Published: July 29, 2025 | Updated: July 25, 2025

Sheppard Fruit Wines offers bottles of Harrison-made goodness

Awesome neighbors help the Sheppard family bottle their wine in January 2024.  From left: Dave Kuenker, Graydon Myhre, Judy Kuenker, Julie Sheppard and Tessa Myhre.

Awesome neighbors help the Sheppard family bottle their wine in January 2024. From left: Dave Kuenker, Graydon Myhre, Judy Kuenker, Julie Sheppard and Tessa Myhre.

HARRISON — A move with their two sons from Carson City, Nev. to Harrison in 1996 turned out to be a fruitful one for Sheppard Fruit Wines owners Jim and Julie Sheppard.

"During the harvest season, we discovered an abundance of fruit in the area that we could glean or grow ourselves," Jim Sheppard said in an email interview.

With a love of the outdoors, wild blackberry hunting and picking soon became one of their favorite things to do.

"We loved eating them fresh, but also decided to try making wine with them," Jim said. "Our first attempt at wine making was with a box of peaches we were given. That turned out awful and had to be thrown out. But our next try was with these wild blackberries, and it turned out amazing! We were hooked."

They tried making wines out of other readily available local fruits: raspberries, Italian plums, elderberries, pears and huckleberries. Before long, they had 13 carboys in their kitchen pantry and mudroom, fermenting and aging various fruit wines.

"We used a little booklet about home winemaking that guided our attempts and took careful notes of each step," Jim said. "If there was an issue with a wine, i.e. a stuck ferment, hazy or funky, we would discuss the problem we were having with the friendly staff at the local homebrew and winemaking supply shop or search publications for information."

The Sheppards gave an abundance of wines to friends and family, who planted the seed that led to commercial sales.

"When we considered starting a wine business, we thought making fruit wines exclusively would be a great niche, and we love doing it," Jim said. "We received our federal winery license in June 2009 and in 2010 produced 157 cases. Production is now over 1,000 cases per year."

The Sheppard Fruit Wines Winery and Tasting Room is at 30233 S. Chester Drive in Harrison, about an hour from downtown Coeur d'Alene.

Growing the winery from a hobby, the Sheppards applied the skills they had gained from past jobs to make it what it is today. They performed any odd work or skill that was needed to create and sustain the business.

"It was Julie’s idea to first make wine and start the commercial winery," Jim said. "Generations of Julie’s family have made fruit wines at home in England. There, the fruit wines were usually finished in a dry to semi-dry style, which are more fruit forward, light-bodied and delicate, which inspired our style of winemaking. The dry style of wines appealed to us the most because of the nuances that could be discovered from the various fruits, without being cloying. It’s a new standard for fruit wines that is appealing more often to the American palate."

Sheppard Fruit Wines currently offers eight different wines, the most popular being huckleberry, followed by rhubarb, peach and cranberry.

"My favorite is cranberry wine, being off-dry, fruity, light body, with a sharp finish," Jim said. "Julie loves rhubarb wine’s fruity flavor and balanced finish. We both love that the wines are made clean, with just the fruit on the label and only the other ingredients needed to make a beautiful wine."

No "other natural flavor" ingredients are used in the wines, nor are there added colors or artificial sweeteners. And the Sheppards carefully avoid a host of ingredients that can be allergens, Jim said. Their wines do contain added sulfites though, "like all good wines and other canned products," he said.

Not every experiment is a success. A dark cherry wine was attempted but didn't meet the required standards to be viable; it didn’t finish all the way to dryness, becoming a “stuck” ferment.

"It was too sharp when we hoped it would be smooth," Jim said. "The color was a little brown. Frustrating, but we look back at the notes, make some tweaks and hopefully next time we can nail it. In contrast, the wines we’ve been making for years are always consistent now and rarely need any intervention but maybe a second filtering."

A batch of wine takes an average of four months start to finish. Most of that time, the wine is bulk aging and settling, using the same stainless-steel vessels in which the fermentation occurred. The wines are not aged in oak barrels, which means less time to bottling.

The process is the same as grape wineries: crushing, dilution, chaptalization, additions of nutrients and cultured yeasts, fermentation, cap punch-downs, temperature and brix measurements, racking off the lees, stabilization, settling, more racking for clarifying, then filtering and bottling. Equipment and tools are constantly cleaned.

Sheppard Fruit Wines is a family affair.

"Working the winery as a family business has been a blessing," Jim said. "We are independent, set our own hours and can follow our own creative vibe. Our sons, Jacob and Ian, and their wives help at the winery and at markets when we need them."

The family began selling its wines at the Kootenai County Farmers Market in 2014. They attend the Saturday market at the corner of Prairie Avenue and Highway 95 in Hayden from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and the Wednesday market on Main Street in the Village at Riverstone from 3-7 p.m.

"We enjoy being at the markets, having a tight community with the other vendors, being in the open air with live music, having relaxed one-on-one talks and feedback from customers and selling lots of wine," Jim said.

Some challenging aspects of making and selling the wine themselves include keeping up with demand; ensuring the quality and consistency; and consistent and effective marketing.

"It is hard to consistently stand out, taking a lot of time," Jim said. 

However, starting a business from scratch, creating a product people enjoy and come back for is exciting and fulfilling, "and is what we love about it," he said.

The wines are available at stores in North Idaho and Washington, distributed through the Odom Corporation and its sister company, Northwest Beverages. Locally, they can be found at Pilgrim's Market, Fred Meyer and all Super 1 Foods locations in North Idaho.

"From our website, customers can purchase our wines and have them shipped to over 40 states, as well as providing information about us and our wines," Jim said. "There is also a Wine Club with quarterly releases that feature $15 flat rate shipping."

Visit sheppardfruitwines.com for details and to keep up on the latest winery happenings.


    All eight Sheppard Fruit Wines, from left: Elderberry, rhubarb, cranberry, raspberry, plum, huckleberry, pear and peach.
 
 
    Julie Sheppard sells wines beneath Sheppard Fruit Wines' custom logoed farmers' market canopy in August 2024.
 
 
    Jim Sheppard bottles wine on a six-place bottle filler in March 2022.