The Thunder Road Wine Trail, named as a nod to the region’s whiskey bootlegging roots, debuted Tuesday, connecting six wineries from Knoxville to Butler.
Rick Riddle, executive director of the tourism push, said the marketing campaign is intended to help grow both the involved wineries and the state’s wine industry as a whole.
“If you look at Napa Valley or you look at the Finger Lakes region in New York, wine trails have been instrumental in the growth of their wine industries,” he said. “If we do well, and start attracting people to the wineries already established, it might help those people who are considering opening but worried about the big investment it takes to make that decision.”
Next month, kickoff events will be held at each of the wineries on the Thunder Road Wine Trail, with festivities at Watauga Lake Winery, 6952 Big Dry Run Road, Butler, on Oct. 17. From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on that Saturday, the kickoff celebration will include a ribbon cutting by state Rep. Timothy Hill, a vintage car show and an appearance by local personality Tom “Tiny” Roberson, owner of the East Tennessee Distillery in Piney Flats.
Wine connoisseurs who visit multiple wineries and have their free wine trail passports stamped could also win prizes. For collecting five winery stamps, visitors receive free wine glasses. Those who visit all six of the trail’s stops will be entered into a drawing for a two-night stay at a bed and breakfast.
Riddle said visitors will also learn about the types of wines that can be produced using grapes best suited to grow in Tennessee’s humid subtropical climate.
“It’s not easy to grow a lot of the wine grapes here, but we can grow some of the French-American hybrids, and our winemakers can make some great wines with them,” he said. “The goal is getting folks out there an tasting those wines, so that instead of just being familiar with the Rieslings or Merlots, they know about the Chancellor, Chambourcin and Seyval varietals that grow well here.”
Riddle admitted Tennessee’s wine industry sprouted from the ground late. The first winery wasn’t officially founded until 1980, but now there are more than 60, with nearly 700 acres of vineyard in commercial production.
“The industry here has tremendous potential for growth, and I think wine trails are critical to that growth,” he said, noting that the Rocky Top Wine Trail, which links five wineries in Sevier County, brings in 70,000 visitors to the individual wineries each year.
The business owners on the Thunder Road Trail are fairly new to the industry, all but one having opened in the past three years, but Riddle hopes the success of the trail coaxes new wineries to open, adding to the economies of the communities in which they operate.
Watauga Lake Winery, which opened to the public in November 2012, repurposed the historic Johnson County Big Dry Run Schoolhouse into its commercial and production front.
Owners Wayne and Linda Gay put their first grapevines in the ground in 2005, the early start of what would become Villa Nove Vineyards, but didn’t begin production for another seven years.
In 2015, the winery’s Fox Hollow and Duncan Hollow wines won double gold and gold, respectively, at the Asheville Wine Food Festival Wine Competition.
Last year, Watauga Lake Winery was included with others in the mountainous regions of North Carolina and Virginia hoping to receive an American Viticultural Area designation from the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. The designation would assign a unique characteristic to wines made from grapes grown higher than 2,000 feet in elevation.
So far, the wineries’ petition is still pending with the federal agency.
Follow Nathan Baker on Twitter @JCPressBaker. Like him on Facebook: www.facebook.com/jcpressbaker.
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