The Summit County Farm Bureau Distinguished Service Award is the highest honor we can bestow upon an individual. Choosing a worthy recipient from the many qualified can be difficult for the three previous winners, who are assigned the task. The award is given to a bona fide farmer who has made an outstanding contribution to their local community and the industry of agriculture.
This year, we are privileged to do something we’ve only done a few times in the past: we’re honoring not one, but two of our members. Our honorees came into farming in two very different ways; he the son of a 4-H extension agent and she the grand-daughter of a butcher however, both were involved in 4-H. In fact, he planted his first grapes as a 4-H project in 1983 at the age of ten. While the grapes were mostly table grapes, that didn’t stop him from attempting to make wine out of them in high school. The wine was terrible, and he thought he better study engineering in college instead. However, while drinking a bottle of bad wine with his college roommate, he decided he could do better, and set off on a quest to achieve that goal.
While attending college at Ohio State, he continued his grape production education but spent his summers serving as a 4-H camp counselor on Kelly’s Island, which proved to be life changing since this is when and where he met his future bride, who attended The Ohio State University, as well.
He graduated from the university in 1996 with a BS in Agriculture, focusing on chemistry, microbiology, and plant biology. This degree certainly helped him secure the position of Vineyard Manager at the Winery at Wolf Creek in Norton.
The lovebirds married in 1998, and while he worked as a manager for Wolf Creek, they planted their own vineyard near his hometown of Wooster on the old Stauffer farm. In 2001 they opened Troutman Vineyards in an old chicken coop on their property in Wooster. At that time, three of their wines already had won medals — a gold, a silver and a bronze out of 177 entries in the Ohio Wine Competition.
With the death of Andrew Wineberg in 2000, who was the former owner of The Winery at Wolf Creek, our recipient found himself returning to Norton to become the wine maker. In 2002 he and his wife purchased The Winery at Wolf Creek.
2002 also brought the birth of their first child, Sophia, followed by their son, Asa in 2005 and the move from Wooster to Norton.
He broadened his horizons with a side project of distilling spirits which turned into another business and the Distillery at Wolf Creek was opened in 2015.
I am sure many of you remember the gas explosion that destroyed the distillery area, along with the former Great Room event space, offices and winemaking equipment in May of 2017 at The Winery at Wolf Creek. Fortunately, our recipient had stepped away from the building just minutes before and although his pop tart was blown out of his hand, he was uninjured in the resulting fire.
We all celebrated when the new and improved Great Room opened this past March.
Our recipients, owners of Troutman Vineyards and the Winery at Wolf Creek, were named the 2007 Ohio Farm Bureau Outstanding Young Farmers, which recognizes farmers aged 35 and younger for their agricultural operations and community leadership. They individually and together have received numerous community awards; New Small Business of the Year by the Wooster Chamber of Commerce, Wayne County Development Councils Growth Award, Wooster Women’s Network’s Woman of the Year, and Young Professionals Achievement Award from the Ohio State University’s College of Food Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, to name just a few. He has served on our Board of Trustees and was our past president. She has attended American Farm Bureau’s Ag in the Classroom conferences for our county, is a 4-H advisor, and is quite active in her children’s schools.
They say that behind every successful man is a woman and that is certainly true in this case. While the nominating committee of the Summit County Farm Bureau has mainly referred to Andy in this bio, be aware that Deanna is an integral part of both vineyards and wineries, working hand in hand with her husband which has resulted in the success of their businesses. Please join me in congratulating our 2019 Distinguished Service Award recipients, Deanna and Andy Troutman.