Feast will soon offer Merrie Mill wine, while Merrie Mill will offer Feast food

Merrie Mill Farm and Vineyard wine will soon be available at the Feast gourmet grocery store, and Feast food will soon be available at Merrie Mill, after the vineyard owners acquired the West Main Street grocer last month.

Merrie Mill’s general manager Christopher Gleed told The Daily Progress that Feast’s new owners only have plans to expand both operations.

“We want to be able to bring the two businesses together and not change it, just grow it,” Gleed said.

That means selling Merrie Mill wines at Feast, which currently does not stock any Merrie Mill bottles but does sell wines from other local wineries such as Barboursville, Blenheim, Early Mountain, King Family and Pollack vineyards.

Those other wines will “of course” still be for sale, Gleed said.

Gleed said that Merrie Mill also will be bringing some food from Feast to the Keswick winery.

“We wanted to use their kitchen a little more heavily on our end,” Gleed said. “We’re pretty excited about bringing a lot of Feast food over here and just uplifting our menu a little bit and molding or melding the two together.”

That shouldn’t be too difficult, Gleed said, given that Merrie Mill’s purchase of Feast was in part driven by the similarities between the two businesses that Merrie Mill owners Elizabeth and Guy Pelly recognized and hope to retain.

“The two businesses sort of had a similar feeling to them,” Gleed said. “We felt it was just sort of a nice combination of two different businesses with some overlap.”

The Pellys announced they had purchased Feast in January. Announcing the deal, the Pellys said they plans to retain all of Feast’s current staff. The new owners, however, added that they plan on “integrating new technology, products, and dedication to the staff.”

The Pelly family moved to Keswick in 2018 and opened the Merrie Mill tasting room in May 2021, according to the vineyard’s website. They came to the area from England, though Elizabeth Pelly had previously lived in Charlottesville while attending the University of Virginia.

Source: www.dailyprogress.com