>>
Inside NOVEMBER 2017
20
13
26 14 |
COVER |
20 FAMILY TREES Young entrepreneur Josh Parker has tapped the family business with his maple production company. |
BUSINESS BRIEFCASE |
12 JCC HONORS ALUMNI Three alumni are inducted into the hall of fame. SMALL BIZ STARTUP | 13 SOUL WAFFLES New waffle house in Potsdam brings new flavors to St. Lawrence County Community. |
|
FEATURES |
|
TOP TRANSACTIONS |
14 WOOD FIRE PIZZA Di Prinzio’s kitchen is soon to open bringing new flavors to downtown Clayton.
31 JEFFERSON COUNTY The top 6 property sales in Jefferson County topped more than $4 million in September.
26 MOTHER AND SON Business partnership between mother and son at Snow Ridge Ski Resort.
|
40 LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON Lance Peterson, Sr., and son Lance, Jr., work together with seperate businesses to complete construction jobs.
BUSINESS SCENE |
46 NETWORKING, NNY STYLE
From Jefferson to St. Lawrence counties, business professionals connect for success. |
ONLINE |
NNYBIZMAG.COM Connect with us online for daily updates, more photos and exclusive Web content.
November 2017 | NNY Business | 5
DAYTONA NILES n NNY BUSINESS The Di Prinzio family stands in front of Di Prinzio’s Kitchen, located at 428 Riverside Drive in Clayton. The restaurant will feature outdoor seating in the summer.
N N Y F E AT UR E
O
pening a new business in Northern New York can come with its challenges, especially as Jack Frost is about to nip at our doorsteps and the busy summer season has drawn to a close. But for one Clayton family, those challenges are being met with family unity, a warm fire and food that they believe will fight off the coldest of winter months. The Di Prinzio family has taken their love of food, friends, family and fine wines and started a journey together that they hope will fill the hearts and bellies of their soon-to-be customers - a journey that they are taking together in their first familyowned and-operated full restaurant.
November 2017 | NNY Business | 15
NN Y BUSINES S manager for a hospitality company and her fiancé, Ken, as the general manager for a very reputable restaurant. “We learned so much about the industry and decided we wanted to open our own business, but wanted to be patient about it,” said Cheyenne, “and then this opportunity came along to work with my parents.” The young soon-to-be-married couple moved home with their daughter, were married over the summer and the Di Prinzio team grew stronger.
18 | NNY Business | November 2017
“When we found out we were going to do this, obviously, we knew that just Chris and I weren’t going to be able to do this by ourselves. So it all came together; I wanted my grandbaby to come home, I wanted my daughter to come home and we have someone who can literally help us build this thing and we can do it together as a family. And then my son Connor - Connor is a production assistant on things in California and he was doing videos in Nashville- but he was available as well. So at that point it was like, let’s
just get us all together! Also, my daughter Cassie works here, too. She lives here, she’s an amazing piece of our puzzle, so we all just kind of looked at each other like, here’s my marketer, here’s my general manager, here’s my chef, Connor is the assistant chef, Cassie is a waitress. You know it just all worked,” said Shawn. When you enter the restaurant the family has included elements that are warm and inviting, yet has an industrial feel with a wire-brushed zinc bar, an open side bar where the wood fire brick oven illuminates the dining room with alluring smells and firelight. The family says the environment is going to make one feel at home with a home-cooked taste with high-end spins. The family says its focus is on service and comfort. “I wanted to bring a flavor to the restaurant that reflected the travel that we have done. I’ve been interested in cooking for the past 25 years; it’s just always something that I have had a passion for,” said Chris. “I want to bring something a little different. We will have your standard Italian food; I call it American-Italian as my heritage is from Italy, but I was born and raised in America, so I just flip it around. And then I can do other things as far as an Asian flair; I love Asian food, so it’s not just strictly Italian. It’s my love of cooking and food… simple food, great ingredients, and as fresh as possible.” The family is now all together in Clayton, overseeing construction, the installation of their signature wood fire brick pizza oven, and developing their menu, wine list and craft beer lineup. The restaurant is set to open in November and the family says the approaching winter months don’t have them worried at all. “We want people to come in during the winter in their snow pants, we want people to come in off their snowmobile and enjoy the wood fired oven. We want the aesthetics to be comfortable, whether it’s off the boat, off the snowmobile, in the front door off the water,” said Shawn. The Di Prinzio’s may be new to opening a family business, but the business of being a close-knit family surely isn’t. They say it’s about learning from each other and figuring it out together. And that’s what they all say is their key to success: each other.
