Shop owner turns avocation into winemaking job

Jeff Kirby not only sells wine at the Pow­ell Vil­lage Win­ery on South Lib­erty Street, he sells wine he made him­self. The wine is bot­tled at Wolf Com­merce Park (below). (Gary Budzak)

GARY BUDZAK

Staff Writer

Win­ery uses fan­ci­ful names on the bot­tles of wines it makes. For exam­ple, a white Chardon­nay goes by Big Spender and the red Caber­net Sauvi­gnon is known as Call Me a Cab.

“Guido & Mario (another Caber­net), that’s my dog and cat,” said co-owner and wine­maker Jeff Kirby. “I always joke and say High Main­te­nance (a Bor­deaux) is after my wife and Flaw­less (a Ries­ling) is after me.”

Jeff and Gina Kirby began attend­ing wine tast­ings while liv­ing in Ari­zona, and enjoyed the expe­ri­ence and peo­ple they met. Mov­ing back to their home state, Jeff began mak­ing wine in his base­ment and decided to turn a hobby into a business.

After open­ing about a year ago, last week the Pow­ell Vil­lage Win­ery was named 2013 Busi­ness of the Year by the Greater Pow­ell Area Cham­ber of Commerce.

“Our first year in busi­ness, we hit our finan­cial pro­jec­tions in less than six months,” Kirby said. He quickly found that his 1,300-square-foot tast­ing room on South Lib­erty Street wasn’t big enough to meet the demand for prod­ucts such as the blackberry-flavored sweet wine Buck­eye Nation, so he and his fam­ily now do their bot­tling in a ware­house up the road in Wolf Com­merce Park.

The juices are shipped in from Cal­i­for­nia vine­yards, and from there, Kirby and his staff fer­ment, sta­bi­lize, blend, bot­tle, label and pack­age the wines in the ware­house. Kirby said he hopes to use Ohio grapes in the future and per­haps one day have his own local vineyard.

“Being in wine and wine-making from the ground up is the ulti­mate goal, from (plant­ing) it in the ground to pour­ing it into a glass,” he said.

The win­ery pours vari­etals such as Soul­mate (a Mer­lot) by the glass or bot­tle Tues­days through Sat­ur­days in the 34-seat tast­ing room. How­ever, the most pop­u­lar way to sam­ple the fruit of the vine is a Wine Flight — four half-glasses cho­sen by the cus­tomer served from a wooden pad­dle. Home­made bread shaped like a clus­ter of grapes and light snacks are also offered, with an appe­tizer in the works.

Kirby, 31, said he was drawn to open­ing the win­ery in Pow­ell because of the quaint­ness of its down­town and its unique shops, as well as the sup­port of local offi­cials. The Kir­bys moved to Pow­ell last fall.

“I think the rela­tion­ships we’ve devel­oped with cus­tomers is prob­a­bly the best thing I enjoy,” Jeff Kirby said of the busi­ness. “It’s an unbe­liev­able feel­ing to take an idea that’s in your head, be able to phys­i­cally build it and have peo­ple come in and like it.”

Posted by Staff Reports on Mar 1 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.