Post Winery Has Five-Fold Production Increase Since ?80s

Production at the Post Familie Vineyards & Winery in Altus has increased by five fold since the 1980s to about 500,000 gallons in 2003.

“Last year, we processed 80 percent of the grapes grown in Arkansas for wine,” said Joseph Post, vice president of sales at his family’s business. That means, in addition to the Post Familie’s 200-acre vineyard, the winery imported grapes from growers across Arkansas as well as from other states.

In 2003, the Post Familie Winery saw an increase in sales of about 25 percent over the previous year.

“We’re doing some stomping,” Post said. “That’s figuratively speaking.”

Post said his parents, Mathew Post Sr. and wife Betty, were busy raising 12 children when production dropped from 300,000 gallons a year in the 1960s to 100,000 in the ’80s.

Since then, 11 of those children graduated from the University of Arkansas and nine of them have returned to work in the family business in the Franklin County town that once had 42 wineries.

Arkansas now has five wineries (down from more than 100 immediately after Prohibition). Four of those wineries are in Atlus: Post, Weiderkehr Wine Cellars, Chateau aux Arc Vineyards & Winery and Mount Bethel Winery. Cowie Wine Cellars is in Paris, about 15 miles south of Altus.

According to University of Arkansas researchers, Arkansas ranked No. 12 last year in grape and wine production with a cash crop valued at $2.5 million. Vineyards cover 1,400 acres of the state. Arkansas’ grape production was divided between wine (55 percent), grape juice (36 percent) and table grapes (9 percent).

Post Familie

The Post Familie Winery is Arkansas’ largest wine producer, followed next by their distant relatives and neighbors, the Weiderkehrs, who have held the No. 1 position in the past.

Joseph Post, a decendant of the company founder, won’t say much about the winery’s revenue other than,”It’s a multi-million dollar production annually.”

In 2002, Post Familie Winery began using eight different kinds of yeast to create different wines.

“The yeast is No. 2 to the fruit itself,” Post said.

Post believes the new yeasts helped his family winery win 24 medals (out of 24 Post Familie entrees) at the Wines of the South competition held in Sevierville, Tenn., on Nov. 1. That includes 15 gold medals, nine silver and five bronze.

Post said his family’s business processed about 3,000 tons of grapes last year and sold 200,000 cases of wine. About half of the wine Post Familie Winery produces is sold under the Post name. The rest is sold to more than 100 other companies that label it with a variety of different names.

Native Benefits

Post said a 2001 change in state law is responsible for most of the 25 percent sales growth his business saw in 2003. The state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board decided to allow grocery and convenience stores to sell wines produced in Arkansas for the first time since 1980.

Since then, 191 native-wine permits have been issued to those stores, according to ABC. Arkansas wines had been sold in grocery stores since 1933. But the 1980 regulation put Arkansas wines on the same footing as wines made outside the state, which since 1935 have been restricted by state law to being sold only in liquor stores and restaurants.

“At the same time, we have experienced an increase in sales in the package stores,” Post said.

The change came at a time when the Concord grape business was drying up in Northwest Arkansas. Welch Foods built a grape juice plant in Springdale in 1922, but sold the plant to Ozark Valley Products in 1992. It later sold to Pappas Foods International. Pappas has stopped buying locally grown grapes and uses the plant only to bottle concentrate now.