COV E R STORY
W
hile infant son Rhett was attended to by his aunts, Emily and Elizabeth, and supervised by his grandfather, Christian, his parents Joshua C. and Alessandra Parker sat sideby-side at the family’s dining room table, taking a break from their hectic lives as the heads of Parker’s Real Maple. The maple-making season is short and fast, and while most in the trade are at their busiest during the early spring when sap is flowing, the Parkers’ business and its focus on year-round production of value-added products keeps the newlyweds on their toes at all times. While the couple is constantly on the move, Mr. Parker said having his wife invest her time and care into the company has relieved him of some of the burden. “I would say that working together is the best and the hardest thing we have ever done,” he said. “For me, before her I was just doing it by myself and it has gotten a lot easier.” Before Mrs. Parker there was just a young entrepreneur from Canton who chose to make a living out of his passion for maple. A chance meeting in the lobby
of a hotel has changed the layout of not only Mr. Parker’s home life, but of his business as well. “I was at a political conference,” said Mrs. Parker, who was working for a presidential campaign at the time. “Josh was there with one of his friends who had started a student organization.” The pair kept in touch and eventually started dating long-distance. Mrs. Parker found out she was expecting their newborn, Rhett, in September of last year, and the pair were married in January. It was not long after that when Mrs. Parker took her campaigning experience and applied it to her husband’s company. “Marketing a person and marketing a product is kind of the same thing,” Mrs. Parker explained. “I found out that was what I would like to do, so I started to take over the marketing and in about April we decided I would take over as CMO.” Before she began her work with Parker’s Real Maple, however, she had to know more about the product she would be selling as chief marketing officer. “I did not even know there was such a thing as real maple, which is super em-
CHRISTOPHER LENNEY n
22 | NNY Business | November 2017
barrassing now,” Mrs. Parker said with a laugh. “I thought syrup came out of trees. I literally did not know about sap.” Mr. Parker said his wife is a perfect example of the demographic he is targeting. “She is the consumer we are trying to reach. Her, in Texas, who had never heard there was a real and fake maple and who had no problem buying a $9 vegetable smoothie at Whole Foods, was still buying Aunt Jemima because she just did not know the difference,” he said. Mr. Parker admits there was a learning curve when Mrs. Parker came on board, but he is excited with how the dynamic has played out. “I would say it has created more work, but more work for the better,” he said, adding that the process of learning to work together is ongoing. The young CEO said he has realized that when he and his new business partner work in the same direction, their productivity is immense. At the same time, there are moments when he and his wife clash and progress halts. Finding a way to stay on the same wavelength is crucial. While working in a cohesive manner can sometimes prove difficult, Mrs. Parker
NNY BUSINESS
C O V E R S T O RY
CHRISTOPHER LENNEY n
NNY BUSINESS
November 2017 | NNY Business | 23
COV E R STORY said there are certainly perks to working with her husband. “There are the positives of it, like we are always together. The work day will end and we are still working at the dinner table together,” she said. “We will be lying in bed at night and we will be throwing out ideas at each other about what we want to do, but the other side of it is you do have to make time for your marriage and kind of separate the two so you can go out to dinner or something.” Finding ways to interact outside of their business has proven difficult for the young CEO. “I don’t know how it is for her but for me, something goes through my head and I’m like, ‘We are not supposed to talk about business at dinner, but what the heck else are we going to talk about?’” Mr. Parker said with a smile. “I would ask ‘How was your day?’ but I know her answer is going to be about business.” A major shift in the company is fast approaching as Mr. Parker looks to move his operation from the barn behind his parents’ house to 19 Commerce Lane in Canton, where he is renting space from the St. Lawrence County Industrial Development Agency. Moving from the building he founded his company in will be a difficult, but necessary, move. “I enjoy having it in the back yard,” Mr. Parker said with a laugh. “I think the nicest thing will be taking the burden off of my parents and having eight cars sitting in the driveway and having 10 people walking around at any given moment.” “It is hard too because that barn is basically where I started the company,” he
