February 28, 2012

Wiederkehr Wine Cellars is the oldest operational winery in the state, having been continually in business from 1880 to the present. It was founded in the late nineteenth century by Johann Adreas Wiederkehr, an immigrant from Switzerland who settled in Altus (Franklin County). He taught his son, Herman “J. B.” Wiederkehr (shown here), to carry on the tradition. Two of Herman’s sons, Leo and Alcuin, built the small family winery into the largest in the Southwest by the mid-1980s.