Meet Jim And Sherri Borton

We recently connected with Jim And Sherri Borton and have shared our conversation below.

Jim and Sherri, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?

Sherri and I both get our work ethic from our respective families. From our grandparents and parents specifically. In my case, both sets of grandparents were farmers, grew up in the 20s and 30s during the depression and before tractors were commonplace. Even well into their 80s all of them had their projects to work on at the farm or house and grass rarely grew under their feet. Grandpa Jim literally wore a path in the grass from the house to the shop where he would tinker every day after he retired from farming until his move into assisted living at 93 years old. My parents, while not directly involved in farming (we had a hobby farm for our 4H and FFA projects) as adults carried that work ethic through to my siblings and I as we went about our lives, especially when we had our livestock projects to take care of.

Sherri’s grandparents worked in various factory positions or on the railroad. Also growing up in the depression and during the war eras instilled a work ethic into her grandparents and parents as well. Sherri’s parents to this day have to stay busy doing something be at home, in the woodshop or a project outside. Sherri struggles with her mom’s health issues and it is tough to tell her mom to take it easy.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

We started our vineyard in 2006 when the kids were 4 and 2. We started as a grower for a nearby winery, and as the vineyard started to grow and expand, we began to think more and more about what our ultimate goal was for the grapes we were growing. It made sense to keep growing for the other winery, but there was also the desire to do something on our own. When the winery building came up for auction, we knew that was the almost perfect set up and that we were on the path to having our own winery.

As the kids grew with the vines and we moved towards starting the winery, their mindsets changed from the vines just being a despised chore into this was a cool way to potentially make a living. Both kids used the vineyard and winery as their required Supervised Agriculture Experience (SAE) project in FFA. As they continued on that path, they both placed in the state level contests and Ari (daughter) moved on from winning the state to competing in the national contest earning a top 5 national ranking. Both then earned their American Degrees within the FFA, something only about 2-3% of the students in the FFA programs nationwide achieve. Alex (son) has taken the lessons learned in FFA and Ohio State’s Agricultural Technical Institute (ATI) and applies them to his role as the Vineyard Manager (and jack of all trades depending on the season) ensuring that our fruit quality reaches the highest standards that the conditions will allow during the growing season. He works with Sherri in the cellar to execute on the blends she constructs in scaling from benchtop trials to full size batches/tanks in preparation of bottling. Ari who has been our lab technician since 7th grade, is studying Food Science at Ohio State in Columbus with the goal of coming home to help Sherri with the winemaking/blending duties. She currently is responsible for blending all of our hard ciders, more on that in a bit.

Today, as a family, we have chosen to work towards being an estate winery, and until we get to that level, we continue to focus on being a true Ohio winery. Everything we put in the bottle is Ohio grown and about 75-80% of the grapes/fruit we use is sourced within 30 miles of the winery be it our own grapes or other local vineyards’. With Sherri’s background as a wine wholesaler and her amazing palette she takes our wines and blends to mimic more standard varieties from more established/popular wine regions around the world. We have impressed “California only” wine drinkers with our ability to produce quality wines that remind wine drinkers of their favorite labels, yet we grow and produce it locally.

We currently have 18 labels with a wide variety of wines from dry to sweet, sparkling to dessert, red, white and rose’ and looking forward to releasing 3-4 new labels within the next few months. Within the last year we added hard ciders on tap (Ohio’s liquor laws permit hard cider to be made under a winery license) to offer an alternative beverage for the “beer crowd” that visit. Our ciders are also locally sourced, and the flavored ciders are done so with natural extracts. We currently have 6 regular ciders on tap and have a rotating flavor of the month, all of which are crafted by Ari.

We continue to grow and are gearing up and looking forward to expanding our reach via the wholesale markets from grocery stores to restaurants. We are already set up for shipping throughout Ohio and 38 other states and are looking to start a wine club as well. As we have expanded our production capabilities, we now feel confident in offering these programs as we can now keep up with demand.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

For us, definitely the skills Sherri had developed as a wine wholesaler, and the opportunity to sample literally thousands of wines over her career, to develop her palette and enable her to blend our wines to match other styles. This isn’t a direct skillset that transfers to other industries though. However, we would say that having specialized knowledge of and experience in the industry you are working into is something to have in your repertoire.

Being able to learn, adapt and apply what you learn from various sources. Be it books, the internet, mentors, consultants, etc. that you might use in starting your business. Don’t get locked in on only one source of info and be willing to admit the path you start on isn’t necessarily the right path. How we thought our winery would look after 5 years is not what it looks like today. Some of that is learning and applying new things to tweak our path, and others are the longer lasting outcomes of the pandemic and how it changed consumer behaviors.

Obviously have a working knowledge of accounting basics. Yes, most businesses hire accountants to do the books, but understanding how the money flows in, and more importantly out, of the business will allow you to make better decisions on what you can afford, how it impacts returns on investment, tax implications, etc. Knowing this allows you to make better decisions in the short and long run.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

Like most businesses that are luxury items (wine is a want not a need for most) or services, we are always looking for ways to improve the bottom line and survive economic downturns. We continue to look for new and innovative ideas to keep things different and offer new products. We started with 9 wines and have grown to 18 with more coming, plus the addition of hard ciders on tap and other wine based mixed drinks. Each new label or drink recipe generates excitement that draws in returning customers as well as adding new ones looking for something different. However, just adding something new isn’t enough, you have to continue to provide a quality product/service to keep the existing customer too. Just because it is new doesn’t necessarily make it better, so you have to continue to maintain high standards of quality and customer service.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lincolnwayvineyards.com
• Instagram: @lincolnwayvineyards
• Facebook: @lincolnwayvineyards
• Twitter: @lwvineyards
• Yelp: Lincoln Way Vineyards

Image Credits

Ohio Grape Industries Commission, Sherri Borton, Jim Borton