October 2008

Anthony and Leatine Fasano
Spring Branch, Texas
www.leaningoaksvineyards.com

When Anthony and Leatine Fasano bought their small acreage in Texas’ hill country in 2000, they looked upon the sloping terrain, with its rich soil and surrounding rock formations and said, “It’s a vineyard.”

They planted grapes even before their house was built, and were concocting plans for a winery on their land, which is located in one of the state’s five American Viticultural Areas.

But Anthony said it was a middle-of-the-night revelation that sent him in another direction, away from a Texas wine market that has become saturated by local producers.

Leaning Oaks Vineyard has created its own niche among grape growers, with its crop being used to manufacture specialty wine sauces and wine conserves that are distributed in the United States and Canada with plans for further foreign expansion.

“My business took a diversion from being a wine producer to being a wine product producer,” said Fasano.

Product development

Leaning Oaks’ 1 ½-acre vineyard, which first produced a crop in 2004, yields several grape varietals: cabernet sauvignon, sangiovese and zinfandel, all red grapes, and the chardonnay and sauvignon blanc, both white grapes.  

But rather than turning it around to be bottled and sold, Fasano processes the wine into sauces and jellies, cooking out the alcohol while preserving its aroma and taste profile.

“We don’t use refined sugar or high fructose syrups, like a lot of the jelly and sauce manufacturers do,” he said. “We wanted to make a product that would be enjoyed by all without the worry of sugar and alcohol.”

Fasano, who is on his way to earning a certificate in wine making from the University of California-Davis, began by making jellies from the cabernet sauvignon, sangiovese, chardonnay and zinfandel grapes that were grown in his vineyard. Following up on some advice from distributors, he sourced pinot noir grapes from California – the Texas climate is not well-suited for growing that varietal – to add to his line-up of jellies.

Diversification

He continued to listen to the calls for diversification, though perhaps by chance. He made an accidental discovery as he was in the process of refining the cabernet conserves for jelly. It failed to set properly, and Fasano was left with a wine sauce. Leaning Oaks now manufactures a cabernet, chardonnay and zinfandel sauce, and has also created a marinade by combining chardonnay, extra virgin olive oil and organic champagne vinegar.

The Fasanos took their collection of products and began to experiment in the kitchen, using the sauces for glazes, finishes or salad dressings, for example, and compiled a booklet of recipes.

“I’ve always had this idea in the back of my mind: wine and chocolate go very well together,” Fasano said. He searched tirelessly for a “clean” chocolate, meaning chocolate that was free of chocolate liquors, sugars and preservatives. He located a chocolatier who recommended a German dark chocolate with the only additive being cocoa butter containing 60 percent cocoa mass and a very small amount of sugar, which is very rich and decadent.

The resulting chocolate cabernet wine sauce, Fasano said, has “just a slight nuance of the wine with all the flavors of the chocolate.” He recommended it poured over ice cream or cheesecake, or to be used for a chocolate reduction. The Cabernet Chocolate sauce was introduced in April 2008 at the SIAL Montreal food tradeshow and he is bottling it with the Leaning Oaks brand as well as a private label contract in Vancouver, British Columbia, for the western Canada market. There are now three foreign distributors marketing the products in Canada.

The cabernet sauce was a finalist in the Gallo Family Vineyards Gold Medal Awards for artisanal products in 2008, and was named one of the Top 10 innovative products for 2007 at the SIAL Montreal tradeshow.

Market access

Leaning Oaks Vineyard had a product, but perhaps the biggest hurdle – getting it into the marketplace – awaited them. Fasano had worked as a marketing consultant in San Antonio prior to moving to Spring Branch, and taking a product to market was a familiar challenge.

“I knew how to do it,” he said. “But I just wanted to do it myself as opposed to doing it for somebody else.”

He has developed numerous marketing brochures for the company’s products, and has gotten his products in front of countless distributors and retailers, often through trade shows.

Leaning Oaks received a USDA Value Added Producer Grant in 2005, which furthered Fasano’s marketing efforts and “helped me an awful lot to kick my product in the behind,” he said.

He was able to not only create his first batch of product, but also launch a marketing program and develop a distribution network. He attended trade shows, including the Fancy Foods Show in San Francisco and New York City, through the grant’s funding. The grant covered the cost of some advertising, Web site development and the company’s eCommerce program.

A separate $1 million USDA Business and Industry Guaranteed Loan was to be used to build a wine tasting room and to expand the winery and wine production facilities. But an accident in 2005 led to surgery for Fasano, and they put the expansion on hold before deciding against it entirely.

“We said, ‘Let’s just concentrate on this and be the best we can at this as opposed to having too many irons in the fire,’” Fasano recalled.

The Leaning Oaks Vineyard line of products was picked up by grocery store chains Winn Dixie and Kroger’s, and more recently underwent the comprehensive testing in order to be sold in Whole Foods stores. The natural and organic grocery store chain had to first test the products to ensure they were “clean,” free of sugars, sulfites and preservatives.

But doing business in today’s food industry has also presented Leaning Oaks with some of its biggest challenge. The interdependence of everyone, from distributors and retailers to brokers and sales people, Fasano said, contributes to high food prices.

“It’s making it more difficult to be in the marketplace at a competitive price,” he said.

Still another hurdle exists in creating public awareness of the products. “In Texas,” Fasano said in his best Texas twang impersonation, “if it ain’t beer and BBQ, it ain’t gonna sell.” So bringing his products to the marketplace has required an element of education, forcing him to inform and educate consumers about the value of his products and their many uses in the kitchen.

Gourmet cooks have used wine sauces and wine reductions for years, he said. What he wants to do is make those products more accessible and easy to use for everyday cooks.

“The product is successful because we take a lot of time and a lot of care to make sure it’s done properly, so that it meets a broad flavor profile for people across the board without being too snooty,” Fasano said.

Moving forward

Encouraged by his rapid success over the past three years, Fasano plans to expand Leaning Oaks’ product line and modify it to make it more cost effective and cost competitive in the U.S. market.

Part of that effort will require an adjustment to the number of flavors of the wine conserves, Fasano said, as some aren’t understood as well as others. He has already developed a Zinfandel and Fig Sauce that will be introduced at Fancy Food Show in San Francisco in 2009 and said he hopes to expand his line of wine sauces further to include a syrah-chocolate sauce and possibly a merlot variation.

Production will continue in Texas, but Fasano hope to begin production in Canada for the private label contract as well. The Canadian market accounts for more sales of his products than does the U.S. market, despite a population that is about 10 percent of the population of the United States.

“It’s one of those things where, as you grow your business, you are continually modifying, enhancing, trying to stay competitive with what’s going on in the marketplace,” he said.