CHRISTOPHER LENNEY n
NNY BUSINESS
24 | NNY Business | November 2017
added. “When you only have that much room, we turned it into everything we possibly could.” Now that the business is bursting at the seams in its current facility, the decision has been made to transition into an expansive space where the company can continue to grow on the hard work of the newlyweds. Both Mr. and Mrs. Parker are young, intelligent and driven in the pursuit of the company’s success, but much of what makes them such a powerful pair is their ability make up for the other’s shortcomings. “One thing Josh is very good at is that he is a dreamer. He can think of stuff that I would never think to do and they are great ideas and we do them,” Mrs. Parker said. “I am much more of a day-to-day person where I want to be on time, I am organized, I have my to-do list. Josh is very smart and his brain is just kind of everywhere.” One example of Mrs. Parker bringing her husband’s vision to reality is her blog, MapleMade. Mr. Parker had already secured the domain name, but had left it vacant while trying to figure out how to best make use of the site. Mrs. Parker jumped at the opportunity and has turned it into a way to provide an inside look at the company, and to offer recipes that include real maple. “The word was Josh’s idea, but it was my idea to make it into a blog,” she said. “I get a lot of moms who comment on there and say ‘I am definitely trying this over the weekend,’ so it has definitely been a way to connect with families and
moms.” Real maple has not only been a unifying force within the Parker family, the new couple believes it can help bring other families together, as well. Mr. Parker said, until recently, he had never realized how unique it was to see a family come together around a food product. The process of creating maple syrup is something that can be enjoyed over several generations. “It is this nostalgic, fun, beautiful experience that is really bringing families together. So what we have found is not every product is like that in the food world so we are really lucky to have a product like that,” Mr. Parker said. “Since the beginning, when I was boiling syrup in my kitchen everyone was definitely around and thought it was cool and was tasting the overcooked syrup that I made on the stove.” “It has always been a centerpiece of the family and now it has grown to be not just in the spring as a centerpiece for the family, but actually all of the time. It never goes away, it is always there,” he continued. “If we weren’t working on it as a family I think it would feel unnatural because that is what maple is. It is bringing people together, and we have found working as a family has been the best way to do it.” In the relatively short time Mrs. Parker has been around the family and company, she has recognized the power of the sweet product her husband has become passionate about and wants to be selfless in its power to unite. “We want to take that family feel that we have here, where it is warm, and we are all about bonding around this incredible thing that nature has given us, and we want to give it to other families,” she said. “We want to invest in other people’s families and allow people to experience that feeling of warmth and bonding around our product.” Mr. and Mrs. Parker are now fully committed to both each other and their business, and they are dependent on it. Their goal moving forward is to make sure their employees and customers feel comfortable relying on it as well. “We really want to have a family company where everyone can depend on each other and get to know each other,” Mrs. Parker said. “It is more than just a maple business, we feel like we are family.”
