Better Daze Winery owners Darryl and Jessica Smith celebrated their one year business Anniversary June 10 at 1732 State Highway 41 in Coventry. (Photo by Kelli Miller)

COVENTRY — Better Daze Winery located at 1732 State Highway 41 celebrated their one year anniversary with a big party on Saturday.

Owner and Army Veteran Darryl Smith and his wife Jessica hosted the event and and made sure everyone was taken care of with drink and food orders. Wine slushies, beer, wine, and cider were served along with food prepared by Koster’s Creations.

The celebration was kicked off with the band 911, playing many well known songs from the 70’s and 80’s. A supportive crowd of about 80 friends, family, and local residents cheered, danced, and sang along with the band throughout the day.

A wine basket filled with two bottles of wine, glasses, and assorted items was raffled to one lucky winner and ‘Home Brewed Comedy’ show filled the night with laughter.

Jessica said, “My dad has been making small batch wine for years and when Darryl and I got together, he shared some with us. Darryl likes to experiment and make things to share with family and friends so he started making his own wine. Also, he had his grandmothers wine recipes and the first batch he made was in her buckets.”

Darryl said “Better Daze Winery and Forged Brewing Co. are under on roof with two separate bar areas. The short version to how this all started off was with a friendly visit to the Brewery.” We made fast friends with the owners Mike and Wendy Andres and basically never left.”

“We shared a lot of late night meetings about our home brewed wines and how we made it in 5 gallon batches and Mike said ‘hey, why not start up a winery’,” Darryl said. “The following week Mike got a lead on fermenters and bought them, so we just jumped into it all.”

Darryl explained the first year was profitable as they started small and doubled their production. It was a lot to keep up, with full time work and kids, but he liked it.

“We faced some challenges in the beginning,” Jessica said. “The biggest was juggling full time jobs, the winery, and two of our kids graduated. We also faced a rare kidney cancer diagnosis with Darryl a week after opening and he had to have a kidney removed. It took a couple of weeks of healing before he was feeling better. And yes, we stayed open during that time. Darryl is all good now.”

Darryl and Jessica travel to the Finger Lakes area and pick up the batches of juiced grapes to bring back to the winery and begin processing. They do it all, even to the corking of the bottle.

“We’re going to have a big 4 day Music Festival in August from the 3rd to the 6th with brunch on Sunday.” Jessica added.

“We’re on a good path and would like to keep putting our name out so the community and surrounding area so people can get together in our outdoorsy setting and enjoy themselves. We look forward to expanding our facility and wine selection in the near future,” said Darryl.

Jessica said, “ We offer wine tastings anytime during open hours. $8 for a pick of 5 wines or a flight is $10 for 4 wines. (flights are bigger pours). We sell by the glass or bottle as well.”

Seven wines are always available and include a dry white, dry red, dry concord, sweet concord, sweet Niagara, and two sweet red blends.

They create seasonal wines to add to their inventory and one thats near and dear to Darryl’s heart is the summer wine, The Patriot. It’s their version of red wine, white wine and blueberries (for the blue part of the wine) with a portion of the proceeds going to Mission 22, a non-profit organization that aims in the prevention of veteran suicide.

Throughout the year, a few of the bands that traveled near and far to play at the Winery were: Short Change Band, Mostly Dead Duo, Acoustic Asylum, and country Duo Rick & Lori French. Also Mike Mullenax and Khalil Jade.

Paint and Sip with Vinhasa was another venture offered by both Better Daze and Forged Brewing Co with painting of a wine glass or beer mug. Diana McShane will be scheduling Paint and Pour classes in the future and Wendy Andres will be hosting a beginners Wood Burning class on July 20th from 5:30 to 8 p.m. The cost is $20 per person.

Darryl is from Sidney and Jessica from Rockdale. They still work full time while running their winery and continue to schedule in at events such as The Canoe Regatta, Tastings at camp grounds, Wine expos and farmers markets.

The Winery hours of operation are Thursdays 4-8p.m., Fridays 4-9 p.m., Saturdays 2 to 10 p.m and brunch is on one Sunday during each summer month. Entertainment is every Saturday night and the 2nd Saturday of each month they have comedy shows.

The Stadium in Oxford offers the wines for sale.