Reflecting on 2024: It’s been a while since we’ve talked …

I wrote my first post on this blog on August 28, 2016. Over the years, updates to the blog became sparse—not because we weren’t working and making progress, and not because I no longer felt it was valuable, but because what began as a curiosity and a hobby had turned into something completely different. For the past few years, we have been searching for the answer to every small business owner’s biggest question: How will we make a living, and how will we make a living while working a sustainable number of hours each week. We still have a long way to go but it feels like we are starting to find that balance.

The Numbers

Last year (2023) we sold about 900 cases (10,800 bottles) of wine. About 70% of that we sold through distribution. This means we sell our wine to a distributor who then goes out and sells the wine to restaurants and wine shops. We sell our lowest priced bottle to the distributor for $11, the distributor sells it to a retail shop for $18, and the retailer sells it to the customer for $26. Our direct material cost (grapes, bottle, cork, label) to produce that bottle is about $7. This means we make $5, the distributor makes $7, and the retailer makes $8. Selling that same bottle directly to a customer for $26 would net us $21—a much-needed improvement. Even without paying ourselves at all, we were not profitable in 2023. (all three of us were working other jobs) Prior to 2024, we tried to solve this problem by selling more bottles and frankly we were not seeing any success. We were determined to be both profitable and able to pay ourselves, so something had to change. Instead of trying to increase sales through distribution, which wasn’t working, we decided to focus on increasing our sales directly to consumers, thereby making more money selling the same amount of wine. Simple enough, but how?

The Plan

There was a small space for lease near the main street in Marfa, previously a coffee shop. We envisioned transforming it into a place where people would want to gather, enjoy wine, and perhaps even more importantly, food. Selling our wine directly to customers would allow us to capture a higher margin and *hopefully* make a sustainable living.

While many suggested we open a “tasting room,” the term never sat right with us. Tasting rooms often feel sterile, detached and performative, like the showroom at a car dealership. What we wanted to create was something warm, inviting, and vibrant—a restaurant. A restaurant that would make you feel like you were at home, or at a home you used to have, or at the home you hope you might have in the future.

We signed the lease, spent 4 months cleaning, renovating, and decorating and opened March 1st 2024. By the end of 2024 we will have sold about the same number of bottles that we did last year, but this year about half was sold through distribution and the other half directly to consumers. We have been encouraged by how our first 10 months with the restaurant, and we hope and expect to be able to improve on those results in 2025.

We removed a drop ceiling to open up the space and bring in more light.

New light fixtures in, the bar is starting to take shape.

A curved bar is not the simplest thing we could have chosen. The steel structure supporting the bar top needed to be level, strong enough to support anything that might ever be put on it and also, rigid enough so that the bar wouldn’t flex when people lean on it.

Joey Benton, designer and builder of Silla in Marfa, not only came up with the design for the structure of the bar, but also supplied the pipe and let us use his workshop to mill our lumber. He also lent us two of his expert craftsmen. Gabe did all of the beautiful welding, and Daniel who did the complicated woodworking required to fit the curved bar top pieces together. A huge thank you to all three of them. We simply would not have been able to open without their help.

Emily and I running all the red oak boards through a giant belt sander. We started with rough sawn lumber and milled all the boards individually until they were all the same thickness.

Each section of the bar is made up of several long boards glued together.

We built the back bar and the top shelf which the wine glasses hang from with the same red oak as the bar top. Because space is so tight in our little bar, we bolted each shelf all the way through the concrete block wall. This way no leg supports would be required, giving us more room.

Deedee is a dog about town who has since moved to Estonia. Also notice the detail of the bar, over 100 pieces of repurposed oilfield pipe. Each one individually cut by me.

Opening day was March 1st. we share our small restaurant space with our wonderful and talented friend, Emily Kolb, who runs her own coffee shop (Mutual Friends Coffee) in the morning hours.

2025

Opening the restaurant has allowed us to increase revenue without needing to find ways to sell more bottles of wine. Looking towards next year, we will be focused on continuing to improve the restaurant and continuing to sell through distribution throughout Texas. With this new focus we will produce less wine, only as much as we need for our Texas distribution and for our restaurant and wine club, and this will allow us to focus on improving our wines.

Embracing the Davis Mountains

The Davis Mountains of West Texas have always been central to our vision. While establishing vineyards in the region takes significant time and investment, 2024 marked a milestone. We crafted six different wines from Davis Mountains grapes this year, each one carrying its own unique story. Look for these first attempts from the Davis Mountains to show up in the wine club offerings over the next two years: Grenache, Viognier, Mourvèdre, Montepulciano, Malbec, Roussanne.

Our Home Vineyard

In June I completed planting the first block of vines at our home, about 350 vines comprised of 30 white grape varieties. This type of planting is known as a field blend and is aimed at expressing the unique qualities of a place rather than producing a wine that expresses the flavors of one specific grape variety. We hope to produce the first wine from this vineyard as early as 2026.

Here is one of the first group of vines. Planted in 2021, this group is starting to reach an age when the vines are capable of bearing fruit. You can see this vine has set a few clusters.

It’s really starting to look like a vineyard!

These two rows were the first vines planted in 2021.

One of the things we spend the most time on in our own vineyard is building healthier soil. We want to feed the soil microbes so that those microbes can feed our vines. Roots in soil are what feed microbes, so here we are trying to reestablish the native ground cover.

Mountain Shadows Vineyard

Additionally, we were lucky enough to work out a deal with one of our neighbors. We planted an acre of vines on their property. We will expect a first harvest at Mountain Shadows as early as 2027.

We installed this cool weather station at the Mountain Shadows vineyard.

Beyond

We will continue learning and improving every year in pursuit of not just making our wines more delicious but continuing to discover which specific wines are the ones that are inextricably linked to this place. The ones that simply could not exist without this place. The wines that will one day remind people of being here.

If you have a question about Alta Marfa, please send me an email and I’ll cover it in the next post. I am determined to write one blog post every month in 2025. I’ve been thinking about why someone might buy wine from a small winery like us. There is really only one thing that we can offer that a big deep pocket winery cannot. We can offer you a personal connection to the people making your wine. So please read the blog, ask a question, buy our wine, drink the wine, tell your friends.

thanks

Ricky