E N V IRO N ME N TAL BU S I NE S S
N
Executive Leadership Can Empower Staff
orthern New York has a welldeserved reputation as a great place to raise a family. Part of what makes it great are the year-round opportunities to enjoy a multitude of outdoor activities. The four seasons, combined with vast amounts of New York state lands for hiking, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, or horseback riding, pristine waters for fishing, and abundant wildlife for viewing or hunting set the stage for adventure, exploration, and good, quality family time. Let me be clear, my idea of family is broad and includes a couple with a dog, blended families, and all other combinations that individuals choose to define themselves as a family. Regardless, my point is this—the family that plays together, stays together. Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Adventure NY initiative, a multiyear outdoor recreation campaign to connect families and visitors to the outdoors, estimates that New York state lands accommodate more than 75 million visitors per year. Region 6, which includes eastern Lake Ontario, St. Lawrence River, Tug Hill and eastern Adirondacks has 11 Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) totaling 18,795 acres in Jefferson County alone. These state lands provide wildlife habitat management and wildlife-dependent recreation. Several are located within a 20-minute drive of Watertown. Lakeview WMA, in Ellisburg on State Route 3, is part of the largest natural fresh water barrier beach system in New York state. Lakeview is open to the public yearround, and some of its most beautiful areas can be seen by boat. DEC has provided boat launch sites for canoes or car top boats with a 10-horsepower limit. As stewards of the land and the wildlife, sometimes we must carefully manage public access to state lands to provide
habitat and nesting opportunities for species that depend on these areas. Perch River WMA, which encompasses 7,800 acres in the towns of Brownville, Orleans and Pamelia in Jefferson County, is one such area where Judy Drabicki we balance public access with natural resource protection. This restricted wetland and refuge area provides habitat for several of New York’s endangered and threatened species, including bald eagles, black terns, and northern harriers (marsh hawks). By late August, the nesting and brooding season is mostly complete and the fall migration period has not yet begun. That’s when we open access to the public and it’s traditionally a huge draw for bird watchers of all ages. Bird watching is one of the fastest growing outdoor recreational activities that can be enjoyed by people of all ages and abilities. Young people between the ages of 12 and 18 can get involved in the State’s “I Bird NY” beginning bird challenge. This past spring, more than 100 young people completed the challenge and became I Bird NYers. In September, Rich Schmitt of Rochester took his 13-year old son and the child’s 14-year old friend hunting at Perch River WMA. He wrote to us in an email that the boys ended up with eight blue-winged and three green-winged teal. “It’s always fun to see the younger kids have a successful hunt,” said Mr. Schmitt. For the nature observer and hiker, we have many miles of well-marked trails in all areas of the five-county area of Region 6.
In May, we cut the ribbon on new improvements at the John Young trail, which make it more accessible to visitors. This newly accessible, 2,000-foot trail is located within the Tug Hill State Forest at Barnes Corners. Our focus is on inclusion, and accessibility improvements invite people with mobility issues and families with children in strollers to our state lands. Camping is an amazing opportunity to live off the “grid” for a short amount of time. Visitors can choose from three DEC campgrounds in Region 6; or find primitive camp spots on state lands. Even teenagers sometimes reluctant to spend time with their families enjoy sitting around the camp fire after enjoying a meal cooked over a propane camp stove or sitting quietly around the fire taking time to gaze at the stars. And don’t forget, every fourth grader in New York is eligible to visit one of the state’s day use areas at a DEC campground for free. These opportunities to enjoy the outdoors, and many more, can be found on our DEC website, at www.dec.ny.gov where a drop-down menu under Recreation provides a treasure trove of information about available opportunities. Our regional office is also more than happy to take your phone calls at 315-785-2239 to help visitors find a great place to recreate with their families. Whether it’s active or passive, back country or front country, on land or water, I recommend that all New Yorkers—and visitors, too—do their family’s physical and mental health a favor and enjoy New York’s great outdoors! n JUDY DRABICKI’S career spans three decades of ensuring the natural beauty of the north country is protected and enjoyed for generations to come. Her office is located in Watertown, but her role covers five counties: St. Lawrence, Jefferson, Lewis, Oneida and Herkimer.
November 2017 | NNY Business | 29
PHOTOS BY AMANDA MORRISON
2 0 QU E STIONS
P
FAMILY VINES RUN DEEP
hil Randazzo has accomplished many things throughout his lifetime, but most important to him is his family, living life to the fullest and sharing his passion of food, wine, music and community with those around him.
