During the early summer of 2008, Phil Brandt had a batch of rhubarb wine fermenting nicely in his Minnesota home. A carpenter by trade and a part-time beekeeper, he looked forward to the day when he would reap the rewards of his patience and planning, finally tasting the wine after it aged. But sometimes plans — like life — can change in an instant.

Phil began to notice a sharp, nagging pain coming from beneath his ribcage that kept getting worse. Concerned, he went to a doctor. Tests revealed his spleen —normally as big as a person’s fist — had swelled to the size of a football.

Further diagnosis revealed grim news: stage-four Mantel Cell Lymphoma, a rare type of cancer that had spread to Phil’s bone marrow, blood, and lymph nodes.

Phil underwent six aggressive chemotherapy treatments for the remainder of the summer. Each visit meant four days in a hospital bed. Needles pumped a 24-hour flow of medication — 3 1⁄2 gallons worth — through a port doctors installed into his chest. And while his body was weakened as it received its daily doses of medication, Phil’s mind was focused on something else: that fermenting batch of rhubarb wine.

“It was one of the scariest times for us. He being newly-diagnosed and me being scared I would lose him — worried about him, missing sleep, trying to keep things together, keep people informed, take care of the home front. The last thing I was worried about was that batch of wine,” said Rollie Brandt, professional artist and Phil’s wife of nearly 37 years. “But not Phil.”

Phil gave Rollie a piece of paper with specific written instructions describing how to tend to the wine waiting for him at home. She removed the bag full of fermented rhubarb, stirred up the wine, and added the proper chemicals.

Knowing his wine was in good hands gave Phil comfort.

“I had to laugh that even in the midst of cancer, he was concerned about his wine,” Rollie said.

Phil’s hair fell out and his blood count plummeted after treatments, each time increasing his risk of developing infections. But eventually his spleen shrunk down to its normal size and didn’t need to be removed. Back home, when he felt strong enough, Phil managed to work and keep up with his wine craft whenever he could between treatments.

Good news came that October: the cancer went into remission. And although he would still need additional maintenance chemotherapy every six months for another two years, Phil tackled the disease with optimism.

“People have the impression that when you get a cancer diagnosis that it’s a death sentence,” he said. “That’s not always the case.”

If anything, he says, the disease has made the world taste that much sweeter.

“I probably enjoy everything that I do more now because I have cancer,” he continues. “You learn to appreciate the little things and some things aren’t as big as you used to think they are.”

And Phil still makes lots of wine.

“I don’t think (having cancer) affected my winemaking at all,” he said, adding that the disease allowed him to take a new approach to life. “Your priorities tend to change. You enjoy life more — making wine is one of those enjoyments.”

“I grew up in a winemaking family,” Phil said. It was in these years, watching his father make wine that Phil learned the art. “We were allowed to have small glasses with special dinners. My dad’s wine was fairly sweet but good, which probably helped me like wine as a kid.”

After marrying his high school sweetheart, Rollie, in the early ‘70s, Phil decided to take up the winemaking hobby. As the years passed, he dabbled in making a variety of different styles of fruit wine, ranging from plum and pear to raisin and wild crabapple wines, eventually perfecting his technique.

These days,when he’s not fishing, hunting, or traveling, Phil tends to his first-ever homegrown crop of Frontenac and Marquette grapes — both tough, “Minnesota hardy” vines,he says. He’s also made tomato and rhubarb wines that he’s proud of. This past June — a year after the initial cancer diagnosis — his chokecherry wine won abronze medal in the stone fruit category at the WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition.

“I had beenfilming on my digital camera some of the awards in the categories I entered,just in case they called my name so I’d have it on film,” Phil said. “When theycalled my name, you can hear me on the camera say, ‘Hey! That’s me! Cool!’”

But winning the medal took a little more than making a good bottle of wine. It also required some additional inspiration from Rollie.

“Phil was reluctant to enter (the competition), but I kept telling him over and over he’d win something because his wine is good!” Rollie said.