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(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) - Most people know about Georgia's peaches and pecans, but wineries represent a fast growing industry in this state and many Georgia wines are bringing home national awards.

(calm music) It's possible you've never heard of the small town Nashville, Georgia.

It's close to Valdosta and off the beaten path.

Just on the outskirts, you'll find Horse Creek Winery, one of the largest producers of Muscadine wine.

Owner Sam Zamarripa says this sweet wine is a classic favorite.

- Yeah, we grow several categories of Muscadines and the thing that I like to say about the Muscadine wine is that it's truly a uniquely American grape.

And I'm fond of saying that if Mother Nature had a child, it would be the Muscadine grape.

And, because in many ways the Muscadine is a perfect grape.

It will grow in the wild.

It can be transplanted.

You can plant it and not look back and a few years later, you've got a nice vine growing up your trellis or the pole in your garage.

Yeah, the birds may eat some of it, but the vines are very, very abundant.

They produce a lot of grapes.

You can eat the grapes and they're delicious and that's where they got their start.

But if you're a little more industrious, you can make your own little wine in your backyard with a handful of Muscadine grapes.

So, and Muscadines don't require any herbicides or sprays.

They're tolerant to the wind, they're tolerant to heat, they're tolerant to rain.

They're very hardy.

So when we think of the 40 acres of Muscadines that we grow here, we sort of take pride in the fact that we think they're the perfect grape.

- [Sharon] We visited Sam as they were getting ready to bottle, but first we headed down to a room full of tanks, all of them full of wines in various stages of production.

Dave Pratt is the wine maker, and this is like his playground.

We were sipping wine right out of the tanks.

- We have a lot of wine still sitting in tank right now that we haven't racked off and finished off, but we've got some... We have some Chambourcin fermenting in a bin.

We have some Norton in tanks.

And then we can skim something out- - [Sam] Can we taste the Malbec or is it ready?

- Oh, it's, we could taste it.

- [Sam] Yeah, let's taste the Malbec.

(laughs) We mix things.

And when is this Malbec gonna be ready, Dave?

- Well, we're using it for blending.

- Now?

- Now.

It's a young wine, so it doesn't necessarily, we're not in a big hurry.

I got some barrels coming, so some of it's gonna go in the barrel and we can release it at any time, but we need to have something else on the bar.

- This tastes pretty doggone good right now.

Even though Sam is a big player in Muscadines, he owns another winery in North Georgia where some of the blended wines will be served.

Dave often brings grapes in from other places, so he can create different varieties that will be offered in their various tasting rooms.

- Only in the tasting rooms, that's right.

So here at Horse Creek in Nashville, Georgia, we are one of the largest producers of wholesale product.

It's distributed here in Georgia by one of the leading distribution companies.

And the wine goes from our vines to our crusher, to our bins, to the bottle, to a truck, to the grocery store.

And that's the supply chain, and that is wines.

We now have, you know, thousands and thousands of cases that you can find in Publix and Ingles and Food Lion, Total Wines, a lot of the major package stores.

And that wine is handpicked, handmade, and delivered within two or three months of its harvesting to those stores every month.

(upbeat music) - When you see the bottling process, you begin to grasp what a major winery Horse Creek really is.

(upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) This assembly line is repeated again and again and again.

(upbeat music continues) What really makes the wine have a certain taste is the earth and the wine maker.

Explain to me why the earth, the soil, the gardening makes the grape.

- Yeah, well, the best way to think about it is that vines are really just little straws and they have their little tentacles into the soil.

The soil is made of decomposed pieces of earth and of debris and of minerals and of elements.

And all those little tiny, tiny roots just soak that right up into the vines and through photosynthesis, that heat process that draws the liquids up into the vines and then into the leaves, then ultimately into the fruits, all of that is going through a metamorphosis in those little channels.

And just like everything else in this wonderful world we live in, all flowers are different, all fruits are different, and all grapevines are different.

- [Sharon] That's why when you head to Dahlonega about 70 miles north of Atlanta, Wolf Mountain Winery feels a little more like Europe than North Georgia.

