There is a wishbone buried under the floorboards of the old farmhouse at Southern Grove Vineyards. It has been there since 1946, when Elener and Joe Kralik brought their grandmother from Ukraine to live with them on the family farm in Baldwin County and she pressed the lucky bone into the dirt beneath the carpet. When Dawn Fletcher renovated the farmhouse into a winery office decades later, she pulled up the flooring and found it — along with a pearl earring no one could explain.
“A wishbone is a blessing, a tradition for having good luck,” Fletcher says. “This land has been farmed for 100 years and everything grows really well here.”
The luck, as it turned out, was real. The Kraliks raised soybeans, cotton, corn and tung oil trees on 22 acres of County Road 32. Today that same ground is Southern Grove Vineyards, a winery and destination whose opening day drew 1,100 customers — an arrival five years in the making that has changed the map of Gulf Coast wine country.
An Oilman, a Geologist and a Perfect Patch of Soil
The transformation traces back to Rick Fletcher, a Canadian oilman who came to Alabama in 2010 to drill a well near Evergreen. The well produced 800 barrels a day, and Fletcher produced something else: a permanent move to Alabama. With 600 wells in Texas and ten in Alabama to his name, he had both the means and the appetite for a new venture.
The inspiration came from family. Dawn’s father owns Nutwood Winery in La Grange, Georgia, and after visiting, Rick decided Fairhope needed a wine destination with plenty of seating and parking. When the Kralik property came along, he brought in his company’s geologist, Alex Owen, to test the soil. The verdict: perfect for grapes.
Owen, a Bay Minette native whose family ran a generational hardware store there, went to California and returned with disease- and weather-resistant hybrid vines suited to Southern growing conditions. Today the vineyard holds 1,200 vines across 16 grape varieties, including two types of muscadines, arranged artfully around the main tasting room and café. Owen — the geologist turned grower and winemaker, as Rick proudly notes — now leads winemaking tours that walk visitors through the working vineyard and production facilities, with tastes of wines still aging in the tanks.
Hands-On From the Ground Up
Construction of the large venue — 214 seats inside, 200 outside — was stalled by the pandemic, and the delay turned out to be a blessing. Rick and Dawn laid every foot of grass themselves and landscaped the flower beds; Rick built the bar with his own hands; Dawn designed the interior. Both remain decidedly hands-on. On the day of one visit, Dawn had spent two and a half hours on a tractor cutting grass before changing into cocktail attire for the evening, while Rick worked the floor helping staff serve food and wine.
The Wine Tree
The tasting room’s signature presentation is the wine tree — a tiered, sculptural stand holding five small tasting glasses. The wines carry local monikers and distinct personalities. The 2023 Josephine Riesling offers a complex fruit nose, high acidity and notes of green apple with a refreshing finish — dry enough to convert a dedicated dry-white drinker into a repeat glass-orderer. The 2021 Ecor Rouge Red Blend mixes muscadine, merlot, shiraz and cabernet. Pier Perfection, a sweet white carlos muscadine, serves the sweet-toothed contingent.
Then come the libations visitors rarely see anywhere else: Wine Shine, an alcohol-infused blackberry blend, and a Frozen Wine Slushie that rotates flavors daily between moscato and mimosa — a sight so common in visitors’ hands that it has become the winery’s unofficial signature. Most of the vines are still young, one to three years old, with the best harvests coming at year four. The champanel vines are already loaded, and harvest falls around the third week of August, pushed by the Gulf Coast heat and humidity. White wines including chardonnay, chenin blanc and sauvignon blanc are on the way.
The Café, the Family Recipes
The café menu matters personally to Dawn: the culinary pairings are locally sourced and built on recipes from her mother and stepmother. The Southern Grove Trio pairs basil hummus (Dawn’s recipe) with pimento cheese (her stepmother’s) and homemade dinner rolls (her mother’s). Larger plates run from pork tenderloin sliders and meat lovers pizza to Bay Breeze bacon quiche, with a rotating dessert of the day — chocolate cake on one visit, served in appropriately generous slices.
Open Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays until 10 p.m., and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Southern Grove is planning a brewery and a wedding venue as the next chapters. The grandmother’s wishbone, it turns out, was buried under the right floorboards. Southern Grove Vineyards is at 10176 County Road 32 in Fairhope.