Grape strides: A winery success story

(UTSanDiego) - In the early 2000s, boutique wines were hard to come by at your neighborhood store or at the chic restaurant down the street. Now shelves and menus are crowded with unique, limited-quantity vintages.

That’s proof positive that there’s competition among boutique wineries — it’s a tough battle.

So what’s the secret to positioning a small wine label for success?

Many ingredients, says Rancho Santa Fe resident Duffy Keys, co-founder of B Cellars winery in Napa Valley — everything from finding supportive investors to sourcing premium grapes, to location, location, location.

Combined, these ingredients make for the perfect recipe, and that’s exactly what Keys has been trying to do all these years. And with the winery’s upcoming relocation to a more visible Napa property, B Cellars has reached a major turning point: “Now we control our own destiny,” Keys says.

It’s been a decade since Keys, 59, and his Orange County-based business partner Jim Borsack started the B Cellars label. Operating in a modest co-op winery in the famed Napa Valley, B Cellars produced its first wine in 2003.

The winery later moved to Napa’s pastoral Calistoga and today produces 5,000 cases annually, mostly blended wines made from grapes contracted from area vineyards.