COVER STORY: Local winery continues to grow
What started as a simple business out of Frank Sergi’s garage in 2006 has now blossomed into a full-blown winery that has its products being sold by major retailers in eight different states.
L’uva Bella Winery in Lowellville is now expanding due the success one of it’s newest products.
“I had to innovate and look at what customers were really looking for,” said Marisa Sergi Schumann, CEO of L’uva Bella.
Sergi came home from college in 2016 and took over the operations of her family business. Success came rather quickly when she was able to market her first wine creation, called Redhead wine at the time, to big sales at Walmart.
L’uva Bella then went on to sell many different wines and saw sales peak, right around covid. But after the pandemic national tastes changed and sales dipped a bit after that, so she knew she had to do something different.
“If you don’t reinvent yourself, find new opportunities to diversify your portfolio in any business it’s a very dangerous game,” said Sergi.
That’s when she discovered the growing popularity of creme wines down south. She partnered with Ohio family dairy, Hartzler, to make a wine-infused version of its popular eggnog.
“Because the egg nog is so iconic during Christmas and that we were working on these creme wines, we thought a licensing partnership with a very iconic dairy could be a very great way to get into the market, especially in Ohio,” said Sergi.
In its first year it was so popular, it sold out 3 weeks before Christmas.
That’s led to a million dollar expansion of their Lowellville winery production facility. Instead of renting warehouse storage elsewhere, they’re adding on 7,000 square feet.
“So we could house all of our products here and allow better organization and maybe a new phase of construction in the future,” said Sergi.
So when you think of wine you don’t necessarily think of things like chocolate and creme but they find a way to neutralize that wine flavor into a neutral spirit.
“It’s all based around ph. Wines are typically lower ph products. More acid, so the process is taking that acid out essentially. The wine is fully neutralized so what you’re really drinking is a creme spirit than wine. No grape flavor or aroma, just the flavors we formulate, like cookies and creme, espresso or egg nog,” said Garrett Lattanzio, Director of operations, L’uva Bella
Marisa says she has had more interest from retailers to stock more creme wines so that may mean adding more production in Lowellville. Right now though, their best seller is Purple sweet red.
Retailers have been happy with the L’uva Bella products and more retailers continue to get on board, like Sam’s Club and even Buc-ees.
Dining and Cooking