NNYB: When did you move to the Thousand Islands and why?
PHIL: We moved to the Thousand Islands in 2004 because we had a cottage here. We own Whiskey Island at the head of Grindstone (Island) and we thought we would come here and retire. We had sold our company in California and my wife and I decided we’d make home here, since we’d been coming here all summer and our summers got longer and longer because we loved the place so much we decided to stay. NNYB: You have mastered the art of growing grapes in the tough Northern New York climate. How did you first become interested in growing grapes for wine production? PHIL: After my daughter graduated from college, we took her on a trip to Sicily to find our relatives and, lo and behold, all of them made wine. My grandparents made wine, as well, here in this country when they immigrated here in the early ‘20s. So, we found cousins, relatives, we found my great-grandfather’s house and all the relatives that were still there and they were making wine. They were making an interesting kind of red wine for pasta dinners that was identical in flavor and taste to the wine that my grandfather 32 | NNY Business | November 2017
n Coyote Moon Vineyards owner Phil Randazzo has deep-rooted ties to wine, food and community development efforts. made here. But I’ve always been a fan of Italian wines, like Chianti classicos. But I also really loved the family-style wine that went with pasta. And I asked them there, “Why aren’t you exporting these kinds of wines to the States?” Their answer was that because the wine brokers that export say that the American market wants dry Italian wine, only. And the kind of wine that my family is making was semi-sweet; it had a little bit of residual sugar. So I came to learn after a while that the reason we had this little bit of residual sugar was that it helped cut the acids in the tomato sauce. So I came home and started making some small-batch stuff here and after we opened the winery, I started making some small-batch stuff for my own personal use, because that’s the wine I really like, to go with my Sunday pasta meals. Interestingly, we started passing a little bit of it around the tasting room and people just said that they just had to have it. So that’s where the whole “Casa Papa” idea came from. When my son Tony joined us a couple of years later, after we opened the winery, he said, “Pops, let’s go do the family pasta sauce recipe. You’ve always wanted to make a pasta sauce, let’s go do it.” So, Tony kind of spearheaded that notion and we put the wine in the pasta sauce, just like grandma did and then “Casa Papa Tomato Sauce” was born. That’s been hugely successful and is now available in local grocery stores, and is now growing into Hannaford’s in Watertown. So, it’s kind of taken on a life of its own. It’s pretty cool and backed
that up with “Twisted Sister Barbeque Sauce,” and then we came up with two “Razzle Dazzle Raspberry Jams” and then the “Naked Chardonnay Peach Salsa.” It’s just been a huge hit.
NNYB: What, if any, have been the challenges of starting a business in Northern New York? PHIL: Lack of people. It’s pretty tough to do business three months a year. So that’s been a huge challenge. Of course, the weather has its challenges, too. The old adage is: “There are only three things wrong with being up here in Northern New York and that’s January, February and March.” Outside of that, it’s an awesome place to live. NNYB: What has helped you to get to where you are today? PHIL: Perseverance. Failure is never an option. You just have to push through the tough times and not give up. Just never giving up, and that’s what I try to pass on to the kids and anybody else who’ll ask me. I do have a saying, that everybody’s entitled to my opinion, right or wrong. I do think it’s perseverance and sticking with it long enough to make it happen. In today’s world, everybody wants everything instantaneously, and that’s just not the way business operates. It takes years to mature a business and get it to grow.
2 0 Q U E S T I O NS The Phil Randazzo File AGE: 67 JOB: Winery owner & wine maker FAMILY: Wife Mary (recently deceased), son Tony and wife Lori, daughter Christina and husband Christian, grandchildren Mia, Chance, Lexie, Tamblin, Aurora, Sebastian and great-grandson Jax. HOMETOWN: Rochester, NY EDUCATION: MBA from New Port University CAREER: Entrepreneur LAST BOOK YOU’VE READ AND WOULD RECOMMEND: Blue Ocean Shift.
