| Kentucky’s
Golden Triangle got a taste of California’s Napa Valley
on Thanksgiving weekend as Elk Creek Winery held its open house
Friday and Saturday.
Visitors enjoyed a variety of Kentucky-made wines as they gazed
over items in the onsite gift shop, sampled from a variety of
hors d’oeuvre platters and looked over a gallery of artwork.
“Everybody loves the wines,” said Curtis Sigretto,
who owns the facility along with his wife Debbie. He noted that
the Elk Creek label offers 17 wine varieties, ranging from sweet
to dry.
“Even if you don’t like wine, there’s something
here you’d like,” he said.
The $2.5 million winery, located at the intersection of state
highways 330 and 227 in Owen County, brought in wine lovers from
as far away as Mississippi and Illinois over the holiday.
“People are excited about this venture,” said gallery
director and event planner Rebekka Seigel, who compared the winery
to similar operations in and around Sonoma, Calif. “People
(who attended the opening) have said there are places there not
as nice as this.”
Elk Creek’s winemaker Ben O’Daniel agreed.
“It’s gorgeous,” he said of the Elk Creek facility.
“It’s nicer than a lot of California wineries and
four steps ahead of any Kentucky wineries.”
Even the weather had a California feel to it over the weekend.
Abundant sunshine helped late-November temperatures top out near
70 degrees on both days of the winery opening.
“This was a beautiful day today,” Ann Marie Quinn,
of Oldenburg, Ind., said on Friday. She drove with a group of
friends from the Cincinnati area to attend the opening.
“I couldn’t stay inside,” she said. “I
had to get out into the country.”
Quinn complimented the selection of food and the quality of the
wine at Elk Creek, though admitting she isn’t as much of
a gourmand as her travel companions when it comes to fine wine.
Still, she enjoyed her trip to Elk Creek.
“I think it’s marvelous,” she said. “I
love the architecture— the wood. And the scenery is wonderful.”
The roof of the cabin-like Elk Creek Winery features a pair of
spires as a nod to Churchill Downs, Seigel said, “so it’s
kind of a cross between California and Kentucky.”
A two-sided fireplace allows visitors to cozy up on leather couches
inside or to warmly congregate on the deck outside.
The back of the winery, where the deck is located, overlooks a
rift nestled between the adjacent Elk Creek Hunt Club and bed
and breakfast, also owned by the Sigrettos.
Seigel said an open-air stage will be built behind the winery.
It will host a bluegrass band and a jazz band this summer, helping
Elk Creek achieve its overall goal of bringing in tourists from
Cincinnati, Lexington and Louisville — and beyond.
“We’re definitely going to bring a lot of people to
the area,” Sigretto said.
Seigel said the new venture offers a new direction for agriculture
in the area.
“I think it’s going to help keep Owen County green,”
she said. “So we don’t turn into a dump site or some
industrial park.”
The economic impact to the area could spread well beyond the 15-acre
vineyard at Elk Creek.
Wine making has become one of the top-10 fastest growing industries
in the state.
“As the public begins to cue in on the fact we’re
producing world-class wines … it will bring more people
and money to Kentucky,” O’Daniel said.
For every dollar spent at the winery, $7 will be spent in the
surrounding community, according to O’Daniel, who knows
the industry well. He also owns and operates Jean Farris Winery
in Lexington and worked at his family’s Spring Hill Winery
in Springfield from the age of 14.
“People’s attitudes change … once they see it’s
not a bar,” he said of wineries, noting that Elk Creek will
offer a scholarship to area students interested in wine making.
“It’s these type of things that make a difference
in a community.”
Seigel said the art gallery “is something new” for
the county and can show young people they can have a career in
the arts.
But despite all the newness in Kentucky’s wine industry,
capped by the recent opening of a winery in Owen County, O’Daniel
says the rapidly growing commodity of wine making is rooted in
well-established old-world technique.
“The principles of wine making haven’t changed for
centuries,” he said.
And those principles are hoping to thrive at Elk Creek.
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