to take a look at the elevation and sandy soil and think about planting vines for wines. They bottle and sell 3,000 cases each year. They also pour by the glass when wine lovers visit the vineyard that weaves oaken flavors with rock lyrics and lore.
Herman says they decided to commit a percent of acreage to a vineyard about 10 years ago and opened the winery five years later. The change gave rise to the winery’s name. “Karma is the great things that happen from the little things you do, much the way the little things you do in the vineyard come back to you in the bottle years later. Vista means view, and our view from the top of the hill is one of the more memorable experiences of a visit to Karma Vista,” he says. Karma Vista Winery is on the Southwest Michigan Wine Trail.
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