Entrepreneur presses ahead with wine-making business

Public Record, The, Jul 30, 2002 by Kleinschmidt, Janice

Deborah Threlfall of Cathedral City needn't worry about competition when she opens her new business.

She hopes by late November to debut the valley's first on-premises winemaking store in Rancho Mirage. She got the idea for the store, which she's calling UWiner, in Canada, where she says there are about 1,300 such operations in British Columbia and Ontario. There, she says, wine drinkers avoid steep alcohol taxes by going to a wine-making store, prepaying to mix yeast with grape juice - taxed as food - and coming back six weeks later for their wine.

Operating such a store in California requires special licensing, which Threlfall obtained during her five years of research. As a vanguard, she had a hard time getting definitive answers from governmental departments. She prepared her business plan as the thesis for her master's degree at the University of Phoenix. Meanwhile, she worked as a controller for Desert Medical Group until last November.

The U-Winer process begins with a "kit" containing a bag of grape juice. Juice varieties originate in France, Chile, Australia, Washington state and Canada's Okanagan Valley and include Cabernet, Chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, pinot noir, Gewuerztraminer and Johannisberg Riesling. Threlfall also will carry ice wine, "a decadent chocolate port" and wine coolers: raspberry, peach, and white zinfandel.

"I offer a climate-controlled location," says Threlfall, "but people can also buy a kit and take it home."

Either way, the process takes six weeks and each kit makes 30 bottles.

"People can begin a 'wine club' by getting three people together," says Threlfall. "Each one buys a kit; and at the end, all three people bring home 10 bottles each of three different kinds of wine."

However, Threlfall says, she also plans to sell wine by the bottle. Even this has a pioneering aspect. In wineries offering personalized labels, a customer must purchase around 20 cases and pay a set-up fee, making the investment run to thousands of dollars, says Threlfall, whose labels will cost $1 to $2 each. She suggests using wine as a new baby announcement in lieu of cigars, putting a picture of the baby on the front label and its birth statistics on the back of the bottle. Shrink-foil caps come in colors to match the labels.

Threlfall even has a slogan: "We offer personalized wine so you can put your label on the table and your motto on the bottle."

The wines contain fewer headachegenerating sulfites than standard wines in the United States. Threlfall. says her wines have 14 to 25 ppm compared to three of four times that amount in standard wines. Because sulfites are preservatives, the personal wines are best drunk between 3 months and 2-5 years. Each bottle will carry a label bearing a "best time" guide.

Finally, U-Winer will offer wine tastings and stock gift baskets, winerelated giftware and cards. The wines will be "affordable," costing less than $10 a bottle, Threlfall says.

U-Winer's 1,300-square-foot space will be in Phase II of the Monterey Marketplace at Monterey and Dinah Shore - between the forthcoming Wendy's and McDonald's.

"It is a premium in price paying for the space, but in the long run it's absolutely necessary to be in a key spot as a new business." Threlfall explains.

She expects the building to be ready for improvements in October so that UWiner can be open in time for the holiday season.