Colchester — When COVID-19 broke out last year, Gloria Priam wanted to know if her farm winery in Colchester could survive, but business was booming. As people became more and more afraid of staying indoors, Priam Vineyards moved its business outdoors and pitched tents throughout the estate.

But the pandemic has already caused losses.

Her mother died of COVID-19, and Priam painfully realized that she wished to spend more time with her. The pandemic quarantine further brought Priam's lack of family ties in Connecticut, where all of her relatives are in the Pittsburgh area.

After six years of strong but exhausting expansion with current business partner Jim Melillo, the pandemic has added more work, which led them to make a difficult decision. They concluded that it is time to sell.

"It's too difficult," said Gloria Priam, walking along a row of withered and dormant vines, waiting for the rebirth of spring. "This is 22 years of my life. You can do many things with this attribute. These things need to happen. I just don't have the strength. When I started to do this, I was a lot younger. I was the chief cook and washing machine. Bottler."

Now, she says that she wants to see her family more-there is not enough time to manage the vineyard.

The 40-acre farm distillery on Shailor Hill Road is now on the market for $3.2 million and is accompanied by a booming wedding and event business-"agricultural entertainment," which Melillo calls it-Melillo said he I think this is an essential business for the winery now.

The 71-year-old Melillo stood next to Priam, pointed to the field and said: "We have done as much work as possible. Now is the time to inject fresh blood into the next generation." "For example, that There are 12 acres of beautiful flat fields on the side. It is growing hay and weeds. It can grow more vines. It can grow hemp."

They said that the modern farmhouse on the property could become a bed and breakfast, and the property was zoned as a restaurant.

Beginning in 1998, Gloria Priam and her ex-husband built a farm winery from the ground up, and they learned this business when they planted the first vines.

Today, there are 10,000 vines on the estate and the winery produces 40,000 bottles of wine every year. There are more than a dozen different varieties, from Riesling and Rosé to Chardonnay and Gewoon Jelly.

The farm brewery in Connecticut began in the 1970s. In the late 1990s, Priam Vineyard ranked only seventh. Today, there are 50 licensed farm wineries in the state-this name requires at least 25% of the grapes to be grown on farms or locally in Connecticut.

A 2017 study of the state's agriculture by the University of Connecticut found that wineries achieved rapid growth between 2007 and 2015. The growth was driven by "increased demand for local wines, which in turn increased the derived demand for local grapes," the study said.

During the same period, sales soared from 30 million U.S. dollars to 85.8 million U.S. dollars. At the time of the study in Connecticut, the Connecticut industry employed nearly 1,000 employees.

The state’s agriculture commissioner Bryan Hurlburt said that since the release of the UConn report, the growth of the state’s wine industry will certainly continue to grow.

"You don't have to fly somewhere to visit a winery and taste some great wines," Hurlburt said. "People realize that Connecticut has some great farms and some great wines."

The Connecticut Wine Road is one of many promotions that draws attention to the state’s growing wine industry.

Melillo said that in Priam, since he became a partner, in the past six years or so, sales have grown at a rate of 15% per year and invested more than $1 million in vineyards, effectively starting A business that has reached a plateau.

Melillo said that by comparison, the industry’s average annual growth rate is 3% or 4%, and sales are growing. He said that Priam's sales include wine sales and event income.

Melillo said that when he became a partner in Priam, he had just sold a global management company. He joked that as an Italian, he loved wine all his life-but he admitted that the learning curve was steep.

"Around the wine, and then around the wine," Melillo said.

Melillo's investment doubled the area of ​​the tasting room and wine-producing area, and added fermentation tanks made in Italy. Priam launched an online wine club, which now has more than 300 members and ships nationwide.

According to the property's online real estate post, in 2020, Priam's revenue will be 1 million U.S. dollars and operating profit will be 300,000 U.S. dollars.

The sale of vineyards in Connecticut is relatively rare. But just this year, Haight-Brown Vineyard in Litchfield, the state's oldest farm brewery, also gained new ownership.

Competition is fiercer than in the 1990s. But the farm brewery can now also provide craft beer, as long as it is brewed in Connecticut. Priam recently started offering Alvarium beer produced in New Britain.

Priam and Melillo attribute the success of their wines—they won multiple gold medals in Germany and New York City—to the minerals in the soil.

"In short, I call it a gravel pit with 300-year-old cow pie on it," Priam said. "It brings a lot of crispness, clear crispness-the balance of acidity and minerals is well done."

The partners believe that if climate change makes the growing season longer and the winter milder, Connecticut and the northeastern region of the country will continue to gain greater visibility in the wine industry. Melillo said that a longer growing season provides more time for sugar to enter the grapes, thus balancing the crispness.

"I know that at some point, the East Coast will premiere because the West Coast will get too hot, and this is exactly what is happening," Priam said.

The decision to sell the vineyard was very personal to Priam, not just because she was there in the first place. Before her grandfather was deported during the Russian Revolution, he owned a vineyard near Budapest, Hungary. The Colchester Vineyard is named after him.

Priam said she hopes that the next owner of the vineyard will see what she sees on this land and the potential for further growth that she often dreams of.

If the vineyard is sold, Priam says she knows she will no longer have a say in the way the land is used, "I can only let it go."

You can contact Kenneth R. Gosselin at kgosselin@courant.com.