The Dahlem fam­ily has been in the grape busi­ness for over a cen­tury. There were Dahlems that ran winer­ies, grew grapes and raised fam­i­lies in Altus and the sur­round­ing viti­cul­tural region for gen­er­a­tions. But James Dahlem got his patch the hard way. He bought it.

“We went from one bank to another, and finally Regions out of Clarksville stepped up and gave us a half guar­an­tee in the place,” he told me as we walked through his vine­yard not far from Chateau aux Arc in Altus. It was 1996, and the land was already home to a vine­yard and a peach orchard.

Advertisement

Grow­ing grapes is in his blood, and it’s some­thing Dahlem and his wife have always wanted to do. He works as a mechanic dur­ing the day, but in the morn­ings and late in the evenings he’s work­ing with his grapes, a mix­ture of table and wine grapes on a plateau north of Wiederkehr Village.

The table-grape vines date back more than 35 years. On the twisted vines under huge flat leaves, a mul­ti­tude of color emerge year after year—the pur­ple Venus vari­etals, the strong-flavored Mars, the translu­cent pink Reliances and the candy-sweet light green Inter­lochens. From the first har­vest in mid-July until the last of the Mars in late August, these seed­less cul­ti­vars pro­duce what Dahlem calls “pure heaven.”

Advertisement

“I can come out here, and the Venus will be ready, and I’ll eat them off the vine,” he says, his eyes glow­ing. “Then a lit­tle later, I can come try some Mars and Reliance, and walk over and taste the first of the Cyn­thi­anas (a wine-making vari­etal that’s also the offi­cial state grape of Arkansas). The Nia­gara come in, and the Nobles (two other wine-making grapes). I can’t get enough of them.”

While they’re in sea­son, Dahlem runs a steady busi­ness, tak­ing grapes to gro­cery stores and pro­duce stands in west­ern Arkansas and east­ern Okla­homa. Many of them go dur­ing the annual Altus Grape Fes­ti­val (held the last week­end of July) while oth­ers are picked up after the event.

Advertisement

A few years ago, Dahlem decided to change things. “I was going to Okla­homa City, to Musko­gee and Fayet­teville, to Albert­sons and Harps, CV and Marvin’s IGAs. And we’d spend a week on the road at a time.” All that dri­ving lim­ited the amount of time he could spend in the fields pick­ing grapes, so he opened up his oper­a­tion to indi­vid­u­als who wanted to pick their own.

“The first year, I told a few peo­ple and they told a few more, and we had some come out. The sec­ond year, I let peo­ple know when they came by at the Altus Grape Fes­ti­val, and we had a lot of peo­ple come out. There were some pick­ers who came up from Lit­tle Rock last year, and they told me they’d come back. This year, I got a call from one of those fam­i­lies ask­ing if the grapes were ready to pick. And when they showed up, I thought the police had come to take me away, there were all these cars at once. And it was a huge group of fam­i­lies. They went out and got more than 300 pounds that day. Some of them told oth­ers, and I had another group out. And a third group came and picked more than 800 pounds of the Cyn­thi­anas in one day.”

Advertisement

Dahlem sells the grapes at 70 cents a pound if you pick them your­self, or a dol­lar a pound if you come to the vine­yard to pick up grapes that are already in the pack­age. With tons of grapes com­ing off the vine, that’s a pretty good situation.

But, like most agri­cul­tural ven­tures, it’s not always guar­an­teed. Dahlem says he and his wife were lucky when they first started. “1996 was a good year, but 1997, we got a late frost and lost almost every­thing. Now, the bank had given us 12 months to make that first pay­ment, and the 1996 grape har­vest made that pay­ment. It could have been a lot worse.”

Advertisement

For a third straight year, he’s had a bumper crop. After a drought took its toll in 2012, Altus and the sur­round­ing area have enjoyed very wet springs and evenly hot sum­mers, which work together to strengthen vines and help the start of good fruit, then con­cen­trate their fla­vor. This year’s leaves are lush and ver­dant, pro­vid­ing good cover that keeps most grapes from burn­ing in the sun.

Dahlem has noted a pick-up from some gro­cery stores that had pre­vi­ously turned a blind eye to these Arkansas-grown fruits—a turn that may be influ­enced by the farm-to-table move­ment that has swept the state. He also has to some­times han­dle indi­vid­u­als who come to the vine­yards even when they’re not open for busi­ness, because peo­ple are crav­ing those grapes.

Advertisement

Though his har­vest is over for this year, Dahlem expects more to come pick their own grapes next sum­mer. He adver­tised on the radio this sea­son and he receives a lot busi­ness word-of-mouth. For a table-grape grower in a wine-grape region, Dahlem Vine­yard is man­ag­ing to sur­vive and thrive.

50 years of fearless reporting and still going strong

Be a part of something bigger and join the fight for truth by subscribing or donating to the Arkansas Times. For 50 years, our progressive, alternative newspaper in Little Rock has been tackling powerful forces through our tough, determined, and feisty journalism. With over 63,000 Facebook followers, 58,000 Twitter followers, 35,000 Arkansas blog followers, and 70,000 email subscribers, it's clear that our readers value our commitment to great journalism. But we need your help to do even more. By subscribing or donating – as little as $1 –, you'll not only have access to all of our articles, but you'll also be supporting our efforts to hire more writers and expand our coverage. Take a stand with the Arkansas Times and make a difference with your subscription or donation today.

Previous article Filmmaker planning Clinton family documentary. FYI if you get a call. Next article StudioMAIN Block Party on Thursday