Alfie Alcantara and his wife, Deanna Urciuoli, are taking their love of natural wine a step further.
The pair will open a tasting room at Dear Native Grapes at 17 Crawford Road in Walton on Saturday, July 19. But bringing the vineyard, and its heirloom varieties, to life has been a passion project years in the making.
“We started really falling in love with natural wines a few years ago, when we were living in Brooklyn and tasting wines that we had never tasted something like that before; they just tasted so alive and expressive, we were like, ‘What is this?’” Alcantara, 38, said. “So, we started learning about natural wine and how organic farming matters so much and how, with organic farming and thoughtful wine-making, small producers are able to make amazing, unique wines, a lot with native grapes in regions and varieties we’d never heard of. That led us down a path where we found out about the history of American native grapes and what happened to a lot of our native varieties, and how Prohibition messed up so much of our country’s wine industry.
“During that time, we lost a lot of diversity in agriculture in general, but especially in grapes in the Northeast,” he continued. “We were really interested, so we went down this rabbit hole of research, and it was an amazing history and project and we thought, ‘This could be something we could do,’ and we dreamed about it for many years.”
Alcantara credited his wife with moving the project from dream to reality.
“Deanna is really the planner, and she tired of me talking about it and said, ‘Why don’t you volunteer in some wineries?’” he said. “We both worked in film production and had no background in wine-making, so she pushed us to start volunteering and we took business courses, because we thought, someday, we could turn this into a small farm business centered around the idea of bringing back all these heirloom and heritage grape varieties.”
Things came to fruition, Alcantara said, in 2019, when the couple purchased property in Walton.
“It had just the right land for growing grapes and the right aspect, so we bought a place and then planted our vineyard in 2020,” he said. “Since then, we’ve been slowly building out our vineyard and our winery. We’ve been making wine in our garage for the last four years … and we had the opportunity to work with some small vineyards and make wine with them, since our vineyard is still maturing and coming into production.
“We were able to actually launch our little winery … in 2023,” Alcantara continued. “We were finally like, ‘Let’s just go for it,’ and we pooled our savings and built a pole barn that will one day house our production space and a tasting room for visitors. We’re finally at the point where we’re going to have our grand opening this month and people can come and taste the wines and get to know the project and the farm. We’re really excited.”
Already, Alcantara said, patrons of area farmers’ markets have become familiar with Dear Native’s offerings and ethos.
“We sell our wines during the summer and winter (Delhi) Farmers’ Market, and we get to chat with so many different people,” he said. “A lot are locals that might have a connection to grape-growing, or their grandparents had grapes growing in the backyard, so they identify with this idea of American, heirloom varieties. And we have people who have never tasted something like this before and are very surprised by these wines, because they’re so different and unique. It’s been a really diverse mix of people who’ve come up to us and are interested — locals, people visiting from other places. It’s been interesting.”
Alcantara said the response from locals has been “heartwarming.”
“I think a lot of people get super excited when they hear the story of American heritage grapes and how we’re trying to bring value back into these underappreciated varieties,” he said. “It’s something really cool that people get behind, so that’s been awesome to see. Our local community has been so appreciative and supportive of our small winery. Every time we release something at the farmers’ market, we get lots of people coming over and asking about the new wine. We feel very welcome in this community.”
The July 19 event, Alcantara said, will feature this season’s vintages and more.
“Every year, we’re trying to experiment with as many different grape varieties to see what they have to say,” he said. “Right now, we have our summer releases, made of three wines, two of them sparkling. We have a white sparkling variety called Delaware and a sparkling rose from an heirloom variety called Stueben and a still, amber-colored wine. So, we’ll have those three and, throughout the year, we’ll have limited, special releases of stuff that we only have small batches of, so the winery will pour those by the glass.
“We are going to be open every Saturday from 12 to 7, and we’re going to have a lineup of local pop-ups – food vendors with local chefs and restaurants,” Alcantara continued. “And we’ll also have snacks available, like cheeses and crackers and baguettes made by Cafe Mutsi in Andes. So, you can build your own picnic and hang out at the vineyard, in the fields, and every weekend will be a different food vendor.”
Alcantara said wine and Dear Native merchandise will be available for purchase from an onsite bottle shop, too.
Alcantara said he and Urciuoli hope to continue growing their vineyard and their passion.
“We both still have our 9-to-5s while we grow the winery, but, eventually, we’d love for this to sustain our family and be what we do on a full-time basis and we’re working toward that,” he said. “It’s a slow process, because we’re growing from cuttings that we have to propagate … and it’s a super-harsh climate, with a short growing season. But, in terms of the winery, we’d love for this to be a place of community-building and to have people see it as a place to come, relax, be in nature and hang out and just keep learning about the whole story of American grapes.”
For more information, follow @dear.native.grapes on Instagram or visit dearnativegrapes.com.