About ISLAND GROVE

We are a Florida fruit winery in Hawthorne, and we grow most of what goes in the bottle.

Blueberry farmers first

The roots go back to 1995, when two blueberry farms in north central Florida combined to become Island Grove Ag Products. The focus then was straightforward: grow high quality blueberries and blueberry plants.

That meant working closely with the University of Florida Breeding Program, using on-site research to increase production and learn how experimental and newly released blueberry varieties actually behave in Florida heat. That relationship still runs today, alongside work with the breeding programs at UGA, NC State and the USDA.

Our Island Grove location near Hawthorne carries roughly 200 acres of certified organic berry production. When the new “low chill” varieties came along, we planted another 200 acres down around Arcadia, which puts total berry production at about 400 acres.

Why there is a winery at all

In 2009 we started looking for something to do with the extra fruit each fresh season left behind. Not a clearance bin — something worth making.

In 2010 Island Grove Wine Company was born. Working with our winemaker, Chase Marden, the range has grown to more than twenty different offerings, in bottles, on draft, and in cans.

The wines are organized into four collections: Blue Roots for the 100% blueberry wines, Sunshine State for the canned sangrias and moscatos, the Island collection, and Sparkling.

What we actually do differently

Most fruit wine is made the fast way — press the fruit, discard the skins, ferment the juice with sugar. It tastes like alcoholic juice because that is what it is.

We ferment on the skins. For Kinda Dry Blueberry, that is up to 30 days of juice sitting in contact with blueberry skins before it is pressed off, which is where tannin comes from and why that wine drinks closer to a red than anyone expects. It is the same principle behind red wine, applied to the fruit that grows here instead of the fruit that grows in France.

Skin-contact fermentation only works if the skins are worth fermenting on, which is the real reason we can do it: the fruit is our own, picked ripe, not sourced on price.

In 2023 we were presented with the Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson’s Excellence Award.

About this site

Taste is where we write things down — pairing guides, honest takes on canned wine, and Florida stories that happen to have a drink in them. It is written by Cal Merritt.

If you want to find a bottle, the retail locator will point you at the nearest one.

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