On any given summer Saturday evening, if you drive about 20 minutes west on Route 9 out of Bloomington, you will find a packed parking lot among the fields. Surrounded by corn and beans, there is a slice of wine country in your backyard: Mackinaw Valley Vineyard and Winery.
“Dad started making the wine in 2001 when I was 11,” Eric Hahn, son of the late founder Paul Hahn, said. “I really avoided work at that point, but I remember using the bamboo poles from the vines to pretend I was a Jedi. It wasn’t until I was 18 that I started helping with the wine-making process.”
The winery opened in 2003, becoming a popular local destination for weddings, seasonal festivals and live music. Eric’s first job was mowing the expansive lawns and between the 15 acres of rows of vines and helping clean the wine-making room. Now, he is the head wine-maker at Mackinaw.
“In my early 20s, I didn’t have much to do with the winery because I was going to school at Bradley University. But then when I was 24, Dad got sick.” Paul was diagnosed with late-stage colorectal cancer. “I dropped out of Bradley and moved home to help care for him and the winery. I couldn’t let his dream die with him.”
Before he passed in 2016, Paul shared as much wine knowledge with Eric as he could. Friends of Paul’s in the industry helped Eric with some of the technical aspects. Within a few years, he had a good grip on the process. Eric now has an assistant who is eager to take on more responsibilities. “It gives me the opportunity to take better care of the vineyard,” he said.
Not only does Eric handle the care and maintenance of the vines themselves throughout the year, but he also takes care of the equipment, from the tractors to the fermentation vats and bottling equipment. He has a small but dedicated team that helps with the manual labor around the vineyard. Because of his father’s dreams, he takes responsibility in keeping all the pieces moving.
“I remember when our air bladder press exploded. That was scary,” Eric said. “There was also one time an employee misunderstood my directions and one of our bottling pumps overheated and caught fire. We were lucky to have a spare out in the barn.”
Hurdles of many varieties come up in the wine-making process. “Sometimes wine re-ferments in the bottle, and we have to go back to the drawing board to figure out if there was a microbial issue or something. Every year we find a new way to fix a mistake. But there’s still so much that can go wrong. It requires constant vigilance,” he said.
Among Eric’s experiments with wine, O’Hana was born, in memory of his father. It’s an incredibly sweet mango-peach-flavored white wine. When he entered it in the Illinois State Fair wine competition in 2024, O’Hana was awarded a double-gold medal. The honor means it was a unanimous decision as the winner of the dessert wine category.
“I was surprised, but I’m proud of the accomplishment,” Eric said. “It helped me realize that this is what I was meant to do. I’ve never been someone who needs praise or to be remembered, but it feels good when people appreciate your hard work.”
Over time, Eric has had the chance to inject some of his outside interests into the wine. He’s an impressive Dungeons and Dragons player, calling himself like a barbarian: “Low intelligence, but high strength.” Eric has added White Dragon, Red Dragon, Green Dragon, and Blue Dragon to the winery’s 24 different varieties. White Dragon, a pineapple-flavored sweet white wine, is a fan favorite. It routinely sells out by the end of the open season.
The winery itself is open to the public 11 months out of the year, closed only in January. The busy season kicks off at the end of May, over Memorial Day weekend. Not only does it signal the beginning of the live outdoor concert season, it is the International Wine & Beer Festival. People travel to the winery on their journey to enjoy over 100 different wines and craft beers from around the world over the course of two days.
Eric is a hard man to pin down that weekend, constantly running to help wherever needed. Each table in the pavilion requires large tubs of ice to keep the drinks cold, so he is on the move with enormous bags of ice, only stopping to trade spots with folks at tables so they can take meal breaks. The festival makes for long days for the staff, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday to11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday.
Once ‘band season’ starts, Eric’s duties also extend to tending the bar with the rest of the crew. During the busy season, you can find him slinging beer or pouring wine with the seasonal employees at any one of the three separate bars on the property. On the craziest nights, he stays on his toes, helping to restock each bar with cases of wine from the cellar and beer from the giant walk-in cooler. But band nights are some of his favorite events of the year.
“We always try to keep the lines moving fast, but it’s kind of exciting to see the lines stretch out from the Yard Bar all the way to the grapes,” he said. Each Saturday night, the bars will see anywhere between 300 to over 1000 patrons over the course of five hours.
“I enjoy the camaraderie and seeing everyone have a great time. One of my favorite memories is the lead singer of Decade of Decadence climbing the gazebo to sing the finale of a concert.” He said, pointing down at the dance floor and gazebo overlooking the vineyard’s pond. “But one of the really important events to me is the Father’s Day Fishing that we do. It reminds me of my Dad.” The winery offers fishing one day per year, and folks are invited to bring their own poles out to enjoy the pond and the scenery.
The winery is a family-friendly venue, offering non-alcoholic beverages and bags and board game sets during concerts. The manicured green lawn space stretches from the house at the top of the hill that holds the tasting room, private party room and immense covered patio down to the pond and over to the pavilion. It’s not uncommon to see kids running around on the lawn over the weekend, including Eric’s own children.
Family is important to Eric, and he wants to keep Mackinaw Valley Vineyard a family operation in the future. “I hope to keep it going,” he said, “So that someday my kids can take it over. I’d like to be able to someday step back and watch all the gears turning, knowing that I did everything I could to keep that machine going.”