NNYB: How did you come up with the name Coyote Moon? PHIL: The name Coyote Moon came from several years prior to ever opening the vineyard. My daughter and I were deer hunting during muzzleloading season, and it was a beautiful, warm day; it was just great. We were out, and towards the end of the day, there were three different buck deer standing in the field right in front of us. All three, too small to shoot. So, we were having this great little whisper conversation, going on about what makes a deer big enough to shoot, because we were really looking for something that was eight points or better. The deer kept looking toward the other end of the field and I was saying, “Now, you’ve gotta watch for that, because the deer know something’s down there and they’re interested in it. It might be the big guy that we’re looking for.” To make a very long story short, the deer finally decided to walk out of the field and went right underneath our blind. I didn’t want to scare them by going out too soon, but by then it was dark. Dark, dark. And just as they were leaving the field, the moonrise was phenomenal. It was a great harvest moon; it was just sensational. It was as big as the biggest moon you ever saw. And as this moon started to rise, we started talking about this great moon, and we just sat there and enjoyed that for several minutes. We finally started climbing down at dark out of the tree stand. Kristina went down out of the tree stand first and was heading toward the field. I was about halfway down the tree stand and I saw a coyote looking right towards us, which is probably why the deer were looking back in that direction. I quick jumped out of the ladder and ran up to where she was and I fired a shot off, chasing the coyote away. It was kind of an adrenaline rush and she was excited, iit was kind of a fun thing that happened with the two of us and off the coyote went and off we went. Ever since that day, any time there was a full moon, Kristina would refer to it as a coyote moon. Let’s roll forward now three or four years, we’re sitting in my living room on French Bay, here in Clayton, trying to come up with a name for the new winery we were proposing. As we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to name the winery, “island this” or “river that,” all the normal stuff
that goes through your head, making long lists of things that might or might not get approved, a full moon started rising over the top of Clayton. You could see it out of our dining room window, looking right at the village of Clayton. And Kristina said, “Hey, look Dad. Coyote Moon.” It was like, it just whacked me right over the head. “That’s’ it. That’s got to be it.” We jumped on the computers and started checking, and there was nobody using that name and Coyote Moon was born. I like it because it’s not “river this” or “river that;” it breaks through the mold, it breaks through the clutter and it just gives a totally different kind of name. It’s become the foundation of our marketing, obviously our trademark and our trade name, being very different from a winery trademark because usually they’re “estate this” or “castle that,” all kinds of iconic things that are out there. It’s real different. Marketing is my forte, if I love making wine, I love marketing just as much and that gave me a lot of material to work with.
NNYB: Wine production in the Thousand Islands and across Northern New York is gaining a lot of momentum. You were one of the first to get into the business in the Thousand Islands. Why do you feel that Northern New York is the perfect place to cultivate grapes and produce specialty wines? PHIL: We were recently awarded the Dan Berger Terroir Trophy. Basically, we took a leap of faith trying to grow grapes in this region. I learned the University of Minnesota had a cold-hardy grape growing program in Minnesota and was doing well and I couldn’t help but think
they’d do well here, too. Now, that doesn’t help us much with why this particular site or location is making this kind of wine. Certainly, it lends itself nicely to it. So Terroir Awards describes the overall environmental factors that affect the crop’s characteristics, including the climate, geography, and the soil composition. And right from day one, I always wanted to make wine that reflected the grapes that grow on this particular place and why they’re so different. So we started with the grapes. And whether it’s our top-of-the-line port wine or whether it’s our dry wines or even our sweet wines, the grapes drive the wine-making. So what people taste here is, they taste Clayton, New York. They do not taste something that was manufactured or derived from a bunch of chemical interventions and such.
