If you grow it, will customers follow for wineries?

UNCORKING SUCCESS: Maureen Leyden, who owns Big John’s Christmas Tree Farm with her husband, Jack, says that it's been challenging to spread the word about her winery. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE
UNCORKING SUCCESS: Maureen Leyden, who owns Big John’s Christmas Tree Farm with her husband, Jack, says that it's been challenging to spread the word about her winery. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE

Jack and Maureen Leyden, who’ve operated Big John’s Christmas Tree Farm in West Greenwich since 1970, last year incorporated wine production into their business.
Leyden Farm Vineyards and Winery officially opened in October 2011, offering five wines.
“[Christmas trees] are only a month out of the year,” Jack Leyden said. “We needed something that could be more of a year-round business. We had been making wine for years on our own. We thought it would be a great opportunity to start growing our own grapes and start selling.”
Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island are home to a small but by all accounts strong group of vineyards, some of which, with little fanfare, consistently produce award-winning wines.
The Rhode Island “big four” – Sakonnet Vineyards in Little Compton, Greenvale Vineyards in Portsmouth, Newport Vineyards in Middletown, and Diamond Hill Vineyards in Cumberland – generate more than $20 million annually for the state’s economy, inclusive of indirect impacts to other industries, according to the Economic Impact Study for Rhode Island Green-Related Industries, a collaborative study released in May by the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, the University of Rhode Island and several industry organizations.
The Leyden winery this past winter ventured into online discount-coupon territory, offering a Living Social deal for a tasting for two to generate product interest.
The Leyden family also has been spreading the word through contacts both professional and personal.
“Nothing’s really easy. Everywhere we go we promote and push it,” Leyden said. “People do know about our Christmas trees, but we have to get them to know about our wines.”
That’s a problem afflicting far more than these industry newcomers.
California, New York, and, to some extent Virginia and Washington state, are all well-known throughout the country as great wine-producing states.
Rhode Island wineries, despite welcoming at some locations hundreds of visitors on a summer afternoon, do not enjoy such acclaim.
“For so long, people really frowned on regional wines, [and] it takes a long time to establish a reputation,” said Nancy Parker Wilson, general manager at Greenvale Vineyards. “People are proud of [our] wines, but not every wine shop carries our wine. Quite frankly, we survive on tourism.” “The Wine Bible,” a reference book on world wine regions by Karen MacNeil, Emmy-award winning host the PBS series “Wine, Food & Friends with Karen MacNeil,” published in 2001, lists Rhode Island as a region to watch, pointing specifically to Sakonnet, founded in 1975 and, according to its website, producing 30,000 cases annually, as the state’s selling point.
Alex and Ani, the Cranston-based jewelry designer, announced in late July that it had purchased Sakonnet for $8.45 million, a move the company said was meant as a reinvestment in Rhode Island.
The company plans to sell Sakonnet wines, the Rhode Island Red perhaps its most locally famous, at its Teas and Javas coffee shop locations.
Getting more shops, as well as more restaurants, specifically outside of Rhode Island, to stock locally produced wines would generate even more revenue for the vineyards and state by making the products a more prominent export.
“We’re a small state without a lot of wineries, so people don’t think [about it] so much,” said John Nunes, who has owned Newport Vineyards, originally planted in 1977, since 1995.
Rhode Island vineyards are not alone in facing large marketing hurdles. Westport Rivers, a family-owned farm and vineyard in Westport, began producing in earnest a variety of whites and reds from its 80 acres of grapes in the late 1980s.
The Russell clan planted there for the area’s soil and rainfall and hoped for crisp wines.
At about the same time, Texas couple Richard and Bunny Becker were getting ready to open their vineyard tasting room in that state’s hill country, known for its complex soil and moderate altitude.
In the last 25 years, Becker Vineyards has grown to sell some 50,000 cases annually. Westport Rivers moves about 5,000.
“[They were all] excited and psyched, living and breathing Texas wine. And it’s not just Texas. North Carolina has had a serious boom [and] local movement,” said Bill Russell of Westport Rivers. “It would be nice to see that [happen] here.” Wineries in the area work together in many ways. The Coast Wine Trail, which encourages visitors to get a wine passport stamped at each location and then be entered into giveaways funded by the vineyards, has nine members.
(In addition to Greenvale, Newport, Sakonnet and Westport Rivers, there are Coastal Vineyards in Dartmouth, Langworthy Farm in Westerly, Running Brook Vineyards in Dartmouth, Travessia Winery in New Bedford and Truro Vineyards in North Truro, Mass.)
The vineyards are heavily promoted by Discover Newport, which markets Newport County as a tourism destination, and the Newport Area Chamber of Commerce.
Evan Smith, president and CEO of Discover Newport, said the organization uses local wines for VIP gifts and advertises the vineyards on visitor maps.
But try to bring a Massachusetts-made wine to a dinner party and, Russell said, you’re likely to be greeted quite unlike a VIP.
“The knee-jerk reaction would still be a guffaw,” he said, adding that he has a California-based winemaker friend who is a regular Westport Rivers buyer. But that friend, whom he declined to name, serves the wine to his dinner guests in a brown paper bag to hide its origin.
“He asks them [what they think] because he loves the response [of] ‘I can’t believe they’re doing this in Massachusetts,” Russell said.
Westport Rivers’ Gruner Veltliner, a grape primarily grown in Eastern Europe, recently was selected for Austria winemaker Laurenz Maria Moser V’s, known as The Gruner Man, International Wine Tasting.
Newport Vineyard’s Riesling won best in show, out of 458 contestants, at the Jefferson Cup Atlantic Seaboard Wine Competition in Washington, D.C., in 2008.
Leyden’s wine business is far too new to claim any titles or measure any remarkable success.
“We’ve had great feedback. People love the location. I’m just starting to get into it,” Leyden said. “[The state’s wineries] have got to get together and work more on [promotion]. Hopefully a year from now I can [say] it’s even better.” •

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