- Soil types that we have here are very similar to what you'll find in Southern France and Northern Italy.

The red clay soils there, they refer to them as the terra rossa, which is a beautiful word for red clay.

I prefer that.

One thing we do have issue with here is high pH with all the pine that we have in the Southeast.

So for us personally here on this site, over 30 tons per acre of lime was tilled into the soil before the vineyards were planted.

And lime applications is something that I do usually on a biannual basis to just make sure the soil pH is right.

But we have our challenges here on the East Coast.

Obviously, humidity, rainfall, that's why we're up in the mountains.

Our 1800 foot elevations here are perfect for growing and ripening, especially Cabernet Sauvignon.

It's interesting, if you get in your car and you just drive 45 minutes north, we have almost a 30 day shorter growing season than what we have here.

So grapes that are really hard to ripen, like Cabernet, which require really long hang time, we're one of the only areas on the East Coast that can fully ripen this variety.

- [Sharon] Brannon Boegner is the winemaker at Wolf Mountain, which has won over 200 medals at wine tasting competitions across the nation.

But again, it's all about the soil.

- Well, there's always a sense of place.

I mean, you know, the wines are gonna have a different, and that's what, you know, the whole term terroir is all about, is the flavor that the wines are able to express from the soil.

And basically that each wine has a sense of place.

So the wine that comes from this place isn't going to taste, is the same as say, you know, something from Southern France or something from California.

But, you know, clay soils have their advantages in terms of, especially with the amount of rainfall we get here, they have very low saturation points.

So at a certain point, once the soil is taken up what it's going to take up, it will just shed the rest of the rainfall, like concrete almost.

So drainage is very important.

Being on the side of the mountain is very important and having that slope.

The vines can dry out after excessive rains.

- [Sharon] Here's another success story for Georgia wineries.

Many of them have tasting rooms and events that bring thousands of visitors to these small towns.

Tourism is now tied to Georgia wine.

This is a typical weekend crowd at Wolf Mountain.

(visitors chatter) - So this one is sparkling MVS, it's a blend of Marsanne, Viognier, and Syrah.

So your Marsanne and Syrah give you that red berry flavor, also gives you a (indistinct) wine.

This one's gonna be a little fruitier than the last one as well, but it's Brut, so it's gonna be very dry, very crisp.

- Okay.

- Enjoy.

- Thank you.

- [Sharon] People come to taste the wines, enjoy the views, and eat at the cafe.

Wine tasting is a big deal in Georgia.

Napa Valley and Sonoma may be well-known spots in California, but Georgia wines have grown in popularity.

The energy from all the wineries created an opening for other businesses, like all day wine tours, water floats, and waterfall trips.

But vineyards are having to watch their crops more closely to catch up with climate change.

Peter Seifarth is the winemaker here at Crane Creek Vineyards in Young Harris, Georgia.

- So climate change is, you know, if you wanna know if climate change is real or not, just ask a farmer because it's pretty obvious to us.

You know, 'cause we started in 1995 and, you know, every winter the ponds would freeze over and now they almost never freeze over.

There's a specific pest that it lives in the warmer areas down south of Georgia and every year we see that pest creep up more and more.

So yeah, climate change is affecting us.

It's very, very apparent.

- [Sharon] So when you're making wine, do you feel like a chef?

You get in there and just play around?

- Yeah, you know, yeah.

I mean, this is where I love to be.

That's good.

Making wine is very, very exciting.

It's very, very rewarding whenever, 'cause we're about to come into harvest this next month.

It's the craziest time, but it's the most rewarding time.

And yeah, like being a chef is a great way to describe it because essentially the fruit coming in is like the produce that's coming in.

You know, I like to almost describe wine making as, let's say you have this beautiful steak coming into your kitchen and then it's your job as a chef to prepare that steak as beautifully as possible.

So the wine is made out in the vineyard and it's just my job to prepare it in a beautiful way.

- [Sharon] Peter has wine chilling in tanks that actually have frost on the outside.

