Whitfield County welcomes its first winery
“I’ve been doing wine for 45 years. I’ve been doing grape vines for about 25 years. I think I’ve been making wine longer than anybody in Georgia, I would bet.”
— MICHAEL ROBERTS, OWNER OF DEEP SPRINGS VINEYARD
As a college student, Michael Roberts said he couldn’t afford alcohol sold at stores. So he ordered from an advertisement in the back of Popular Mechanics magazine a 20-page book on how to make wine.
“I was so poor, I could barely afford the book, and I definitely couldn’t afford store-bought alcohol. So I decided I was going to start making wine from Welch’s grape juice,” Roberts said.
Now, 45 years later, he’s opening a farm winery in Whitfield County that will allow visitors to experience the entire winemaking process from vine to glass. Visitors will be able to see grapes growing, tour the fermentation process, taste the wine and buy bottles to take home.
The grapes are growing, the wine is fermenting, and Roberts said during a short tour of his property that the new winery is planning a grand opening for the public on Nov. 17.
Named Deep Springs Vineyard, the new business will have eight to 10 varieties ready on the day it opens and up to 20 in about a year, he said.
Farm wineries have sprung up in nearby counties like Murray, Gilmer, Pickens and Fannin. Roberts bought land intending to open a farm winery while knowing that although Georgia law allowed them, Whitfield County law would have to be amended.
Jevin Jensen, chairman of the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners, said Georgia has been the No. 1 state to do business in for seven or eight years running, and the county wants starting a business in the county to be as easy as Roberts’ winery is smaller than some of the businesses county government assists in moving to Whitfield County, but Jensen said in a phone interview that how county officials worked with him is based on the same concept.
“So we had to change our alcohol and permitting licensing ordinance to allow them to have tours and have a facility and do those tastings as well as show off the process of creating it, and do all that on one premises,” Jensen said. “Before, there was a distinction. You had to be a distillery, or a restaurant or a package store. And you couldn’t mix or mingle any of that.”
After the end of a two-month discussion period during which any concerns could be voiced (none were), the commission passed the legislation last fall. The ordinance requires tastings to end in the early evening to prevent the winery from
turning into a bar or club that would disturb neighbors in a residential area, Jensen said.
Jensen said Roberts is taking a risk by opening a new business and learning what grapes grow best there.
“So the least we can do is support him as he learns about what’s going to grow and what’s not,” Jensen said.
Roberts said county officials were helpful and even showed him how to obtain a minor zoning variance.
The winery will be a tourism draw for the county, without any infrastructure investment, Roberts said. The winery will pay about the same amount of taxes annually as a 150-unit apartment complex but without the need for more schools or electric and sewage infrastructure. He also said agro-tourism raises the value of nearby land, too.
Roberts has visited many of the wineries in North Georgia, and he thinks Engelheim Vineyards makes the best wine. Most of the wineries in the mountains east of Whitfield County have sandy soil, while his soil and the soil in Napa Valley, California — the United States’ premier farm winery destination — have clay soil.
“In clay, the grapes grow slower, but you get a more full-bodied flavor of the wine when it’s done,” Roberts said. “So you wait a little longer, and your yield isn’t as high, but you get premium grapes out of it.”
Roberts said his winery has planted about 400 grape vines and plans to plant another 300 this year. Some of his vines are 3 years old, and he said at that age, they produce about 60% of their full capacity. Fully productive at 5 years old, Roberts said each mature vine will produce 1 1/3 gallons of wine — about six bottles.
Even though he had thousands of vines planted there, Roberts said he left Alabama because the local government fought him at every step.
Alabama was going to require him to earn 51% of his revenue from food, and he said he had no interest in opening what essentially would be a restaurant. His grown children live in Cleveland, Tennessee, he said, so he and his wife started looking for property nearby. He also has his grandchildren close to help on the farm.
He said Deep Springs Vineyard has a 2,000-gallon capacity, and with that, the staff will make three batches per year: fruit wines in the summer, grape wines in the fall and a winter batch with grapes imported from California.
“I’ve been doing wine for 45 years. I’ve been doing grape vines for about 25 years. I think I’ve been making wine longer than anybody in Georgia, I would bet,” said Roberts, who works from home as a software engineer.
Whitfield County is working to diversify its economy beyond carpets and flooring, and Jensen said tourism and agriculture are both sectors elected officials are promoting. He gave the examples of an upcoming car show that expects to bring 3,000 visitors, a new 1,000-acre Civil War park being developed by the county and a wide range of crops grown in the county.
“Georgia’s known for peaches, but that’s not even our No. 1 crop in the state. It’s blueberries, it’s pecans, it’s all these other types of crops,” Jensen said. “And I think that’s going to continue to grow as people are trying to get back to a natural way of eating.”
Jensen expects a few more wineries to follow Roberts to Whitfield County, making the area a more attractive trip for visitors.
Roberts said a friend is about to get a permit to open a farm winery in Murray County, and he hopes more farm wineries root nearby. He said he’s not worried about competition because a grouping of wineries makes it more likely for people to get off the interstate and visit them all.