Oliver Winery Continuing Growth Momentum
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowWhen you think of wine country, you typically think Napa Valley in California, but one Indiana winery is carving out its own niche as a major player in the big business of wine making. Oliver Winery in Bloomington was recently named one of the 40 largest wineries by Wine Business Monthly and one of the fastest-growing wineries by Market Watch magazine. But success didn’t come overnight.
It all began in the 1960s when Indiana University law professor William Oliver started experimenting with home wine making.
“My earliest memories are of my father helping to make wine in the basement of our house,” said Bill Oliver, chief executive officer of Oliver Winery. “I just remember the smells of fermenting wine and the sort of the clanking of glass as we’re bottling and just the time in the basement. I don’t know if I was any help or not but I sure enjoyed the time with him.”
Professor Oliver took his pet project from the basement to Bloomington, where he planted grapes and established a small vineyard.
“Initially, it was a hobby winery. If he sold enough wine to pay the bills, that was a successful year.”
And what started out as a hobby nearly 50 years ago has now turned into a multi-million-dollar business that just keeps on growing. The winery recently expanded into 38 states, including California.
“It’s been a goal of ours for a lot of years and (we’re) so proud to kind of be at this point in our growth and our history,” said Julie Adams, president of Oliver. “We don’t try to compete in spaces where wineries on the West Coast might. We think about how can we do things that are different? And that has been a real key to our success.”
Another secret to Oliver’s success?
“We’re 100% employee-owned and that’s a really unique thing. That means every one of our employees has this true stake in the game, day in and day out and it’s something that’s notable.”
In 2019, Oliver Winery sold more than 505,000 cases of wine, which was a 19% increase over the previous year. The winery says it is on track to exceed its 2019 sales and that can be attributed to its online and wholesale successes.
Oliver says it also increased wine making capacity 30% in 2019 to keep up with demand. Bill Oliver says they have no plans to slow down.
“We’ll continue to grow. It has been helpful for us to be out of the mainstream, to be in Indiana, to be away from the competition out in California. There’s 5,000-6,000 wineries in California; I don’t know if we can be able to thrive in that environment. The pathway to that is to continue to make great wines, package them attractively, offer great marketing and sales support, our distributor partners, and seeing all that working together just to continue to grow the winery.”