How a market crash sparked the rise of Duplin Winery

Editor’s Note: This is part one of a two-part series about Duplin County’s journey into becoming wine country.

Ask any farmer and they will tell you that being successful in the agriculture world requires the ability to adapt quickly to changing conditions. It is that ability to adapt that began the journey to Duplin County becoming a unique winemaking center in eastern North Carolina.

Jonathan Fussell, of the family behind the creation of Duplin Winery, spoke with Duplin Journal about the birth of the business. He said it all began during a turbulent time for grape growers.

According to Fussell, about 70 vineyards, totaling about 2,700 acres, were being cultivated by farmers in eastern North Carolina and South Carolina when the grape market took quite a plunge.

“We were growing grapes for a winery called Canandaigua,” Fussell said. “The price of grapes dropped in 1974 from $350 a ton to $125 a ton.”

That drastic drop left Carolina grape growers wondering what to do. Fussell said the choices were to just try and find another solution to wait it out, or to open a winery.

“My father and uncle decided to open a winery, so they opened in 1976,” he said. They had incorporated Duplin Winery the year before, but there were still challenges to making it a financially successful venture.

“In 1977, they were trying to figure out how they could grow when, financially, they weren’t able to without borrowing money to either build the winery or grow the vineyard side,” Fussell said.

His uncle and father decided the best solution was to bring other area growers into the Duplin Winery family.

“They went to all the growers and said, ‘Listen, if you give us your grapes, we’ll give you stock in our company.’”

Their plan worked and in 1977 Duplin Winery became a stockholder corporation owned by 14 families. As the original owners began to age and pass away, their shares were passed down to immediate and extended family. By the time Fussell graduated from college, the number of stockholders had grown to 1,300, with his family owning 68 % of Duplin Winery.

When his grandfather died in 2008, his stock was left to his uncle, his aunt and his dad. His father decided it was time to pass along his holdings.

“My dad said, ‘I need to step away from the wine business itself,’” Fussell said, adding that he and his brother bought their dad’s shares.

Family ownership of Duplin Winery came full circle when Fussell and his brother eventually bought all the remaining stock from the other shareholders over the next six years after their father’s death.

Fussell was too young to experience firsthand what his family went through in the transition from growing grapes to making wine, but he heard it wasn’t easy.

“I can only repeat the stories that were told to me,” he said. “It was very, very challenging. We made a lot of mistakes, but we were very, very fortunate that the Lord blessed us and the customers forgave us. They continued to support us and allowed us to survive through the mistakes.”

And survive they did. Today, Duplin Winery has expanded far beyond its Duplin County roots, with additional locations in North Myrtle Beach, Panama City Beach, Florida and Gatlinburg, Tennessee.