Our Story

Two lives, one home

Hospitality isn't something we offer. It's how we were raised, who we are, and why Free Run exists.

Trish Slevin & Prashanth Pais · Free Run Cellars

We didn't set out to open a winery.
We set out to build a place that felt like home — to us, and to everyone who walks through the gate.

Free Run Cellars is our primary residence, the place our kids are growing up, and the place we've chosen to pour our energy into between two demanding careers. When you visit, you're not a customer — you're a guest in our home. There's a Sanskrit phrase for that.

Atithidevo Bhav · the guest is akin to god

Trish at Free Run with her dogs

Trish Slevin

LaPorte to Nashville
to Berrien Springs

Trish grew up in LaPorte, Indiana — the kind of Midwest upbringing that instills a genuine warmth toward people that no amount of professional polish can manufacture. After Indiana University she earned dual master's degrees at Vanderbilt, then built a career in corporate strategy advising C-suite executives on AI implementation and mergers and acquisitions.

Somewhere in all of that, she developed a gift that has nothing to do with technology: the ability to make a stranger feel like a regular before they've finished their first glass. At Free Run, she's the reason people stay longer than they planned — and leave already thinking about coming back.

At the tasting room, she's just Trish.

Prashanth Pais

From the coffee hills
of Chikmagalur

Prashanth grew up spending summers at Mathathota, his grandparents' coffee estate in Chikmagalur, Karnataka — a region of India whose misty hills and rich volcanic soil produce some of the world's finest coffee. Those summers shaped something fundamental in him: an understanding that the land you tend determines what you pour, and that the people who tend it determine how it feels to be there.

A career as a data architect brought him to Chicago, where he met Trish. Today he's deepening his understanding of viticulture through coursework at Lake Michigan College — bringing the same rigor to his vines that his family brought to their coffee trees, half a world away.

Prashanth & Trish at Free Run Cellars

Together

They met in Chicago.
They landed here.

When Trish and Prashanth found Free Run Cellars — a boutique winery on a quiet road in Berrien Springs with four acres of Pinot Gris vines, a pond, and a tasting room with good bones — they didn't just see a business. They saw a home worth building a life around.

Both still work demanding careers in IT. Free Run is not a side project — it's what the careers exist to support. Every grape tended, every glass poured, every Sunday afternoon with live music on the patio is an expression of the life they've chosen to live here.

Listen · If Vines Could Talk
Episode 108 — Trish & Prashanth on Spotify
01
This is our home
Free Run is where we live, where our kids grow up, and where we've chosen to invest everything we have. That's not a marketing line — it changes how we treat every person who walks in.
02
Small batch, by choice
We curate wines from Lake Michigan Shore and beyond — small-batch bottles from growers we believe in. Quality over volume, every time.
03
Everyone is welcome
Family, dogs, designated drivers, first-time wine drinkers. No pretension, no dress code, no attitude. Just good wine and genuine hospitality.
04
The land matters
Four acres of Pinot Gris vines, a pond, walnut trees lining the drive. We tend this land because we believe what grows here — and how it's tended — ends up in the glass.

The Property

Ten acres of Southwest Michigan

90 minutes from Chicago. A world away from everything else.

4ac
Pinot Gris Vines
¼ac
Pond · Turtles & Fish
3ac
Walnut-lined Drive
90min
From Chicago

Come Visit

Come see it
for yourself

The best way to understand what Free Run is about is to sit on the patio on a Sunday afternoon with a glass of wine and nowhere to be. We'll take care of the rest.

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