NNYB: Your business has expanded to three locations, from your downtown store along the waterfront in Clayton to the Salmon Run Mall in Watertown. How has this expansion changed operations from the start of Coyote Moon until now? PHIL: We’ve had to somehow make a transition, from family to people who weren’t members of the family. Selection of people has been really, really important. We have a really strange selection process when we hire people; we don’t hire them because of their resume, we don’t hire them because of their educational background. We hire them if we believe they’ve got the attitude that is a hospitality-driven attitude. That they can have fun with customers and find out what the customers want and deliver what those customers need. We really look for that personality, we November 2017 | NNY Business | 33
2 0 Q U ES T I O NS vineyard and he says, “Wine is made in the vineyard, not in the building.” He showed me how to prune the grapes so that we had the right sunlight to get the maximum amounts of brix, the more brix, which is the measurement of sugar, the sweeter the grape the more alcohol it will build. And so the next trick was to take the wine that we had and distill it from our own property. So we distilled that wine, we went to a neighboring distillery, we went over to Clayton Distillery, we distilled that wine down to come up with the alcohol we needed at precisely the right level – and there’s a long one-page formula – the alcohol level needed to be very, very precise, the grapes that came from the same property and then we started fermenting with these. When we started fermenting the juice down, we get to a certain brick level that we like the taste of and we say, “OK, that’s going to be it,” we stop the fermentation – you stop it by adding alcohol to it – and so we infuse the alcohol, again that came from our own property, we infuse the alcohol that kills the yeast and stops the fermentation and then we pump that off into our oak barrels, and that’s it. I asked Daniel one day, “Now that we’ve got it into a barrel, how long?” He said, “Aw, when it tastes good.” I said, “OK, how long? A year, two years, three years? Tell me.” About that time I learned my second really good lesson about winemaking. My daughter walked into the room with her newborn daughter, Aurora, and Daniel looked over at Kristina and Aurora and he says, “Well, maybe when Aurora, she gets married, then you take a barrel to the wedding and everyone enjoys it.” And I said, “Holy smokes, that’s really longterm.” So, long-term thinking in the long haul is really what winemaking is all about, because where most people make a Frontenac, they’ll go pick it or more than likely buy the juice and make wine out it and roll it out that same year. You know, Frontenac tastes great when it’s aged three or four years. It becomes a totally different wine, totally different, as does Marquette. So when you treat these grapes with a great deal of respect and use the protocols you would on the finest, most expensive grapes .
NNYB: You’ve worked closely with agencies like Cornell Cooperative Extension of Jefferson County. How do these relationships and educational opportunities benefit your family business? PHIL: Five or six years ago, Cornell, along with the University of Minnesota and several other northern universities received a $5 million grant to study these cold-hardy grape varieties that are coming from the University of Minnesota and Tim Martinson is the head of viticulture for Cornell statewide, local guys get involved with the extension, but there is a statewide program with Cornell University. They had scientists in here all summer for five summers measuring how many buds, high-trellis systems versus low-trellis systems and everything in between, measuring the various flavor compounds from the grapes. And so we really learned a lot about, with some real empirical data, not just opinion, what was absolutely the best way to grow these grapes and what trellis system to use, etc., the nutrients we needed
to add or not add to the soils and so on. We took that technology and applied it here to our own vineyard. I mean I couldn’t have learned that in 20 years. The work that they did here and all the vineyards…I’d go to the national meetings with the other university members and scientists from different universities and we hashed this all out and I talked about it with my counterparts. At the time, I was one of two New York state advisors to that grant working with Cornell. So, it was an awesome experience because, you know, it’s like getting a PhD in viticulture, it was just amazing with all this horsepower that we had. They really helped us a lot.
