Bob Lautenbach started with a roadside market just south of Fish Creek in 1955. That single fact tells you most of what you need to know about Door County's agricultural identity: someone grew fruit, sold it from the road, and the thing grew from there into a working orchard, vineyard, winery, and cider operation producing some 50 wines and hard ciders on-site. Cherry orchards line the WI-42 corridor the way other places have strip malls — they are not decoration, they are the peninsula's structure. Spring blossoms, summer fruit, roadside markets, u-pick farms: that is the county's actual calendar. The oldest winery on the Door Peninsula runs out of a former schoolhouse. No reservations at the tasting room. You show up, you drink what the land made. The agricultural identity here was built around the orchards, and it still runs on the same logic.
