A Passion For Winemaking Led Brandon West To Create
Brandon West is the CEO of Rich Oak Vineyards, Wines of Wellington.
By Jack Lowenstein
A curiosity about winemaking has grown into a local start-up company for Brandon West, CEO of Rich Oak Vineyards, Wines of Wellington. The small-business owner and longtime Wellington resident started like many others with a curiosity that has grown into a passion, which grew into a business idea, and now it’s a finished product. Originally, West thought he might want to learn about the process of brewing beer, but that faded. Instead, he found himself interested in a process not too far off his original path. “I started Googling and YouTubing about how to actually make wine,” West said. “And then, that day, I took action and bought a wine-making kit.” The rest is recent history, and West has made a mark for himself by introducing his Red Blend to the local community and beyond. His Red Blend is 70 percent cabernet, 20 percent zinfandel and 10 percent Syrah. Where does a winemaker in Florida get his grapes and start the process for something like this? “I work with Royal Caribbean, so I was able to travel to many areas of Europe and actually visited a lot of vineyards over there,” West said. “Also, I took some trips over to California. I found that I wanted to keep it in the United States as the first go-around. After a lot of research, I found an excellent vineyard in Lodi, Calif.”
PHOTO BY ABNER PEDRAZA
West created a partnership with a vineyard there, and he picked the grapes he would use to create the Red Blend. “I worked with them to get a blend, to get it all packaged, all labeled and shipped to a warehouse in Miami,” West said. “I got all the licenses and regulations, started up the business, and then started selling with retailers around Wellington.” All of the grapes used in his blend come from Lodi, which West said rivals the vineyards from close neighbor Napa, Calif. “I think Napa is a little overvalued,” West said. “It’s great wine, but there is also some great wine next door that doesn’t have that name to it. It’s still excellent wine. I think it’s probably number two in the California region… so it has a lot of quality, and the price is not as expensive as Napa, so it gets a lot of value in that aspect.” Wines of Wellington is the foundation for West and the company. Rich Oak’s Red Blend, beyond the different grapes, offers a wine low in added sulfites, which are found to varying degrees in all wine. West noted that enjoying a glass of wine high in added sulfites may give the drinker an annoying headache. “When you have these mainstream, mass-produced, cheaper wines, many times those sulfites are 200 to 300 parts per million, which is really wellington the magazine | december 2017
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