GenKota Winery is a Family Affair

The Drake winery has been a family affair from the beginning, owners Dr. Bradley Drake and his wife, Tamara, named the winery for their daughters Gennifer and Dakota. Then, they had to find a place to buy the grapes.

So, they turned to Dr. Drake’s mom and dad, Ina Rae and Gerald, with whom they co-own the Drake Vineyards, just a little northwest of town. Gerald runs the vineyard, Ina Rae manages the winery and Brad is the winemaker.
Ina Rae designed the interior of the winery and Gerald designed the exterior, with the help of an architect who brought their ideas into a blueprint, Ina Rae said. Brad took the blueprints to an Amish construction crew and they built the building.
It’s easy to hear the love and pride in her voice when she talks about her family and the work they do at the winery. “My husband did a lot of the finishing work. He built the tasting bar and the doors to the cold room. That was a bit of a project since he had never done anything like that before. But he’s really good at that sort of thing,” she said.

Then, Brad saw some mission-style doors on the cover of an architectural magazine and asked his dad for even more work, Ina Rae said. Gerald built the double mission-style doors for the winery and later a pair for the courtyard at his son’s home at the vineyard.

“When Brad and Tammy built their house at the vineyard, they really wanted to carry over the Mission-style,” she said. The southwestern style is reflected in the design of the house and the walled courtyard with big mission-style doors opening into the vineyard. “That house just looks like it belongs in a vineyard.”

In addition to buying from the vineyard he co-owns with his parents, Brad buys grapes from 5 other Illinois’ vineyards. “We try not to buy anything from out of the area that could be grown in Illinois,” Ina Rae said. “More than 90 percent of our wine is from Illinois’ grapes.”

The percentage of Illinois grapes in the wine might be even higher, she said, “I really haven’t done the math lately.”
When the winery buys grapes from out of state, they are crushed and juiced at the vineyard where they are grown and sent to Mount Vernon as raw juice, she said. “Then we make all the wine here in this building, even the port,” she said.
Ina Rae is also the computer guru in the family, designing the unique labels for Genkota’s custom gift wines. “It’s a very unique gift idea. We’ve done them for weddings, family reunions, corporate gifts, retirements. I have a whole file on my computer of real estate agents with their photos and company logos and we do a lot of gift baskets for people who’ve just bought a home with a bottle of wine included that has the date they bought the home and their name on it,” she said.
Ina Rae can take whatever text the giver wants and incorporate it with graphics to make a totally unique looking gift. Inside is one of the many award-winning wines Genkota has produced over the years.

The winery serves lunch daily. Nothing special, and “we don’t cook anything”, Ina Rae said, but a quality sandwich of deli meat and cheese on a bun with chips and a pickle.

Summer and fall hours for the winery at 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.n. Friday and Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday

The winery has a small gift shop, including the special label wines, and can host special events for up to 70 people indoors and additional 100 on the deck and in the garden.

The winery is surrounded by two acres of grapes in some of the varieties used in Genkota wines, but don’t expect grapes from those fields to end up in your glass.

“They were mostly planted for landscaping,” Ina Rae said, “but the deer and the birds think we planted them just for them.”