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Community
votes to allow sale of wine
Ben
Fronczek
Staff Writer
(January 2002) NEW CASTLE, Ky. – Henry County
farmer Chuck Smith is chasing a three-year dream. If he fulfills
it, folks may soon be referring to his hometown as “Vintage
New Castle.”
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Chuck
& Mary Berry
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Smith is working toward opening the city’s
first commercial winery sometime in 2002. A Dec. 11 vote of
county residents passed overwhelmingly, allowing Smith to
establish a winery and giving him the right to sell wine in
the otherwise dry Henry County under several Kentucky Revised
Statutes.
Smith’s new venture will be called the Smith-Berry Winery
and Vineyards and will be located on his 180-acre farm at
855 Drennon Rd., just east of town.
“We feel like our community really supported us and will
continue to support us on this new venture,” said Smith,
43. “We’re overwhelmed with feelings that it went
that well.”
A New Castle native, Smith runs his farm with his wife, Mary
Berry, and his three daughters, Katie, 20, Virginia, 16, and
Tanya, 11. The Smiths have owned the farm since 1980, raising
of cattle and tobacco. During the 1990s, they started to raise
organic vegetables, which they sold at the New Castle farmer’s
market. They also had pasture poultry.
But a visit to California’s Napa Valley three years ago
planted a new seed in the Smiths’ farming ventures. It
was here and on a trip a year later to Livermore, Calif.,
that introduced Smith to the wonders of grape growing.
“It peaked my interest, especially that you didn’t
need a lot of land to have a winery,” said Smith. “I
always thought you needed to have 300 to 400 acres.”
But as it turned out, the Ivan Tamas Winery he visited in
Livermore only had eight acres of vineyards.
“They had some really nice wines, too,” he said.
Upon his return home, Smith pursued his interest by becoming
involved in the Kentucky Vineyard Society. He met Louisville
resident Mark Klan, a society member.
Smith began studying laws of alcohol legislation in dry counties.
In January 2000, Smith attended the Kentucky Vineyard and
Horticulture meeting in Lexington, Ky. There, one of the issues
discussed was trying to legalize the sale of wine in a dry
county. It wasn’t long before a bill was drawn up and
passed before the General Assembly, and local option elections
on wine sales in such counties were allowed under the governance
of statutes.
With these statutes in place, Smith began promoting a petition
for a winery at his farm. He had to obtain signatures of 25
percent of the registered voters who voted in the last election
in order for a local option election to be called. He said
he found the community favorable to the issue. By late September,
the petitions were turned into county clerk, and two months
later, the vote was taken and the statute passed.
“I think this is an exciting thing,” said Henry
County resident John Logan Brent. “If we are going to
have a healthy local economy and maintain the quality of life,
agriculture has to play a big part. I think a winery will
work toward those goals and could open up a lot of doors for
farmers and spin-off businesses.”
“I think this was a tremendous effort on his part,”
said Klan, who came up from Louisville for the Dec. 11 meeting.
“It provides a nice alternative to the traditional Kentucky
tobacco growing. If you look at the location of New Castle
between I-71 and I-64, it’s in a perfect area. Most of
the people purchasing are interested in tourism, so a winery
is a hot financial opportunity.”
The newly passed statute allows the sale of wine at Smith’s
establishment only and not on Sundays.
Currently, Smith is already growing four types of grapes on
four acres of land. He plans to offer a balance of both dry
and sweet and red and white wines. Guests will able to tour
the vineyards and enjoy the tasting room, which will be in
an old buggy shed next to the Smiths’ Victorian gingerbread-style
home. Smith said half of this structure will be used to house
an art gallery. He is also planning to later establish a conference
center and reception hall on his property.
“That is our long term plan,” he emphasized.
His tentative timeline is to prepare the tasting room by April
and landscape his property to include a new driveway to accommodate
bus tours and the like.
Smith invites anyone seeking information about the winery
to call him at (502) 845-7091.
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