Chelsea couple to open winery on Old Highway 280

Walking onto a winery property typically means seeing acres of grapevines. Walking into an Alabama winery typically means sweeter wines.

At Cat-n-Bird Winery in Chelsea, however, guests won’t find either of these things.

Owners Matt and Robyn Lyons said they plan to steer away from the muscadine wines Alabama wineries are known for, opting to order their grapes and juice from other areas of the country. 

“There’s a lot of risk with the Alabama weather,” Robyn Lyons said, noting that is why wineries are limited in the type of grapes they can grow.

Taking this approach, however, allows the chance for a wider variety of wines — and more of the wines they enjoy most.

“There is such a wide and deep variety of wines out there that no one ever explores,” Matt Lyons said. “So one of the things we’re really going to specialize in is the nonstandards.”

Those wines include Gewurztraminers, which Matt Lyons said he recommends to chardonnay lovers, and Barolo, which he recommends to those who like cabernet sauvignon. The winery will have white and red wines of varying styles and finishes, although the variety will have to grow as time progresses. The Lyonses said they hope to wrap up the approval process by early November, start producing wine and be open for bulk sales and wine tastings in the first quarter of 2017.

In the making

Matt Lyons started making wine about three and a half years ago. After a trip to Atlanta, he saw a woman examining her wine carefully. He asked if she was a sommelier. She wasn’t. She made her own wine.

He stopped at a local beer and wine store in Atlanta following his meetings, talked to the owner about the basics of wine making and was almost instantly hooked.

“I started tasting a few of the wines he made and was just amazed, so I bought a kit,” Matt Lyons said. “And that’s really a place most people start, is a real basic kit. It costs a few hundred dollars, and you make a few bottles to start with.”

After Matt and Robyn Lyons met a few months later, they got involved in the process, and it progressed to a point where they thought about opening a winery. The brainstorming started in April, around the time they bought their house on Old U.S. 280.

“This one came open, and the first time we saw it, we walked through it and thought, ‘We can do this,’” Matt Lyons said. 

During the home buying process, they did research on what was necessary to open a winery. A week after buying the property, they started the application process. 

In mid-October, their manufacturing and retail table wine license was approved by the Chelsea City Council, and they have all federal approvals. The only remaining steps include a few tweaks around the house prior to a final health inspection and a final inspection by the local ABC board.

A nonstandard winery

In addition to stepping away from the wines seen on grocery store shelves, Matt and Robyn Lyons hope to offer a nonstandard winery experience.

Most wineries are standing room only, Matt Lyons said, and the goal is to taste wine, buy wine and leave.

“Ours is going to not be a restaurant or a bar, but it’s going to be more ‘come in and sit down,’” he said, adding there will be a pool table and opportunities for people to bring their own food. “It’s really going to be like a social experiment. Enjoy it, have fun. We just want to meet people.”

Wine will be available by the glass or in a flight — four smaller glasses that have samples of a variety of wines. Tastings offer a chance for a wine education, Matt Lyons said. For example, chardonnays come in several styles and flavors — oaked an unoaked, aged in different types of oak and made with different grapes — so a flight could include the same type of chardonnay oaked in multiple types of oak. 

“Then if you want to do a wine tasting, you’ll actually taste all four at the same time,” he said. “The goal is not to just do a wine tasting for how this one compared to the one you had last night.”

The winery is a passion project for the Lyonses, and neither is quitting a day job just yet. Both work full-time with flexible schedules, allowing them to focus on quality rather than worrying about having to pay the bills with their wine.

“We don’t have to feed kids with a winery — this is just because we love to make wine,” Matt Lyons said. “If it blows up, then great. If it doesn’t, then we’ll just drink the wine downstairs. The worst case, we still win.”

Their jobs take off the pressure of starting a winery, Robyn Lyons said, making the process less of a leap of faith.

“To me, it hasn’t really been scary at all,” she said. “I think having a job, it has made it to where we aren’t relying on it.”

The tasting room will be open on Saturdays, by appointment and for private parties. They might open for “wine down Wednesday,” offering a few hours in the tasting room during the week, Matt Lyons said, but no plans are final.

For more information, and to stay up to date on progress, go to facebook.com/catnbirdwinery.