ABOUT

Las Mujeres is a family farm and winery in southwest Wisconsin.  We are in a part of the Upper Mississippi River Valley known as the Driftless, marked by big forested hills, dramatic valleys, meandering streams, and lots of community around organic agriculture.  We farm apples, pears, and grapes, and make natural ciders and wines without additives, preservatives, or filtration. 

 

Steep hills, dense wild apple woods, former pasture transitioning to fruit savannah…our agriculture lies in the edges, where we work entirely by hand, organically and regeneratively.  Some of our apple trees are thirty feet tall and close to a hundred years old.  We’ve planted grape vines next to volunteer trees coming up in the between spaces.  Our play in these margins is enormously productive.  Field/forest.  Farm/garden.  Wild/cultivated.  We’re obsessed with the feminine spirit of the liminal.

 

Our winery is a simple cinder block room dug out into the bottom of our farm’s hills just below some towering pine woods. Seeking to plumb the depths of soil and fruit, we make ciders and wines that defy category.  Savory, saline ciders with minerality.  Wines that taste of the earth.  Elixirs of light, energy, and freedom for celebratory contemplative togetherness.

 

A quarter of the fruit we use comes from our farm and the rest comes from like-minded partner farms in the area, all of it organically grown.  We crush, macerate, press into barrel, bottle 12 months later, and age in bottle for 3-6 months before selling…nothing ever added, nothing taken away.  We blend at maceration in ways that extract dynamic layers of flavor and depth.  

 

We make still ciders, still wines, and sparkling piquettes, all of them dry.  We make piquette by macerating pomace with water, and we get bubbles naturally by bottling when there’s still some sweetness left in the juice.  We like piquette with bubbles, because it brings life to the light residual flavor of the fruit left over after first press.  We make our ciders and wines still, because we find that to be the most satisfying expression of the profoundly delicious fruit we grow and gather. 
 

Farmers/Winemakers/Founders:

Elise Zelechowski and Tony Bezsylko have backgrounds in environmental policy and food and wine.  They started Las Mujeres in 2020 with the aim of expanding awareness of, and the collective sense of possibility around, sustainable agriculture in the midwest through daily engagement with and celebration of the earth.