Patty Peters founded Grape Expectations with her late husband, Charlie, and now runs the business with fellow owner Mike Schoenbaechler. Their concept — winemaking — may not at first seem like a fit for the desert, but with grapes sourced from California and two winemaking seasons (California winemaking season begins in September/October, with Chilean and South African winemaking season starting in April/May), Southern Nevadans can create their own bottles for less than $16 each.
What is your business philosophy?
We don’t look at this as a business, but rather as a community of like-minded people who enjoy wine and want to learn as much as they can about wine and winemaking. Wine brings our customers in. It’s the wine, atmosphere and socialization that keep them coming back, year after year.
How does your business work?
We specialize in the art and science of hands-on winemaking. It requires approximately 756 pounds of grapes to make one 53-gallon barrel of wine. Our grapes are handpicked and placed in 36-pound crates in the vineyard to provide easy handling by our clients. After they’re harvested, the grapes are shipped to us in refrigerated trucks and the four-step winemaking process begins.
What are winemaking’s stages?
The first two sessions are the crushing and pressing, and they are seven days apart. After that, the wine will be placed on the shelf for about four months until the third process, racking. After racking, the wine goes back on the shelf until the final session, bottling. Winemakers will leave with 20 cases of their own handcrafted wine.
What does it cost?
Cost is based on barrel usage. So, it doesn’t matter if the winemaker decides to make a barrel of wine alone or include friends and family; the cost is the same. The cost for the entire winemaking experience in 2017 is $3,700 (half of the payment is due at sign-up and the other half at the time of pressing). This includes the use of one 53-gallon oak barrel, 21 crates of wine varietals selected by the winemaker and four winemaking sessions. At the end of nine months, the barrel will yield 20 cases, which equates to 240 bottles of handmade wine.
What comes after the winemaking?
With each group’s permission, two bottles of wine are held back for inclusion in a blind taste-testing conducted by the American Wine Society. Then, at the Bacchus Awards Dinner, selected winemakers receive gold, silver, bronze, meritorious and best-in-show medals.
How do clients choose which wine to make?
We feature the red wine making process, as there are many more steps involved than with white. This lends itself to our hands-on teaching environment. Initially, the group determines the type of wine it wants to make, a blend or single varietal, and if it cannot reach consensus, our staff will intervene and advise.
What wine is a favorite for your clients to make?
We enjoy an 85 percent return from year to year. Consequently, our veteran winemakers have become more sophisticated and will produce more esoteric blends such as Prisoner, the famed wine from the Orrin Swift Cellars in Napa, Calif., which includes percentages of five or six varietals.
Other winemakers will be more conservative and go with a merlot or cabernet sauvignon. The Bordeaux blends are popular (cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc, malbec, petit verdot) as are the Rhone blends of grenache, syrah and mourvèdre. Zinfandel, either as a single varietal or in a blend, is gaining in popularity, as is pinot noir, in better years.
Where do your grapes come from?
We source our California grapes from the North Coast AVA, a viticultural area in California including Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, Lake Solano and Marin counties, and the Central Coast AVA, a viticultural area extending from the south of San Francisco to Santa Barbara.
What’s the best business advice you’ve received?
Provide customers with much more than they could have expected.
Many longtime business owners and winemakers say they wish they could bottle what we have here and use it within their own businesses. Everyone who works here at Grape Expectations loves what they do. They work hard but always manage to smile and stay engaged with customers.
What obstacles has your business overcome?
My husband Charlie’s death was a huge blow. His heart and soul kept Grape Expectations alive and vibrant, and when he died, we weren’t sure the business would continue. Then the calls started coming in — customers asking us to keep Grape Expectations open and to keep Charlie’s dream alive. How could we say no to that? We did the only thing we could; we moved forward and we thrived.
What is the best part about doing business in Las Vegas?
No one expects it. They are baffled that a business like ours exists. We are the only ones doing this. We found something Las Vegas lacked and desperately needed, and stepped in to fill that void.
What’s ahead?
We are breaking new ground with a new venture, Vegas Valley Winery, aka Sin City Cellars. We are creating a tasting room/wine lounge adjacent to the wine school. The winery should be open around the end of the month or early September, and will be the first of its kind in Clark County. It will offer customers a cozy, inviting wine lounge and tasting room in which to enjoy locally crafted wines by the glass and bottle. The Vegas Valley Winery is next door to Grape Expectations and Nevada School of Winemaking in the Henderson Booze District (Eastgate Road, south of Warm Springs Road), a spot that lets customers experience all things wine in one location.
What are your top three tips for home winemakers?
1. Ensure the work environment stays clean. Being sanitary is a necessity in winemaking.
2. Source quality fruit or juice, yeast and nutrients, and reliable, easy-to-operate equipment.
3. Seek professionals’ advice. They are usually eager to assist fledgling winemakers.