After finishing her day job and putting the kids to bed, Amy LaBelle heads down the hill to her barn, home to LaBelle Winery, an Amherst winery specializing in fruit wine. The fruits of her labor are impressive. LaBelle Winery, which opened in 2005 producing 400 cases of apple wine, will produce up to 7,000 cases this year.
The collection includes 21 wines made from New England fruit and produce, including three cooking wines and four dessert wines. The winery has four full-time staff, including LaBelle's husband and winery co-owner Cesar Arboleda, and is scheduled to break ground this summer on a new winery that will house a 20,000-square-foot function facility with a tasting room, a new production facility, vegetable gardens, a retail store and a vineyard. We've got to be able to increase our capacity yesterday, says LaBelle. At this point we are turning down new accounts. We need more tanks. We need bigger tanks. This is a great problem to have.
Sales have doubled every year since opening, with a 130 percent increase last year. The barn now houses 16 tanks with a total capacity of up to 7,000 gallons. In the fall, they are used for apples and grapes; in the spring for the winery's many berry wines. The new facility will allow LaBelle to increase production to 20,000 gallons. For LaBelle, the decision to create fruit wines was simple: She wanted to find a niche market that could also support local producers (15 farms in the greater New England region, including one in New York for grapes.) I want our customers to feel more comfortable with wine, LaBelle says. It's a popular drink, but people feel intimidated by it. They drink what they are familiar with.
LaBelle has been working to change that, educating customers at monthly open houses about the many uses for drinking and cooking with wines. Her most popular item, cranberry wine, can be used for grown-up cranberry juice, or as the recipe card calls it, a Cranberry Wine Cosmopolitan when combined with Triple Sec. Also popular are the cooking wines, from heirloom tomato to jalapeno pepper. She is currently developing a dessert wine using maple sap and vanilla bean.
As the winery has grown, charitable giving has become part of its business plan. The winery raises money for a different charity at each of its open houses and gave away the equivalent of 10 percent of its sales last year through tastings and product donations. The wines are available in more than 100 retail locations in NH, as well as one in Massachusetts, and have earned 42 medals in competitions worldwide, including the Best Small Winery at the 2008 Big E. Once the new facility opens, the couple plans to expand their staff to at least 10, and LaBelle wants to leave her day job as an attorney to focus solely on winemaking.
For more information, visit www.labellewinerynh.com.