Monroe's Treehouse Vineyards bottles 4,000 cases each year, specializing in North Carolina-grown Muscadine wine.

MONROE, N.C. — When you think of wine, Italy, Spain and California probably come to mind.

But did you know that North Carolina's wine history goes back more than a century?

“Believe it or not, before prohibition, North Carolina was the number one wine producing state in the whole country,” says Philip Nordan, the winemaker at Treehouse Vineyards in Monroe. “We didn’t have the most vineyards, but we were producing the most gallons of wine per year.”

North Carolina is 10th in the U.S. for wine production. Treehouse Vineyards contributes to that number. The Nordan family’s been growing grapes here on property since 2010. The process starts in the field in September when the grapes are picked. Their specialty is Muscadine wine, the sweet stuff. Those crushed grapes are then fermented in tanks. They can chill here for up to two years. All year long, though, the wine is bottled every 10 days. 4,000 cases of wine a year.