Operation transformation

From market garden to world class winery, newly minted OYF winner tells all

By Trevor Bacque

It’s natural for farmers to adapt. Perhaps it’s a new technique for crop production or animal husbandry, a shift in marketing or an effort to expand operations. Other times adaptation means entering a whole new business entirely, as was the case for Geena Luckett of Luckett Vineyards at Wallbrook, NS, in the heart of the Gaspereau Valley.

Geena is owner and general manager of a well-curated, 130-acre winery on the Bay of Fundy, and operates the business with her father, Pete Luckett. What began as a market garden has been transformed into a winery.

When Pete arrived in Canada from England in 1979, he soon established a handful of specialty grocery stores, Pete’s Frootique, growing his own produce to supply the shops. In 2001, he was asked to grow hybrid red wine grapes for the Domaine de Grand Pré winery a few kilometres north of his farm.

Pete’s agronomic understanding was evident, and the grapes were of the utmost quality. It led him to wonder if something as audacious as a winery was conceivable. He quickly decided it was and he set off on a radical business change in the following years. Geena joined up with Dad in 2012, after the winery had been open for a year. By then she had completed a business degree at Dalhousie, but had never thought about returning to the farm-turned-winery.

“I thought I was gone for good because when I left, the winery wasn’t even an idea at that point,” she says.

Even though she had no idea about wine when Pete pitched pinot, she loved it all the same. “From the outside looking in, it seemed really sexy and exciting and glamorous. That’s what brought me in,” says Geena, winner of the 2024 Outstanding Young Farmers Program award for the Atlantic region.

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to: the strength in difference

The two began to work in tandem on everything. Despite having very different personalities and decision-making styles — Geena is methodical and process-driven whereas Type-B Pete relies more on gut feeling and instinct — it all works. Geena manages the day-to-day, while Pete is brought into larger, long-term planning discussions.

“These different styles allow us to challenge each other and our strategies, plans and processes in a complementary way,” she says. “I always really appreciated his ability to identify opportunities and really dig in and work really hard from the ground level up to building these businesses.”

Though she started as a wine neophyte, Geena has never blindly accepted anything, but instead challenges everything.

“It’s something that my dad has always ingrained in me from day one,” she says. “It doesn't even have to be a problem, but just to have the mindset and mentality to be assessing things all the time and challenging them by asking questions and just always assessing what you’re doing. Never become comfortable or complacent.”

Seeing the opportunity, meeting the challenge

Geena’s ability to constantly take stock of the business has precipitated sizeable growth. Sometimes she finds an issue, sometimes an issue finds her. For instance, in the business’ first five years, their restaurant was gaining a positive reputation, and it didn’t take long before the NS-101 Highway began to have a multiple-kilometre queue just to get into the winery. Three hour waits for a table was a clear signal that an eatery expansion was the most pressing need.

“That was our first real big change, and that allowed us to then open space up to get a better idea of what kind of growth would be possible,” she explains. “Each season thereafter we would sit down and look at the challenges and what changes we could make either in policy or infrastructure that could mitigate these moving forward. From there, it all came down to the budget.

This analytical approach served them well when tough decisions needed to be made. For example, between 2014 and 2017, they literally ran out of grapes and couldn’t make enough wine to meet external retail demand. They had to be deliberate about where their limited supply of wine went, especially since their No. 1 customer was the province’s liquor authority, the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation (NSLC). It wasn’t an easy decision to let some sellers down but, knowing that product placement was key to long-term success, they did what they needed to do.

“It’s not a good day if you’ve got an empty spot on the shelf at the NSLC,” says Geena. “We made tough decisions to limit some SKUs in order to increase quantities on other SKUs, or we had to limit some of our customers.”

Culture is king: keeping staff and honouring authenticity

The winery is an hour’s drive from downtown Halifax and that officially makes it a destination, for both visitors and staff.

Geena has been rewarded with years of loyal service as she proactively modelled and pushed a flat management culture. “Dad instilled that in how I would treat the business and maintain the culture,” she says. “Our team really appreciates that we have a very horizontal leadership approach versus top down.”

To fully appreciate the uniqueness of the business, Geena has done every single job there is over the years, at the suggestion of her father. The structure has created business-wide buy-in in a non-conventional wine region.

“Surround yourself with the right people and don’t take your team for granted,” she advises. “Entrepreneurs, especially farmers, have a hard time letting go or delegating. I would not be able to do what I do without the people I have around me. They are valued and feel empowered to challenge me because, together, we can create better ideas, news ways of thinking. It gives me peace of mind that knowing if anything happened to me my team is well equipped to handle it.”

This approach has led her to nurture and retain vineyard manager Marcel Kolb, and the aptly named Mike Mainguy as winemaker to manage their 10-plus wines with grapestock primarily sourced from Quebec and Ontario.

Geena has made a concerted effort to capitalize on the marketing of the vineyard as well. Situated next to the Bay of Fundy and never more than 20 kilometres from tidewater, the vineyard’s PR material boasts the benefits and uniqueness of the winery, which is in a growing region that’s comparable to parts of England and the eastern United States. Some of those features include newly mild winters, constant airflow due to the tides coming in and out for drier grapes, 1,000 growing degree days per year, and soil that helps contribute to the wines’ minerality and acidity.

The winery’s marketing efforts are primarily powered by social media and digital marketing to communicate with its 30,000-plus followers.

“I feel it gives us the best bang for our buck when dealing with a smaller marketing budget,” says Geena. “It also allows for us to maintain our voice and deliver authentic messaging to our consumers.”

Geena encourages other argi-tourism operators to never settle and always be in conversation, which she says is a cornerstone of the winery’s success.

“It can feel really lonely, and it doesn’t need to be that way if you can identify folks around you who can be mentors or advisors. Seek those folks out because there’s so much wisdom, knowledge and experience that already exists. That’s a really helpful and valuable asset. You don't have to do it alone.”

For instance, a large driver of Luckett Vineyard’s success is collaboration with other wineries, which she hasn’t witnessed as much in other wine regions. The Atlantic cross-promotion has benefitted all vineyards, including hers.

“Everyone is really trying to achieve the same thing; we want to put Nova Scotia wine on the map,” says Geena. “That’s what gets me out of bed every day — the fact that I know we’re all really trying to achieve the same thing and we’re all trying to be really great.”