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So you want to start a winery?
• by Glenn Bardgett• Photo by Jonathan S. Pollack
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I have been asked for my entire wine life if I ever wanted to open a winery. I did have the occasional daydream of grape growing and winemaking during my college years. After college, I even grew grapes in my backyard – and crushed them in my basement – for several years. Thankfully, that amateur attempt at winemaking was the perfect antidote to any personal winery ownership visions.
Running a winery is a tough venture, and it’s not for the faint of heart or light of wallet. Fortunately for wine-lovers, thousands of people do take the ownership plunge, and this number is growing, which is why all 50 states now have commercial wineries. With the number of Missouri wineries nearing 80, I frequently wonder about the challenges entrepreneurial Midwesterners face when they make the life-altering decision to own and operate their own wineries.
For example, I recently noticed a sign at the Lake of the Ozarks pointing toward Seven Springs Winery. Shortly after that, I met Mike Bleile, the winery’s owner, at the National Norton Wine Festival at the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park. Seven Springs had only been open for 68 days, and I was curious about what Bleile’s biggest challenge was. He said it was a need for more capital – and this after initially borrowing $500,000 from the bank. “The bank told me to get my tanks filled first and then come back to talk,” Bleile said.
Unlike many agricultural endeavors, grape growing requires significant upfront investment and offers significantly delayed returns. Once land is acquired and cleared of boulders and trees, the real expenses start to rack up. Young vines are purchased from nurseries; posts are sunk into the soil; very likely, some sort of irrigation system is installed. Then, after all of that, a vintner must wait, prune the vines in the winter and wait again. It is typically two to four years before a full crop is produced, and so it is not unusual for a grower to have three to five years of time and money invested before a single grape is harvested. At that point, a white wine may be made and sold within a year, but a red, particularly a Norton, may require another two to three years of aging before it is ready for the market.
This long period between planting grapes and selling wine is the reason that many new wineries will at first sell wine made with some help. This is usually accomplished by either of two scenarios. One is to have an established winery produce wine for the new operation for a few years until the vines begin bearing usable fruit and the new winery can make its own wines. The other is to begin producing wines very quickly by bringing in fruit from other states, most likely California. Crown Valley Winery near Ste. Genevieve, for instance, is a large purchaser of West Coast fruit and juice. (If a wine made in Missouri is produced from fruit grown outside the state, the label will read “American wine” rather than “Missouri wine.”)
Chandler Hill Vineyards, near Defiance in St. Charles County and another recent addition to our growing list of local wineries, has relied on both scenarios to get up and running. Once they obtained investors, owners John Shillington and Chuck Gillentine planted five acres in 2007 and will add another five acres in 2009. “We brought in [viticulturist] Joe Cotta and plan to harvest our first vintage in 2009,” Gillentine said.
In the meantime, sourcing fruit is a challenge. With the rapid growth of wineries in Missouri, the availability of local or even regional grapes is extremely tight. Consequently, Chandler Hill is purchasing fruit from vineyards in California to support its winemaking. Additionally, the talented Daniel Alcorso at Crown Valley Winery is making the Chardonel, Vignoles, Chambourcin, Norton and King Buck blend currently sold under Chandler Hill’s label until its own vineyards come into full production in a few years.
Certified sommelier Glenn Bardgett has overseen Annie Gunn’s award-winning wine list for the last seven years.
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