- Cold stabilizing.

So the tartaric acid in wine, when you chill that solution down, it'll precipitate out a solution.

And they're like these little, we call wine diamonds.

There's just like these crystals that will form in the bottle when you chill it.

So as opposed to having those crystals form when you go home and put it in your fridge, I chill it down here in the tank.

So those will come out of solution, but then when I bottle it, you can chill it at home, but it won't have those crystals.

- [Sharon] But any wine maker will tell you the earth and the atmosphere make the grape taste the way it does.

It's called terroir.

- The wine is made out in the vineyard.

And what makes our, what we call terroir so special is because we have this altitude.

You know, when people think of Georgia wine, of course we have great wine regions in the southern parts of Georgia, but what makes our area up here very special is because of our altitude.

And that really allows us to make wines that have a little bit more acidity, slightly drier wines.

And yeah, we just keep growing and growing.

(calm music) (calm music continues) (calm music continues) (calm music continues) (upbeat music) - I visited another winery near Blairsville.

Scott and Crystal Whitney made one heck of a career move.

They were in the oil and gas industries.

So you guys made this major move.

You moved from Houston and just created this?

- So yeah, I guess it was four or five years ago we started.

We were vacationing out in this part and she kind of planted the seed of moving here and what that would look like.

And I think that's all it took was a seed and suddenly we started looking at land.

And we lived in Houston.

We knew that we wanted to get our kids sort of out of the city and into a simpler way of life and to kind of get them an opportunity to maybe not join the rat race one day.

So we started looking and we found this, this 70 acres near Blairsville, which was all cow pasture before, and we sort of just went for it.

- Yeah, and you've put a lot of work into it because this is not just about wine for you guys, it's for tourism.

- Yeah, I think so.

I mean, you probably have a view on that.

- Well, I think that even when we met with the Chamber, they sort of requested certain things from us.

They wanted...

They were excited about having an event space because I don't think there was a lot available at the time.

And they were also wanting specialty lodging, which we haven't gotten there yet, but we have some ideas.

But yeah, I think that we were looking to bring in more people into Blairsville.

How do we attract out-of-towners like us to this small town and kind of bring in more money, more people, more jobs, you know?

I mean, there's definitely that part of it.

- [Sharon] So imagine, you move from Houston, Texas and buy this land, but don't know anything about growing grapes.

This winery, the fountains, flowers, all of this was just a cow pasture.

How hard was it to, you know, figure out I'm gonna grow grapes here?

- So we've planted more than we have now 'cause we lost 2,900 vines... - Ooh.

- Last year.

- Last year, due to a huge freeze that we had here in 2022.

So, but now what we've got in the grounds, we've got Cabernet Sauvignon, we've got Gruner Veltliner, Cab Franc, Petit Verdot, Chambourcin, Petit Manseng, Vidal Blanc, and then we've also got a new variety kind of down the hill there called Aravelle, which I think we might be the only ones in Georgia that have that.

And it's kind of a, it's a very new blend, kind of between like Cayuga and Riesling.

So, and I think we're the only ones that have it.

So far, so good on it.

- So you've had a big learning curve.

So you're doing oil and gas in Houston and then you come up and, hey, let's grow grapes.

- Yeah, huge learning curve.

I mean, we essentially knew nothing about the wine making or the viticulture.

And- - We laugh 'cause we can't keep plants alive in our front yard, so- - Yeah, yeah.

Which I mean, there's been some death of our vines and there's been a lot of learning experiences, especially with wildlife around here, dealing with the deer, dealing with the birds, dealing with downy mildew is always an issue for us.

So just learning all of that, even how to drive a tractor.

I didn't know how to drive a tractor before we came out here.

And so even like equipment is constantly breaking down, so learning how to fix all that.

But we've relied a lot on our friends and the people that are in the farming world and our consultants, our viticulture, wine making consultants.

- [Sharon] Agriculture extension agent Jacob Williams is one of those consultants.

- North Georgia up in the mountains, with the elevation as far north as we are, we can get a lot of late frost and that kind of thing.

