LOWELLVILLE, Ohio – L’uva Bella Winery has started work on a 7,000-square-foot warehouse addition to create room for a potential additional production line down the road, CEO Marisa Sergi-Schumann said.
Heavy equipment that included a dump truck and backhoe was at the construction site this week preparing the property for pouring concrete, scheduled to take place Sept. 14, with plans for the building shell to be completed within the next 90 days, she reported.
The approximately $1.1 million project, which is being funded in part by a $656,932.50 grant from the Ohio Department of Agriculture through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Resilient Food System Infrastructure grant program.
The new warehouse is being constructed near L’uva Bella’s current manufacturing area, Sergi-Schumann said. Currently, the winery leases 10,000 square feet of space in downtown Youngstown to meet its current needs, which is costly because of the logistics involved.
“For now, it is just warehousing space, with plans in the future to potentially utilize the current space within our facility to expand our bottle line,” she said. “Due to the demand of our cream wine products, we are most likely going to one day need a larger, more efficient bottle line, so it’s part of a phased approach for expansion.”
In recent years, as sales of traditional wines and alcoholic beverage in general have declined, L’uva Bella has seen growth from production of cream wine products in partnership with regional dairies, which now account for at least 60% of sales, she estimated. Several years ago, representatives from L’uva Bella and Hartzler Family Dairy in Wooster met to discuss a wine-infused version of its popular eggnog.
“It just caught wildfire year one,” she recalled. Launched exclusively with Cleveland-based Heinen’s in 2024, the grocery store sold “every single unit” of the Boozy Eggnog within seven weeks of launch.
She also has received “zero negative feedback” from the retailer, which is “very forthcoming” with opinions, she reported.
“They strive for excellence in everything they do, including what they do for their customers,” she added. The success led L’uva Bella to expand its partnership with Hartzler, for which it also produces an Irish cream.
There “unquestionably” has been a downturn in sales of wine and other alcoholic beverage products since 2022, Tom Wark, executive director of the National Association of Wine retailers, affirmed. “We’ve been seeing single-digit downturns year over year, probably in the 4% to 5% range,” he said.
Wark attributed the decline to several factors, the two major ones being primarily the decrease in discretionary spending because of the economy, particularly inflation, and an increased focus on wellness.
The specialty/alternative sector generally has outperformed the total market for alcoholic beverages in recent years, though it is a small market and not an easy one for the average winery to succeed in, Andrew Adams, senior editor at WineBusiness Monthly, said. Wineries like L’uva Bella should look to build on this business as the wider wine market is not expected to improve significantly in the coming year.
“Identifying and successfully entering a specialty market is an excellent way to differentiate one’s wine business in the current challenging market,” he said.
“When we went down this cream wine path, we certainly didn’t anticipate it being this successful,” Sergi-Schumann remarked. The cream wine product was expected to be popular – In fact, it has supplanted the winery’s Purple sweet red wine as its highest grossing revenue stream – but not so popular as to warrant investing in the new space.
The popularity of the Hartzler Boozy Eggnog – during the fourth quarter of 2025, the product was Ohio’s seventh highest grossing 750 milliliter spirit in the entire state, and 65th most popular among all package sizes – “has allowed us to see the power of the item,” leading the winery to pursue other opportunities, Sergi-Shubmann said. The winery subsequently partnered with Turner’s Dairy, near Pittsburgh, on an eggnog product as well as an irish cream, which it will introduce in 2027.
The Turner’s products are being sold though the Wegman’s, Giant Eagle and Weis supermarket chains in Pennsylvania, she said.
Hartzler’s products are sold “from Ohio all the way down to Texas,” including at Buc-ee’s, the convenience store and travel center chain known for stores that exceed 70,000 square feet. Locations in Texas, most of which had received between eight and 10 cases, sold out within 48 hours, she said.
The winery also has had success with licensing opportunities with the cream wines, as well as sales through QVC, the television shopping network, which featured products during a “Christmas in July” special and plans to double down during the fourth quarter, she said.
In addition, Sam’s Club – the warehouse store affiliated with L’uva Bella’s longtime retail partner, Walmart – is testmarketing Hertzler’s holiday packs in a handful of stores in larger Ohio markets and one in Kentucky. “This is our first time ever selling to Sam’s Club,” she said.
The company is looking at completion of the new warehouse by Dec. 31, per ODA requirements attached to the grant but Sergi-Schumann and the company’s president – her husband, Evan Schumann – have not committed to a timeline for the new bottle line. A grant based on an earlier application included funds for the new line but they decided to be “more conservative,” so funds for the line went back into the pool for other manufacturing businesses, she said.
“It was a lot to take on when we weren’t sure how successful [the cream wine line] was going to be,” she said. “It’s certainly an aspiration. It’s not a guaranteed plan but it’s something that we envision needing to happen, given the growth trajectory that we are on.”
Pictured at top: CEO Marisa Sergi-Schumann.