Photo/Todd Bissonette Photography
When Sasha and Michael Pardy were seeking out a place to start their new winery business, they looked at several locations on the east coast, including places in New England, before landing in the Lake George.
Sasha and Michael, armed with a marketing and business degree and engineering degree, respectively, selected the Adirondack region based on its potential to be a growing market and its tourism base, with the bonus of its location being closer to family.
Sasha is co-owner and president of Adirondack Winery. She said they opened the winery in 2008 with a production room and wine tasting storefront on Canada Street in Lake George.
“We started with 1,000 cases. We didn’t even have enough to sell, so for two years we sold other wines, too … We renovated our space and tasting room, but shortly thereafter we were still busting at the seams.”
Initially, Pardy employed four part-timers in the tasting room. With the business burgeoning, she moved the wine production to Queensbury in 2011. Initially, the Adirondack Winery purchased fermented juice to make wine. But this year, the Pardys acquired equipment with the ability to press and crush grapes. Now they purchase grapes directly from vineyards.
“We started with a little nest egg,” Sasha said. “We moved to upstate New York from Florida, where Michael had started wine making in our basement. Once we could get the grape, we knew we’d have a winner of a product.”
Adirondack Winery produced 1,000 cases in its first year, and now produces 12,000 cases per year. The company now employs eight people full-time, including a wine making assistant, assistant tasting room manager, marketing and events manager, tasting room manager, office and customer service coordinator, marketing and graphic design specialist and an events assistant.
“During our peak production season, we employ 30 people part time. We have eight full-timers, year-round,” she said. “Employing people year-round is very important to us.”
Adirondack Winery currently offers 35 different types of wines, including its platinum medal Meritage Wine; gold medal Baco Noir, and will continue to add new varieties in the future.
Adirondack Winery wines can be found in 400 wine and liquor stores across New York state, and are also shipped directly to customers.
“We are expanding into the wholesale market, but not too fast. We now have sales into New Jersey and Massachusetts,” she said.
The business recently received a $65,000 state grant from Taste NY for the annual fall Adirondack Wine and Food Festival. Pardy said most of the dollars was funneled into advertising the event, which has grown tremendously over the past five years.
“The event is huge for the area,” she said. “We had over 5,000 people come to the region for the festival.”
Pardy recently sat in on the Lake George 365 panel discussion, hosted by the Lake George Regional Chamber of Commerce to discuss year-round marketing of the region to tourists and visitors.
“We are open year-round, and we interact with our customers on a year-round basis,” she said. “We ship wine to their doors, we connect with them on social media and we give them plenty of reasons to come back to Lake George,” she said. “We have an event almost every weekend from May to November, whether it’s our Wine 101 class, a sip-and-paint class, a festival or community event, Adirondack Winery is out there, and we are expanding our reach.”
She believes the key to promoting Lake George 365 days a year is co-promotion. “The more we co-promote with other businesses, the more we give people reasons to come here, to come back and to stay for a while.”