Looking out over a field of freshly planted grapevines one evening last summer after a friend said a blessing over the vineyard, Chris Harmeyer said he and his family agreed that it was time to take the family business, White Oak Vineyards, to the next level and build a winery. The final nudge he needed came in July, when he lost his job with a medical equipment company.

“We knew that we wanted to put a winery up some day, but we hadn’t made a whole lot of progress toward building it,” Harmeyer said. “The week after I lost my job, I sat down with an architect and started moving everything forward. I finally had the time to commit to the project.”

Harmeyer, who returned to medical equipment sales earlier this year, said the construction of the winery is going smoothly. Work began in December, and the building is now fully enclosed.

“Everything about this project has just fallen into place,” he said. “I used to call it luck, but there’s no question in my mind that it’s divine intervention. We had so many things that we were fretting about one day, and then the answer would come in the mail or we would get a phone call. The weather has even cooperated all winter for this to stay on track. I don’t think we could have planned it better.”

Harmeyer, along with his wife, Janet, and her parents, Max and Pat Brewbaker of Ankeny, started White Oak Vineyards in 2000. The business is located about three miles north of Elkhart in the village of White Oak.

The idea for the vineyard, Harmeyer said, originally came from his mother-in-law, Pat. She suggested planting grapes on the property the two couples jointly own after visiting Summerset Winery near Indianola. But he didn’t take the idea seriously at first. Actually, he remembers saying at the time that she “was nuts.” Then a year later, he started researching grape growing.

“I was working in corporate America, ‘climbing the ladder’ and really doing rather well,” Harmeyer said. “But through some downsizing and changes in the company, I ended up in a position that I didn’t really like. I had always wanted to own my own business, so I started doing some soul searching and thought about what kinds of things I love to do.”

While growing up on a farm near Fort Dodge, Harmeyer developed a love for working the land and being outdoors. But his education at Iowa State University focused on exercise science and geriatric rehabilitation, leading him into a career in the medical industry. When Harmeyer considered how he could turn his love for the outdoors into a viable business, he turned his focus toward the large Baby Boomer population, a group with incredible spending power.

Not only did the wine industry fit his target demographic, but he already had the land he needed to get started. For several years, he had been growing corn and soybean test plots for Garst Seed Co. on a 6-acre parcel of land next to his house, so he decided to turn that into vineyards. He found that his sandy soil was ideally suited to growing grapes.

“I don’t mind working hard and sweating; manual labor is what I grew up with,” he said.

At first, Harmeyer’s wife, Janet, a teacher in the North Polk Community School District, and their four children (now ages 18, 16, 14 and 13) thought his idea to plant grapes was just a temporary interest that would fizzle out. But six months, later, when he was growing vine cuttings in the family’s garage, they started to see that he was really planning to do it.

“I always get accused of being a big dreamer,” he said. “My wife used to say that every two or three months, I had some big idea that I was shooting off on. It would last for a few months and then go away. This one, all of a sudden it went to three, four, five months, and she thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I think he’s serious.’”

In 2000, the Harmeyers and Brewbakers planted their first 2.5-acre plot of vines, a French-American hybrid called Marechal-Foch. That first year, Harmeyer said, was “an absolute disaster.”

“There were some issues with a lack of root system in the ground, and it was the driest summer we’d had for a long time,” he said. “To make matters worse, the corn harvest was early that fall, so we had hungry deer coming here to feed on the vines.”

About two-thirds of the 960 vines they had planted were destroyed and had to be replanted the following spring.

“I’m Irish-German, which makes me stubborn, so I refused to quit,” Harmeyer said. “We came back the next year and had better methods. Through the years, we’ve really mastered the planting of the vines.”

In 2002, they planted a field of St. Croix, a red wine grape. In 2004, they planted Lacrescent, a white grape developed at the University of Minnesota, and Frontenac, a red grape. Last summer, they planted their own White Oak Vintage grape in field five. Wine grapes take four to five years from when the vines are planted to when they’re harvested, so they’ve now harvested two crops of Marechal-Foch and sold them to other wineries.

Everyone in the family helps out in the business. Pat and Max Brewbaker, who are retired, help the Harmeyers and their children with mowing and the upkeep of the vineyards. The Brewbakers used to own and operate an art gallery in Ankeny and bring a wealth of knowledge about running a business. Pat helped design the business plan for the vineyards and handles a lot of the bookkeeping. Janet picked up on her mom’s business sense while working in her parents’ gallery, and has strong customer service skills. Harmeyer oversees the planting, crop management and pest control, and handles marketing.

“Everyone has jumped in headfirst and been equally involved all the way through this,” Chris Harmeyer said. “We’ve all brought our own special talents to the table to make it work.”

When construction of the 14,000-square-foot White Oak Vineyards Winery is finished this summer, it will have the capacity to produce 25,000 gallons of wine per year. Harmeyer expects to start out at around 5,500 gallons the first year and increase that to meet demand. He has hired a wine expert with experience in horticulture, viticulture and the food industry to manage wine production.

The 2.5-story building will also have a large tasting room to accommodate about 50 people, a banquet area to seat 250 and a loft area for offices. Starting Aug. 1, Harmeyer expects the winery will likely be open five days a week, and the banquet area and tasting room will be available for rent for events such as weddings or dinner parties.

The winery is located along a paved road on 23 acres of land the Harmeyers and Brewbakers purchased a few years ago adjacent to their property. It’s a serene area with lots of timber and rolling hills. In addition to the winery construction, several new homes are being built nearby, bringing new life to the area. Harmeyer gets the feeling that he is finally doing what he was intended to do.

“Where I grew up between Carroll and Fort Dodge, it was completely flat, so flat that on a good night, you could see the lights of Des Moines from where I lived,” he said. “My dream was always to live where there was timber and some creeks running through it. I love where we’re at, and I love what I’m doing. I’m the type of person who gets bored with things easily, but in the last six and a half years, I haven’t been bored at all.”