Downtown Knoxville winery part of new trend
Photo by Saul Young
Linn Slocum has been making wine at her home for the past seven years as a hobby. In August she opened an urban winery in the Old City, the first one ever for Knox County. Slocum produces and bottles her own wine at her Jackson Ave. location which also has a small retail are where she sells the wine and does tastings.
Inside this small winery, the grapes of a local farmer are poured into a wine press. The juice of the grapes is set aside to be fermented and eventually will be bottled.
But this winery is far from a traditional rural setting near a vineyard. It's in the heart of downtown Knoxville.
"We're bringing the farmer to us," said entrepreneurial vintner Linn Atchley-Slocum, who opened Blue Slip Winery last month in the Old City.
Blue Slip, located at 105 W. Jackson Ave. across from Manhattan's, is Knoxville's only winery and part of a national trend where the art of wine- making is going urban.
Most wineries in Tennessee are in outlying communities, with some seeing development spread around them. But more wine makers are looking to the city to produce and bottle their vino.
Just last week, the state Alcohol Beverage Commission approved a winery at Belle Meade Plantation in Nashville. The new business hopes to begin selling bottles before Christmas.
"Tourists are the biggest market for wineries. We think we can tap into that being in the Old City. We want to network and tie-in with other downtown businesses. And it's a lot more convenient to locals," said Jeff Galyon,who maintains a West Knox County vineyard and is handling most of the wine production at Blue Slip.
Galyon, who serves as director of property management for the Public Building Authority, has more than 350 grape vines as well as 60 blueberry bushes that supply the business though a majority of the grapes used comes from Grainger County.
Galyon and Atchley-Slocum, who also works at the PBA, teamed up because of their shared interest in wine-making, joining an ever-growing industry in the state.
"There's a misconception that you can only get wines from California but there are a lot of award-winning wines that come from Tennessee," said Dan Strasser,director of market development for Tennessee Department of Agriculture.
Most wineries also have a vineyard but it's two very distinct businesses, he said.
There are 40 wineries in Tennessee and about 100 grape growers, with others getting on board.
That number has increased over the past several years, said Danielle Elks, executive director of the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
"To have wineries on the agenda for approval used to be a very unusual thing. They were just few and far between. That's changed over the past seven, eight years. The industry has been more organized and developed. There's more opportunity."
During the last legislative session, a provision was removed requiring local wineries to use 75 percent of grapes from Tennessee before being allowed to ship their products out of state. A bill allowing Tennessee consumers to have wine shipped directly to their homes was also passed.
As a result, Elks said, "You might see more wineries open up here in Tennessee."
Atchley-Slocum, 49, hopes to begin shipping bottles of her wine soon.
Inside her 2,000-square-foot building, there is a small retail area and a tasting bar where visitors can sample the wine before they buy. The winery is open on Sunday, which has been popular with folks who want a bottle but can't buy it at a liquor store.
"We want to try to have something for everybody so we have dry and sweet wines, red and white and even fruit wines," said Atchley-Slocum, who started making wine about seven years ago as a home hobby.
Most of her wines are from a French-American hybrid grape grown in the area. She also has a selection of vinifera grape wines, which include more familiar varieties like chardonnay, syrah and merlot. There are also apple and blueberry wine.
Blue Slip currently has about 11 different wines available, including Old City Red, River City Red and Pot Blanc, the latter of which is named after "pot luck" because it was made using a blend of three whites.
Blue Slip will produce about 3,600 bottles a year. The wine costs from $10 to $16 per bottle.
Compared with other wineries, what Blue Slip produces is "a drop in the bucket."
"It's very small but that's just what we are," she said. "We're home grown and hand crafted."