So that can have a big effect on a vineyard.

It's really hard to manage a late frost when you get those freezing temperatures when the plants are in full bloom and that kind of thing.

That can be really detrimental to a vineyard.

So managing that as best as we can.

And then also working with diseases like Pierce's disease, that's affected by elevation.

Pierce's disease is a bacterial disease that's spread by an insect.

And so we don't have as many, we tend to not have as much Pierce's disease the higher elevation you go.

So if you go a little bit further south, like down towards Dahlonega, they're gonna have more issues with Pierce's disease than we do up here.

So the elevation does play a role.

We have researchers who do research on these different diseases, so finding out which sprays have become ineffective and that kind of thing.

So we do research on that.

And then sharing that information with the vineyards, that's kind of my role in that.

I also do disease trials, so doing research on, you know, well, can we use maybe different products for different ways that we haven't used them before to try to create new avenues to keep those disease pressures at bay as much as we can?

- [Sharon] As new wineries continue to open across the state, that kind of research is increasingly important.

Georgia's wine industry is booming.

- It's really taken off.

There's a...

I would say probably where we are up here, it's the biggest sector.

Agritourism is probably the biggest agricultural commodity that's growing up here.

Brings a lot of, you know, tourism dollars into this area, into the local economy, you know, creates jobs for people here.

So it really is a boon to the local economy here.

- [Sharon] Owning a vineyard just seems romantic.

Like so many, the Whitneys were attracted to the land and the idea they were no longer tied to a corporation.

But it is a lot of hard work.

Are you glad that you guys made the jump?

- Most days.

There are some days that it feels heavy.

It feels like a lot because Scott and I tend to pull a lot of the weight.

Like often you will find us here in our work boots and covered in sweat.

And people have come to know us as being the owners, but at the beginning we were not presumed to be the owners.

We were the worker bees 'cause we were always outside working on things.

So on those days it feels heavy, but it washes away quicker than the same feeling we would've had in the corporate world.

So we may have had a project that was weighing on us, but this feels like all you have to do is sit down in these chairs, look at this view, and it's all gone.

So at the end of the day, it feels like the right move.

- Plus you get to drink the wine.

- Plus you get to drink the wine.

And for me, like just listening to you, at least I feel something, you know?

It's a rollercoaster of emotions, very much like having a child to me, where sometimes it's just pure moments of joy and then other times it's like, oh my God, why are you doing that?

Or like, why can't you just do what I tell you to?

You know, to the equipment or to the vines.

But at least I feel something.

Whereas in the corporate world, I always felt just sort of numb and like I was going through the motions.

Here, it's always some sort of passion, some sort of emotion.

Sometimes high, sometimes low, but it's there.

- It's there, yeah.

- [Sharon] Ernest Hemingway wrote, "Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world."

Perhaps Sam Zamarripa puts it best.

- So the experience of sharing wine with friends and family is almost on par with the experience of the camaraderie that comes with drinking beer.

You know, it's just a moment to relax, to let go of the stress of the world, and to let the wine speak a little bit and have a little laugh, have some fun.

And if it's a beautiful winery, to take all that in.

You know, they would say that oftentimes, a walk in the woods is better than any medication you can take because it will clear your mind, somehow just walking among the trees does it.

And I think the same thing about enjoying sharing wine with friends.

It's just one of those things that allows you to engage on a level that you may not be able to do on Zoom or on your phone.

And wine is the elixir that gives you the ability to share a little more, talk a little more, laugh a little more.

And that's what the vineyards are set up to do, while at the same time introducing you to the art of making fine wines.

- Wine is also becoming one of the most valued things in Georgia.

As of 2024, there are approximately 125 wineries across the state.

Having vineyards planted keeps acres of land in agriculture instead of development.

And those wineries attract a lot of visitors to many small towns that may not ordinarily get those tourism dollars.

In 2022, Georgia had nearly 300,000 tourist visits and contributed about $5 billion to the state's economy.

And those numbers just keep on growing.

I'm Sharon Collins.

We'll see you next time.

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