Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicholas Kaufman.
Nicholas, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I was raised in Dallas, Texas with my parents and 3 brothers; an older, twin and younger brother. Wine has always been a huge part of my life, as my mother was an avid wine drinker, and a connoisseur. Whether it was sharing stories about wine in new places, and enjoying it with family and friends, or talking about the different regions of wine; the Kaufman family has always been involved with wine.
Things changed when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, and passed away when I was just 17 years old. A void followed for many years to come. I started work straight out of high school, as an overnight stocker at a grocery chain. I started at the bottom and climbed up the ladder up to Store Manager at several locations, including the Kroger in Southlake.
Kroger’s wide selection of fine wines helped me learn more about wine.
A spark rekindled from sharing lunches and dinners with wine makers from all around the world. I traveled and trained at wineries across the country to gain industry knowledge and experience. Training and learning for years I was successfully certified as a Sommelier and found that having conversations, and teaching others about wine allowed me to feel closer to my mother. This realization inspired me to leave the big grocer to pursue my love of wine, and to open Wine Fusion.
Envisioning a place much like my childhood home, I wanted to provide an atmosphere where people could come to relax, learn, laugh, and enjoy the many intricacies of wine. Wine Fusion was created with the idea of merging 2 groups together, the consumers and the daunting wine industry, without the intimidation. Wine Fusion aims to help you shop for wine with ease at the grocery store, wisely pick wines from a daunting menu at restaurants, learn how to dissect confusing wine labels, and identify wines based on taste, smell and sight.
I created a wine blending class as well where we teach people how to create their own wine blend in an hour and a half. The class participants get to use beakers and graduated cylinders and even get to bottle their custom wine blend, cork it, create their own label and leave with a bottle of their custom blend. It’s a very educational, hands on experience that no one else offers.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Ha, smooth? Certainly not. There have been so many bumps in the road and obstacles that I could write an entire book about them. I have thanked my lucky stars a thousand times as it seems that every time something comes up that seems to be impossible to overcome that another equally lucky solution comes into place. I remember when we were first building out our tasting room in Grapevine, it was two weeks before Grapefest (one of the largest wine festivals in the Southwest). We didn’t have our TABC permit yet so we were not going to be able to open for it. Well as luck would have it, we got it four days before the festival started then had to scramble to get product in place and bottled to be able to sell for the festival. Well we couldn’t get product bottled that fast so we have to pump wine out of tanks and barrels unfiltered into kegs and serve wine only on tap for the festival.
The kegs created another issue as we had to keep them in refrigeration to keep them stable and prevent a second fermentation from happening. We brought in over 50 kegs but did not have the cooler space to store them. I noticed the BBQ restaurant next to us had a three-door refrigeration unit just delivered and it was just sitting behind his restaurant. So, I went to talk to the owner AJ and asked if he rented the cooler and if so where from. He said no, I just bought it for a remodel we are about to do and I’m about to put it in storage until we finish. I asked if I could rent it from him and he said no, just take it, that will save me a trip from having to haul it to storage. It held just enough kegs for us so that everything worked out perfectly. We only sold glasses of wine and wine tastings and still had thousands of customers over that weekend. Our story is filled with crazy luck like that but I love every second of it.
Branch Rickey, once General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers said “Luck is the residue of design”. I truly believe that the harder I work the luckier I seem to be. I won’t miss opportunity knock on my front door because I’m sitting at a slot machine hoping to win the grand prize. I will by the door, and I will answer.
Please tell us about Wine Fusion Winery.
We make 18 different wines here at Wine Fusion and are not 100% Texan by any means. While I was born and raised here and love this State more than anywhere else in the world, I am not the person that says everything here is the best over everywhere else. We source our grapes from wherever they are grown the best. We make wine from grapes grown from all over, from Texas to California and our Malbec is even grown in Mendoza Argentina.
We are known for our wide variety because we want to provide a list where we will have the right wine for almost anyone that walks through the door. It has been said that our wines are the finest in the State and I won’t argue that because we work very hard to produce the highest quality wine around.
I am most proud of the staff that I get to work with every day. Every staff member at Wine Fusion feels like an extension of my own family. I would do anything for them. On top of that they deliver the highest service level in the United States hands down. No one can match the service this team delivers, if you don’t believe me, please come put us to the test.
What really sets us apart is two main things. Our blending class that we offer where we teach people how to create their very own wine blend in an hour and they get to leave with their bottle that very same day. No one else offered customers a chance to learn, and create a bottle of their own red or white, sweet or dry wine and leave with it that day. There are places that doing 30 bottle batches for $400-$500 dollars but ours is one bottle and the class is only $65. It’s been so successful that we are starting to see copy cats come into the market now. We don’t mind though because we know our experience is unmatchable by competition.
The other thing is the vibe and the environment here at Wine Fusion. We built a well lite, modern tasting room with a cool music list as well. We wanted to get away from the old school, cave like dark tasting rooms where you feel like you have to be on a date to go to. We have an awesome fun wine club with hundreds of members already that we throw parties for every month. Wine Fusion is definitely the place to come and enjoy great wines with friends, date night or for any occasion at all. We have singles parties, wine and yoga, paint and sip nights, wedding receptions, business team building events. We really do it all. It’s a lot of fun. We can’t wait to open another tasting room so more people can experience this unique Winery and tasting room.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Oh my. I have made thousands of dollar’s worth of mistakes. I wish I could take those back. I spent years in research and learning everything I could and still made really dumb mistakes that cost me lots of money. I had someone give me some advice that I trusted at that time and it turned out he was completely wrong and it cost me thousands of dollar’s worth of product that we had to dump because he didn’t know what he was talking about but acted like he did. I learned quickly to double and triple check with multiple people experienced in the field before just listening to one person about the issue.
Pricing:
- Blending Classes – $65 per person (Group sizes from 2-2000) We travel as well
- Wine and Yoga – $20
- Wine Tastings (5 Wines for $11)
Contact Info:
- Website: winefusionwinery.com
- Phone: 817-442-8466
- Email: info@fusionwinery.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/winefusionwinery/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/winefusionwinery
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/winefusionwine
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/wine-fusion-winery-grapevine
- Other: snapchat.com/winefusion
Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
