In 1919, Clem Kruse started selling Oldsmobile, Maxwell, and Chalmers-Velie vehicles from the ground floor of a two-story concrete building on Mill Street, in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, just south of the Twin Cities. Upstairs, Kruse’s Hall hosted dances, plays, and high school basketball games. One hundred years later, Cannon River Winery opened a tasting room and production facility in the history structure. Their grapes are grown nearby. Their wines are handcrafted on-site. And the building’s reuse provides space for tastings, retail sales, and special events.
Craft beverages are often discussed as lifestyle amenities—something pleasant to do on a Saturday afternoon. But in many small towns, a winery, brewery, cidery, or distillery can be a piece of rural economic development infrastructure. It can create a market for local farm products, bring visitors into a downtown, support restaurants and lodging, reinforce a community’s distinctive story, and give people a reason to spend more time in a place.
Across the Great Lakes region, communities are learning that the real product is not just wine, beer, cider, or spirits. It is place.
Craft Beverages Create Value from Place
Cannon River Winery’s production begins at a Sogn Valley vineyard on 40 acres in rural Goodhue County. Its wines are crafted from cold-climate Minnesota varieties developed for northern conditions. As of 2025, Minnesota was home to 73 wine producers contributing about $4.7 billion in economic activity statewide.
The Great Lakes are not trying to be Napa Valley. The Upper Midwest cold climate, short growing season, local fruit, and University of Minnesota grape-breeding program have produced an industry with its own identity. The same principle applies across the Great Lakes, including in Southwest Michigan where my grandfather grew grapes and other fruit for juice producers and local wineries.
The craft beverage industry is in a period of structural adjustment, with declining consumption and changing consumer preferences. Let’s not even mention tariffs. Yet as consumers search for authentic, hand-crafted experiences, the field still has potential as an economic alternative for value-added agriculture from the hills of the Gopher State to the shores of Lake Ontario.
The Tasting Room Can Be a Main Street Tool
Cannon River Winery also demonstrates a second lesson: where the visitor experience happens matters.
The winery’s tasting room is in downtown Cannon Falls, rather than being isolated at the rural vineyard. That choice brings people into the historic commercial district, where they can walk, eat (there’s a wonderful ice cream parlor across the street), shop, attend events, and encounter the rest of the community. The building itself—a Chevrolet dealership just a few years ago—adds another layer of local history to the experience.
Across the Great Lakes, craft beverage businesses increasingly operate as anchors within broader visitor economies. In southeast Minnesota, Cannon Falls, Red Wing, Lanesboro, Winona, and the Mississippi River valley connect wineries, breweries, and distilleries to trails, bluff-country scenery, historic downtowns, arts, agricultural experiences, and river tourism.
This is a practical impact of heritage tourism, and a question to ask your city planner: Does the Zoning Code allow such a thing downtown? If not, why not?
Local Food Completes the Experience
A good beverage may bring people in. Local food helps them stay sober!
Cannon River Winery has expanded beyond tasting and retail by incorporating food service, live music, events, and a more complete social experience. Visitors may stay longer, spend more, and bring friends whe a destination offers a more lively experience. Food turns a tasting room into a gathering place. Plus it creates opportunities for local suppliers, bakers, cheesemakers (the ice cream parlor across the street is run by local dairy farmers), musicians, artists, and event vendors.
This is one reason why craft beverages and local food systems belong in the economic development conversation.
For small towns in particular, this network matters more than any single business. A visitor who buys a bottle, eats a local meal, stays at a bed-and-breakfast, rents a bike, visits a museum, and shops downtown leaves much more value behind than a visitor who simply stops for a quick tasting and drives away.
Make the Place the Product
Cannon River Winery is a useful illustration because it connects vineyard agriculture with a historic downtown, wine production with local food, and an individual business with the larger identity of Cannon Falls.
That is the opportunity for communities across Minnesota and the Great Lakes region.
Craft beverages should not be viewed only as a hospitality trend or a niche business category. At their best, wineries, breweries, cideries, and distilleries help communities turn local assets into a coherent visitor experience. They create reasons to preserve agricultural land, reuse historic buildings, support small businesses, tell regional stories, and invite people to spend time in places that might otherwise be passed by.
The Sogn Valley Art Fair is coming up 3-4 October 2026. If you have a free weekend to visit Cannon Falls, Minnesota, give them a visit. They say they’ll even have baby goats.
