Arkansas’ wine industry, valued at $1 billion, is well down the list of the state’s agricultural product sectors, both in dollars and acres, but it is unique in its composition. Rice remains the undisputed king of Natural State crops, but tourists generally do not visit rice fields to enjoy a bowl of the stuff. Nor does the average consumer give thanks to the soybean farmer for the life of their tires, even though Goodyear plans to replace petroleum with soybean oil by 2040, the United Soybean Board states.
“If you asked anybody, ‘What’s Arkansas known for agriculturally?’ they’ll say soybeans, rice, cotton, cattle,” said Doug Meyer, president and co-founder of Rusty Tractor Vineyards in Little Rock. “Grapes will probably hardly ever be mentioned. If you asked the same thing in [California’s] Napa Valley, you’d get a totally different response.”
Rusty Tractor Vineyards in Little Rock. (Photos provided)
The state’s wine industry, however, balances an economic trinity of tourism, agriculture and commercial products that are all closely interrelated. As such, producers enjoy three times the opportunity to market themselves while dealing with triple the challenges, from crop health and manufacturing to marketing and changing consumer tastes. Still, Meyer said the potential for the industry remains unmatched.
“If I could change one thing that would help the wine industry in Arkansas, it would be to have 30 more winemakers,” he said. “Oklahoma has 50 wineries. Texas has 470. Missouri has 130. Tennessee has 69 and growing. We have 20 or 21, and it’s been 20 or 21 for the last 20 or 30 years. The best thing that could happen to the wine industry in Arkansas is to go to 60 or 70 or 80 wineries where we have bigger wine trails, increased tourism, more awareness to the general public.
“Most people in business would say, ‘I don’t need more competition,’ but with wineries, the more there are, the more people come. If you go to Napa, you might taste three different wineries in one day, but instead of going there for one day, you go there for three or four days and taste 10 different wineries. It kind of feeds off itself.”
Arkansas is home to three American Viticultural Areas, or delimited grape-growing regions with unique properties, which the wine industry identifies as geographic or climatic features that influences the character of the grape, Wine-Searcher states. At less than 13,000 acres, Altus is the bullseye of those three AVAs and is surrounded by the much larger Arkansas Mountain, a circle that stretches from Conway to Fort Smith. Covering 3 million acres, it is one of the largest single-state AVAs in the nation.
Arkansas Mountain sits entirely inside the behemoth Ozark Mountain AVA, a 3.5-million-acre patch that is one of the largest AVAs in the country, covering growing regions in Arkansas, Oklahoma and south Missouri. Broadly speaking, the three AVAs have in common a mountainous terrain which is desirable for proper drainage and, especially in the case of Altus, creating pockets of air that help regulate temperature.
Chardonnay, merlot, niagara and muscadine grape varieties are among the most important Arkansas plantings, but not all grapes grow equally in all parts of the state. Meyer said one of the challenges to the industry below Arkansas’ River Valley is the varietal trade-offs that simply cannot be overcome due to climate and, to a lesser degree, terroir, or soil composition.
“The biggest challenge we have is our July and August, the 90- to 100-degree days with the humidity,” Meyer said. “It’s very difficult to grow cabernet or chardonnay in Arkansas, mostly because of our weather. It’s not because of the soil; it’s just because of the weather. We have to grow wines that can handle that heat and humidity.”
“Other places — Napa; Bordeaux, France; Florence, Italy — have the 90- to 100-degree days, but they don’t have the 80 to 90 percent humidity. It’s the humidity with the tight clusters of grapes that causes the problems. They have the ocean breezes and the cool air that comes in and cools the grapes down at night. Our July and August, a lot of times, you walk outside at midnight, and it’s still 80 degrees and humid. That brings challenges of different kinds of diseases, mostly fungus.”
In 2016, the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture introduced the first wine grapes produced from its fruit breeding program, the neutral white wine grape Opportunity and rich red wine grape Enchantment. In 2021, two more new grapes were introduced, the floral and fruity white wine grape Indulgence, and Dazzle, a pink grape that produces white Gerwürztraminer-type wine, lending a spicy aroma to the traditionally floral nose and dry flavor profile. The new grapes were lauded for disease resistance, adaptability to Arkansas growing conditions and chemical properties that made them versatile in winemaking.
Meyer praised the work of the UA for giving producers more tools in their toolkit.
“One of the fabulous things that we have is the University of Arkansas has been working on hybrids for 30, 40 years, and they are constantly bringing out new varieties that can take that deep humidity but also produce good quality grapes and, in turn, good quality wine,” he said.
Other innovations on the agricultural side resonate on several levels. Meyer has installed alternative watering systems and solar panels to provide electricity, which not only improves efficiency but strikes a chord with today’s wine tourists and consumers. John Post, president of Post Winery in Altus, the largest operation in Arkansas by far, said public tastes are changing how the industry standard bearer approaches its craft.
Vineyard manager James Post plants a muscadine vine at Post Winery
“We’re on this push to be 100 percent organic because all of a sudden, it has much more synergy than you might think at first,” he said. “I believe that muscadines have some advantages to going organic. A muscadine is much, much more robust in its immune system than other grapes. If there’s a grape that can be utilized in the organic market, I have reason to believe that it’s muscadines.
