by Jeanne Roberts
Contributing Writer
Published: Tuesday, June 2, 2009 3:57 PM CDT
NORTH OAKS — Minnesota's harsh climate and temperature extremes make fruit-growing difficult at best. In spite of that, Alexandru Bortnova has found a way to grow quinces and even wine grapes that survive Minnesota's frigid winters and hot, humid summers.
Alexandru and his wife, Pasha Bortnova, a registered nurse, are transplants from Moldava, an Eastern European country that was once part of Romania. The country has a temperate climate and rich soils that create ideal growing conditions, making it the breadbasket of Eastern Europe, so it's not surprising that Alexandru's hobby is related to horticulture.
Today, Moldava is a thriving parliamentary democracy, but between 1992 and 2001 economic upheaval created unbearable living conditions, and many families like the Bortnovas left in search of greener pastures, at least in terms of financial opportunity.
For the Bortnovas, the single stroke of luck came in 1995, when they won the World Green Card Lottery. This lottery, officially known as the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, is operated by the U.S. Department of State, and consists of a yearly drawing by which 50,000 immigrants obtain visas. There is no cost to enter, and application can be made through the Department of State's Website, but applicants must have the equivalent of a high-school education.
Those who emigrate are also given an opportunity to apply for permanent residence, as Alexandru Bortnova and his family did after emigrating in 1996. In 2002, the Bortnovas were granted U.S. citizenship.
They currently live in Shoreview, and Alexandru has transformed his third of an acre into a miniature botanical paradise, complete with kiwis, apricots, quinces, cornelian cherries, seaberries, Carpathian walnuts and, of course, grapes.
The grapes, all 1,000 varieties, are the result of five years of cross-pollination, and represent hybrids of both well-known and obscure varieties of grapes, including table grapes, seeded and seedless grapes, and grapes grown exclusively to make wine. Bortnova creates his hybrids by transferring pollen from the flowers of one variety to the flowers of another, and then covering the hybrids with special paper bags to prevent open pollination. When the grapes ripen, he removes them, collects the seeds and plants those.
The process is very time- and labor-intensive. Records must be kept of each cross. In addition, since a grapevine takes four years to mature and bloom, viable crosses are slow to be discovered and require great patience.
As he notes:
"Selection of a good variety takes between 15-25 years, and sometimes a lifetime."
But the goal, grapevines that are extremely hardy, immune to disease and ripen by mid-September for maximum Brix (a measure of the ratio of sugar to fluid in the juice of the grape), is worth the effort, at least in his opinion.
In 2008, he also bought 2.6 acres of land in western Minnesota, seven miles south of Litchfield, where he hopes eventually to create Minnesota-hardy varieties of grapes using various growing, pruning and trellising methods he’s discovered along the way. He also hopes to grow hardy varieties of black currants, cherries and apricots, and to introduce unusual hardy berries and fruits like seaberries, arctic kiwi, Carnelian cherries and quinces to Minnesotans.
For Bortnova, wine is more than a hobby. He began working with grapes in a Moldavan vineyard his father purchased in 1972. His more recent efforts, to create a Minnesota-hardy wine grape with a high sugar content, are driven equally by a difficult climate and a conviction that wine grapes can be adapted to the local climate, where winters are sometimes more severe than those in Alaska.
Focusing on the future of grape-growing and winemaking in Minnesota, he is very optimistic, especially in view of the work already done by the University of Minnesota Horticultural Department and the Minnesota Grape Growers Association.
"When I moved to Minnesota in 1996, we had seven commercial vineyards and wineries, he said. "Now we have at least 23."
His work has been influenced by such notables as Elmer Swenson, a native of Osceola, Wis., who worked at the University of Minnesota caring for fruit crops in the 1970s. Swenson was a pioneer in grape breeding whose cultivars, both patented and freely distributed, have revolutionized grape growing in the Upper Midwest.
Bortnova also follows the activities of Peter Hemstad and Mark Hart. Hemstad heads the University of Minnesota's wine grape breeding program at the Horticulture Research Center in Chaska, and Hart is the owner of Mt. Ashwabay Vineyard and Orchard in Bayfield, Wis. Bortnova also buys many of his rootstocks from John Marshall, owner of the Great River Vineyard in Lake City, Minn.
Bortnova is a member of the Minnesota Grape Growers Association, an organization formed in 1976 to further communication amongst Minnesota's professional grape growers and vintners. The group is dedicated to cold-climate viticulture and sponsors a yearly conference in which growers, vintners and sponsors can listen to lectures from some of the most highly recognized figures in wine-grape breeding from the U.S., Canada and Europe. The association also features workshops, tours and wine-tastings for interested parties, including the general public.
Alexandru's recent article in the Minnesota Grape Growers Association magazine deals with the dynamics of Brix in some grape varieties hardy to central Minnesota. This is a critical factor in making good wine, because high sugar-to-water ratios allow superior fermentation during both the initial vat (or must) stage, and the barrel (or aging) stage.
Because Brix can vary from one grape cultivar to another, depending on the weather, the soil quality, pruning methods and the time of harvest, grape growers make quite a production of measuring Brix to determine the most optimum day to harvest grapes.
When he isn't growing grapes, creating cultivars, or making communion wine for the historic St. Mary Romanian Catholic Church in St. Paul, he works as an autotransfusionist for six local hospitals, providing hemodynamic support while surgeons perform open-heart surgery, for example.
Autotransfusion is the use of the patient's own blood during surgery, and is performed via an intra-aortic balloon pumping contrapulsation. In Moldava, Bortnova was a cardiac surgeon with a Ph.D. in medical science.
The Bortnovas have three children, Andrei, 21, Ana, 19 and Valeriu, 16. Andrei and Ana both attend the University of Minnesota. Valeriu, their youngest son, goes to Mounds View High School.
Alexandru is already working on another article, this one about the health value of red wines that have been properly fermented during the primary stage, as opposed to some commercial red wines, which spend less than three weeks in the must stage.
When asked why he chose Minnesota, he said the choice was inevitable. The only people he knew in the U.S. were friends he made during a lecture tour to Minnesota in 1994 to present his findings in the field of cardiac surgery.
"When the State Department asked me where I wanted to emigrate, I of course said Minnesota," he noted.
His impression of the U.S., and Minnesota?
"America is a unique country, 50 different states with different landscapes, climate, natural and agricultural resources, industries, human resources and intellectual potential. We did not have this vastness in my country."
He said he is especially proud of Minnesota, his chosen home, with its great river (the Mississippi), great lake (Superior), and a terrain that extends from rich farming land in the south to the vast, dense forests of the north.