NNYB: Coyote Moon is a family-operated business. In fact, just about everyone plays their own part in everyday operations. What does it mean to be in business with your family? PHIL: Needless to say, it has its challenges. And probably because it’s an Italian family to boot, we’re probably not as polite with each other as we need to be, or as politically correct. So, you get a lot of heated discussions about everything; everything is questioned all the time because people feel free to do it because, when you can’t get fired from your job, you can really just talk about anything you want to talk about and do anything you want to do. So, it becomes interesting. As a manager running businesses previously with thousands of employees, I never had to deal with the kinds of challenges that two kids and their spouses can give. Because like I said, nobody can get fired, so it’s like.. “OK.” That really helps bring the company and stretches us and takes us to the next level. But everybody’s kind of finding their own niche, where they’re really good at it. NNYB: What role does everybody play? PHIL: Tony is taking over more of a (general manager) role. I mean, he’s overseeing a lot of the accounting that’s going on, overseeing the office work, but more importantly he’s overseeing everything from our winemaking facility to the vineyard itself. I think that’s probably going to split into two jobs someday, but right now we’re small enough where it isn’t. Kristina is a real wine-tasting expert and can talk to any winemaker or any wine guru on the planet and do a really great job. She’s working with big restaurant chains; she’s working with some hotels now and getting our highest-priced wines out there. She can really talk the talk when it comes to wine, she’s really great. My daughter-in-law, Lori, is doing a phenomenal job down at the Watertown store and doing farmers’ markets and doing shows and she gets everybody revved up and excited, she’s a real cheerleader. Kristina’s husband, Christian Ives, helps us a lot, developing the Twisted Sister flavors and the food things that he’s good at. He’s also got a good set of taste buds when it comes to wine and what wine goes good with which food. There’s a lot of collaboration going on and everybody kind of brings something different. My wife, Mary, has done all the (wine) labels. The labels themselves are an interesting story because in the beginning, we just had six little tanks. I was going to make
some wine and be open in the summertime and the weekends. Maybe have some fun just growing a few grapes. And Mary was going to sell her artwork, in a little art studio, until we learned it was illegal for her to sell artwork in a farm winery. It had to be wine-related. So I woke up in the middle of the night one night and said, “I’ve got an idea. We’re going to put your artwork on our labels.” It was wine-related and “Voila.” That’s’ how all her paintings ended up on the labels, so we could sell her artwork as well. So we have the artist in the family. Then we just needed to complement us with those skills we didn’t have with other people and the rest of the staff just kind of grew around that.
NNYB: What plans do you have for the future of Coyote Moon Vineyards? PHIL: I think to continue to grow the food and wine business, together, and have foods and wines that complement each other. Continuing to make wine at the highest possible quality level has also got to be in there. Recently, we started to self-distribute to liquor stores and hotels and restaurants. So our next future is to move further out of the Clayton market; not abandon the tourism or the market per se, or Jefferson County, but take our wine that’s manufactured here and start to expand it through the rest of the state, and then from there, to the rest of the country, hopefully. The thing about this, when you start talking long-term in terms of European businesses, especially wineries, some of them are hundreds and hundreds of years old. I know full right…I’m a student of architecture and European buildings. The people that designed and built those buildings knew that when they started the project they’d never see it finished, versus the United States where you see it finished in three months. Here, it’s like we’re building something that I’m never going to see it finished. It’s sad, but it’s the way you need to be if you’re going to develop a legacy business or a family business that’s going to go on for generations. I know that I’ll never see the completion of it, but I think we’re making all the right moves to set the groundwork and the foundations so that it will grow. As soon as I knew that we could really make this world-class wine – I’m quoting Dan Berger – if one winery in that region can make a world-class wine, then that bodes well for the entire region. I’ve always been involved in the entire region. I’ve never just kept everything to myself; I know some wineries do that, but I’ve shared openly with the other wineries because I want them all to do well. NNYB: You’re an active member of the Clayton community. Why is that important to you? PHIL: It’s the first community I’ve been involved in, and volunteered in, and worked in. It’s kind of interesting; in the summer of 2000 I actually had a heart attack from being retired. I sold my business and had nothing to do and had a heart attack. I needed something to do, so I started volunteering to keep my mind active, because it was just turning to mush. So I started working Please see RANDAZZO, page 38 November 2017 | NNY Business | 35
N N Y BU SIN E SS F E AT UR E
DAYTONA NILES n NNY BUSINESS Lance Peterson, Sr., and Lance Peterson, Jr., stand in one of the new condo apartments on Riverside Drive in Clayton where they recently completed. The father and son duo’s businesses worked together to complete this project.
November 2017 | NNY Business | 41