“Consumers are looking at the health of the beverage, but there are other considerations, as well. If we could be 100 percent organic, that would have implications beyond only the customer. That would impact the health of our employees to where they’re not subjected to anything dangerous, like some sprays. It has implications for the land itself, the neighbors, where if you want to develop homes. All of a sudden, there’s no drift concerns.”
By almost every measurement, the Post Winery operation is huge, claiming to be in the top 100 largest in the industry. Post would not disclose production figures but estimated the operation was twice the size of the rest of the state’s producers combined. Getting to such volume has meant expanding past the family plats in Altus, which Post said represented an important growth strategy for the future, both for his winery and the industry overall.
“Expansion, the way to do that is we don’t try to own everything ourselves,” he said. “There’s ample work for all of us, and the trick is to embrace other farmers, other growers in Arkansas that are looking for alternative crops that perhaps pay better and can be more fitting for their philosophy and working with the land in a sustainable way. There are folks out there that can, and would love to, grow grapes.”
That said, not every farm in Arkansas is suitable for growing the crop.
“There’s a set of requirements for each site that would have to be studied,” Post said. “One of the biggest factors, for instance, is water. That’s a big limitation because you have to have a very good water source. Every plant takes about five gallons a day.”
Like all consumer products, wineries in Arkansas have had to roll with the punches when it comes to consumer tastes and regulation. As the longest-standing winery in Arkansas, Post has a colorful history of meeting challenges posed by the times. The company has long produced sacramental wine and juices by which it withstood Prohibition, which nearly wiped out the Arkansas industry entirely. Today, Post and its peers are having to pivot to meet younger consumers who, statistically, are drinking less wine than their parents did.
According to 8Wines, United States consumers have posted 14 straight years of year-over-year declining wine consumption. In 2010, Americans drank 9.8 liters per capita, more than double the 4.5 liters per person they are expected to consume in 2024. Even the quarantine lockdowns and shelter in place mandates of the COVID-19 pandemic year could not arrest the slide, and consumption dropped 0.3 liters per capita from 2019 to 2020.
The Wine Market Council reported in January the results of a survey that revealed several factors were at work in the decrease. One, a general reduction in alcohol consumption overall and two, inflation and economic factors that are forcing consumers to cut their spending. As evidenced by the drop in wine and alcohol sales, such items are a cutback more easily justified as a step toward better health.
Grapes ripe for the picking at Rusty Tractor.
For this reason, wineries have to rely on the experience their operations offer rather than solely on the product itself, which taps into the tourism aspect of the industry. As of 2022, virtually every one of the 21 wine producers in the state have some sort of tasting room or other structure worth driving to, the National Association of American Wineries states. They vary widely from place to place from a modest tasting room snuggled into a corner of the vineyard to ancient farm buildings to the more elaborate event spaces at Rusty Tractor and the clutch of stylish wineries in Altus.
An effective experience and compelling story can be a great equalizer in the marketplace. Ten-year-old River Bottom Winery at BoBrook Farms in Roland is a fraction of the size of other wineries yet enjoys a steady to brisk pace of business thanks to the amenities it offers and the connections it makes with its customers.
River Bottom Winery at BoBrook Farms in Roland
“The best thing that has happened to us is Little Rock tourism. They really promote breweries and the wineries. They really do a super job helping us promote ourselves,” said Karen Bradford, River Bottom founder. “One good thing about Arkansas is around here, everybody helps promote everybody else. When people come here, we tell them, ‘Hey, don’t forget to go up to the street to An Enchanting Evening.’ We’re not each other’s competition. Every winery in the state that I’ve been to is just totally different.”
Bradford said she has also witnessed a switch in consumer tastes in that where once being small was a liability because of a lack of marketing dollars or name recognition, such attributes are now a decided advantage. Today’s tourists are far more interested in visiting a place they see as local and artisan, she said.
“People tell us all the time, ‘This is so amazing. You guys are the owners. Tell me how you did this,’” she said. “People appreciate the fact that we attempt to grow as much [grapes and fruit] here as we can, and they also appreciate the fact that we give them a great variety of other things. We offer a laid-back atmosphere. We have that mom-and-pop type thing going. We know most of our customers by name. It’s just a different vibe out here.”
River Bottom Winery produced about 10,000 gallons of product last year, which is miniscule by industry standards. Bradford said she has no interest in ramping up to compete with larger wineries or get into restaurants and retail because the winery was formed as an adjunct to BoBrook’s other amenities, such as the annual pumpkin patch and an on-premises wedding venue. She said those attractions, as well as tourist trends and loyal regulars, have the small farm-based winery right where she wants it.
Post assistant winemaker Clay Burke works with University of Arkansas doctoral candidate Amanda Fleming.
“I’m not really a winemaker. I’ve not had any formal courses. It’s just all trial and error, and I’m fine with that,” she said. “What I love about this is I get the luxury of wondering what I could make, and then we get to try it. Sometimes it’s gross. I’ve tried things that just didn’t work, but we try to introduce at least one or two new wines every year. We’re up to something like 30 different flavors.
“What that does is= I don’t worry a lot about trends, what’s coming, what’s going, because it doesn’t seem like it affects us that much. I think it’s because we’ve got so many flavors that my eggs are not in one basket. If you don’t like one of my wines, surely you’ll like the next one.”
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