Driving into Cedarburg, you might be skeptical that good wine can be found there. It’s not wine country, not as you might imagine wine country, anyway. There are no softly rolling hills striped with row upon row of old-growth vines, just shaded streets, stately houses and then a several-block-long main street, neatly bordered by cream city brick buildings.

The winery is set off from the main street, headquartered in an old 1860’s woolen mill that hugs Cedar Creek.

The mill offers foot-thick limestone walls and a basement that looks purpose built for storing and aging wines. That’s how it must have looked to the couple who first established a winery at the site, in the 1970s. The Stone Mill Winery was famous for its Wisconsin cherry wines, and the winery was a popular stop for tourists visiting Cedarburg over the years.

In 1990, the winery was purchased by the Wollersheim family, who already operate the Wollersheim Winery in Prairie du Sac. The winery, renamed Cedar Creek, shifted its focus away from fruit-based wines to more traditional offerings.

Today, Cedar Creek bottles more than a dozen varieties - from sweet whites to robust, dry reds – as well as a handful of fruit wines, a nod to the winery’s heritage. Those wines have racked up a good number of gold, silver and bronze medals in wine competitions, as well as numerous fans.

Summertime best-sellers at the winery include perennial favorites such as Strawberry Blush, a semi-sweet white redolent with strawberry, and a sophisticated unoaked Chardonnay that reveals the complexities of the grape.

The grapes aren’t grown in Cedarburg – the soil and climate here don’t provide the most ideal conditions for the tempermental grapes. About a fifth of the winery’s grapes are Wisconsin grown, however, on Wollersheim Winery land. The rest come from Washington state’s fertile grape-growing region, carefully monitored by Wollersheim’s vintner, Phillippe Coquard.

The Cedarburg winery has a tasting room, offers tours of the wine cellaring and aging operation and sells all of the wines. You can also find many Cedar Creek wines at Outpost.