Prairie Berry Winery, of Hill City, recently got rave reviews at the nation’s largest competition for North American wines. The local winemakers were honored with several awards at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, but their raspberry and rhubarb wine stole the show.

Prairie Berry’s famous raspberry/rhubarb combo earned a Best of Class (judges unanimous gold) award, and was further recognized with a Judges Choice award.

I’m certainly not a professional wine-tasting judge, but I have had this rhubarb wine and it is fantastic!

Prairie Berry also received a silver medal for their Phat Hogg Red and a bronze medal for their Phat Hogg Chardonnay, a dry white wine.

One of the 63 judges for the San Francisco competition was Jessica Yadegaran, staff wine writer for the Bay Areas ness Group, the largest newspaper chain in Northern California. She also writes a wine blog and mentioned the local winery in last week’s post “10 Things I learned from judging the SF Wine Competition.”

Number three on Yadegaran’s top ten list was, “I absolutely have to drink more fruit wines, particularly those from South Dakota’s Prairie Berry Winery. Everyone on my panel loved their sassy rhubarb wine.”

The Vojta family, who owns the winery, has been crafting wines from South Dakota fruit since 1876. They started producing wine commercially in 1998 in Mobridge, South Dakota before moving to their current Hill City location in 2004.

Prairie Berry Winery is located on Highway 385, just north of Hill City, and offers free wine tasting daily.