Love Wines Opens Tasting Room in Lowell at Red Barn Mercantile

 

Red Barn Mercantile Opens Tasting Room for Love Wines

Originally Published in the Lowell Ledger August 16, 2023

Hopefully by now anyone reading this article appreciates how important it is to shop at locally owned businesses because studies consistently demonstrate how dollars spent at a local mom and pop results in way more of that money staying right in the community. Want to know a way to double down on that principle? It happens when you support a local family owned business that is selling a product produced by another family owned business.

The Red Barn Mercantile at 217 West Main is a mom and pop business owned by Laurie and Marty Chambers. After lots of phone calls, form filling, and hoop jumping, they are very pleased to open their tasting room for Love Wines – hand crafted wines produced by another family operation located in Luddington, MI. The wine tasting room is one more step for Red Barn Mercantile in their effort to provide a nice selection of Michigan Made food, beverages, cooking supplies, and sweets. (They sell a garlic aioli from Stonewall Kitchen there that can always be found in this reporter’s refrigerator.)

Spend a few minutes talking with Marty and Laurie and it seems the relationship with Love Wines was a predestined event. “There was too many things that lined up,” Marty said. “The winery up there's on Washington Street and we live on Washington Street. She started in business in 2014, the same year we opened our business.” Laurie chimed in to report that the signed license from the State arrived in their mailbox one year later on the same week-end they started the process.

Laurie and Marty Chambers behind their gorgeous bar.

The best part about the process of getting certified by the State taking so long was that it gave Laurie and Marty plenty of time to prepare a great looking place to present Love Wines. The most striking part of the presentation is the beautiful bar Duane Hamilton crafted for them out of lumber that Marty reclaimed from the second floor of their building that he figures was originally harvested around 1875 to 1877. The eleven week process of making the bar saw the planing and joining together of the lumber from upstairs and the application of six coats of clear epoxy. Even if you don’t drink wine, the bar alone is worth a visit. Carol Hamilton is married to Duane and also works at Red Barn. Now we might have to amend our original statement about helping two families when you purchase Love Wines and bump it up to three.

When the Chambers’ were launching Red Barn Mercantile in Lowell, 2014 found Jana Rose, who was a single mom of four children at the time, fulfilling her dream of crafting wine from Michigan grapes and fruit. Jana initially started in a tiny, rented space. She was working two other jobs at the same time she was launching Love Wines. Her hard work and financial gamble has paid off. Jana’s first season saw her working with about 500 gallons of tank space. By 2019 Jana was able to purchase a commercial space big enough to process, ferment, and bottle the wines.

These days she and her crew, which includes her husband Nate, create and prepare small batches of a wide variety of specialty wines using about 2,300 gallons of stainless steel tanks. Nate and Jana met about a year after she started. In addition to helping bottle, wax, and label the wines, Nate helps in their tasting room in Luddington and does all the design work for their labels. They buy about 12,000 pounds of grapes from three local vineyards every year.

When you include the fact that Jana and Nate do their best to flavor their Michigan grapes with fruits grown here, we now have more Michigan family owned businesses feeling the economic impact of Love Wines. It should be noted that their efforts have been getting the attention of wine lovers in and around Michigan. The proof is that Jana’s combinations have won Gold, Silver, and Bronze awards at the Michigan Wine Competition and the Indy International wine competition at Purdue University.

“We have an ever rotating stock of wine because we do so many different fruit and grape combinations,” Jana explained. “We have dry and sweet wines and everything in between. I prefer a fruit forward wine with a complex, balanced finish which is evident in many of my creations. I love experimenting with new flavors of fruit and grape combinations. I am a foodie myself and find inspiration everywhere. Our wine is truly unique, like our brand new Two to Mango which is a Mango and Jalapeño Chardonnay. I even have a black cherry Merlot called Twilight Kiss, which was inspired by a Bath and Bodywork's hand soap. I think in a state with so many winery choices, our growth stems mainly from our large and unique selection.”

The truth of Jana’s words about variety were borne out when we visited Red Barn. The store had 25 varieties of Love Wine in stock and a couple more are expected to arrive this week. When you visit their tasting room, you can purchase a flight of five different wines to sample for $10. Marty shared a great story about how people are reacting to Love Wines.

The shelves at Red Barn Mercantile are well stocked with Love Wines.

“Last Saturday, a pair of ladies were back home in Michigan. They were sisters and they moved to Italy thirty years ago. They married and had families. They came back for a family reunion,” Marty recalled. “I asked if they would like to sample some wine and the response was, ‘Well you know we're from Italy. We are from the place where wine-making is an art.’”

Marty encouraged them to try a flight with the promise that if they did not like any of the wine, he would not charge them. Love Wines worked it’s magic and not only were the ladies impressed, they each bought a couple of bottles of their favorites. Lovers of chocolate will appreciate the fact that the two of them were also very, very impressed when they tired sea foam for the first time. They asked the Chambers, “Where has this been all of our lives?”

The serendipity involved in bringing Love Wines to Lowell as well as the patience it took for Marty and Laurie to get everything set with Lansing seems to have been well worth the effort. Red Barn Mercantile has a great selection of Love Wines waiting for you along with their other curated Michigan food and beverage products.