We recently connected with Ryan Levy and have shared our conversation below.

Ryan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, one thing many business owners consider is donating a percentage of sales or profits to an organization or cause. We’d love to hear your thoughts and the story behind how and why you chose the cause or organization you donate to.

This week marked a milestone in our charitable commitment as a winery. We produce a Rosé wine exclusively to raise money to combat breast cancer. This week we donated $50,000 in partnership with the Emma Jacobs Breast Cancer Foundation to The Rose, a Houston organization focused on reducing deaths from breast cancer by providing access to screening, diagnostics and treatment services to any woman regardless of her ability to pay.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Nice Winery makes organic and sustainably grown wine, teaches wine classes, and leads culinary classes at Nice Winery’s Houston headquarters. In 2019, we created and planted the first commercial winegrowing vineyard inside the city limits of Houston. Nice Winery is now home to a modern organic apiary, organic vegetable and herb gardens, and a sustainably farmed vineyard. It boasts a state of the art kitchen and production facility that has become the epicenter of wine and culinary education in Houston. Nice Winery’s wines have won top honors in the massive Houston Rodeo International Wine Competition including Best in Show, and that bottle was auctioned off for $140,000 for charity. Our wines have received 94 point ratings and acclaim from both Wine Enthusiast Magazine and the Beverage Testing Institute. We craft 30 wines from sustainably farmed, family owned vineyards in Texas, California, Argentina, and Washington state. Our commitment to giving back includes serving on multiple foundation boards and raising over $1M for local charitable causes through his winery’s extensive philanthropic initiatives.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

We actually make a wine called Resilience that is based on our survival through the pandemic, fires in our Napa vineyards, and freezes in our Texas vineyards. Each one of these alone would have been devastating for our small family run business were it not for the loyalty and steadfast support of our amazing wine club members. They made it possible for us to weather multiple (literal) storms.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

I met my co-founder and co-winemaker Ian Eastveld while we were living in Paris studying at the same Le Cordon Bleu school where Julia Child trained. Together we planned to revolutionize the way people think about and buy wine.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.nicewines.com
• Instagram: @thenicewinery
• Facebook: Facebook.com/nicewines

Image Credits
Jerry Levy