Sweet Baby Vineyard Named NH Wine of The Year

The New Hampshire Liquor Commission recently paid tribute to its 2014 Wine & Spirits award winners April 9, at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, honoring the top winery, distillery, wine, spirit and business partner. For the first time this year, NHLC also honored the top New Hampshire spirit and wine.

NHLC’s annual Wine & Spirits Awards celebrate the achievements of the products and suppliers who have demonstrated incredible sales, exceptional leadership and a commitment to the New Hampshire market. Sweet Baby Vineyard in East Kingston was honored as the top New Hampshire wine.

East Kingston’s Sweet Baby Vineyard experienced skyrocketing sales following its participation in NHLC’s rack program, an innovative attempt to showcase local wines in prominent displays at NH Liquor & Wine Outlets. In just one fiscal year, Sweet Baby Vineyard made huge strides, jumping from about sixth in sales among New Hampshire wineries all the way to second. With overall sales growth approaching 42 percent for the year, Sweet Baby Vineyard surpassed sales growth by all other New Hampshire wineries. The winery also introduced a number of new wines during the past year and won the Peoples Choice Award at the Toast to the Coast, in Hampton, NH in addition to several medals awarded in international competitions.

“Sweet Baby Vineyard is extremely pleased and honored to be recognized by NHLC. NHLC’s rack and point-of-sale program has had a tremendous impact on our sales,” said Sweet Baby Vineyard winemaker and owner Lewis Eaton, who was recently named president of the New Hampshire Winery Association. “With support from NHLC, we continue to break our own sales records each year. In 2013, we sold a record 2,600 cases. In 2014, we sold 3,600 cases, and we are projecting that we will sell 5,000 cases in 2015.”

About Sweet Baby Vineyard

What started as a hobby for Lewis, quickly grew into a family business. We chose our home in Kensington because it had a lot of land for our children to play and space to garden. Growing up in New Hampshire, our family has always enjoyed all of the fresh fruits that the spring, summer and fall bring. Each season we take the kids to the local farms to pick strawberries, blueberries, peaches and apples. We decided to bring these fresh fruits grown at our local farms to our wine. We also turned part of our land into a vineyard, which yields four varieties of the grapes we use in our wine. We now have happily outgrown our little home winery and moved to a new wine making facility in East Kingston. We still maintain hundreds of local vines at our home farm winery in Kensington but now have a new and improved tasting room and expanded winemaking facility at the junction of Rtes. 108 and 107A in East Kingston.

Lewis is the winemaker at Sweet Baby Vineyard. He worked for over 15 years building bridges, during which time he also returned to college to earn a degree in business. A love of wine and a desire to start his own business, paved the way for a major career change. Stacey is the office manager at Sweet Baby Vineyard, as well as a teacher at a local elementary school. Our children enjoy helping in the vineyard and with the picking of fruit. They have learned where our food comes from and know all of our farmers personally. Our daughters’ hands are even featured on our original label and one of our wines bears the name of our son. We are looking forward to sharing our wines with you and continuing to support our local farming and wine making community.

We hope you love our wines as much as we do. Please enjoy responsibly. -- Lewis and Stacey Eaton, 204 South Road, Kensington.