Hannah Ferguson had been a winemaker for ten years before founding her own wine company, and she had always appreciated craft beer – though she understood how to make wine, she didn’t know how to create beer. Ferguson has gone from being an assistant brewer at Modern Methods Brewery to being the creator of DOPE Cider House & Winery.
This move also makes her the first black female cidery owner in Ohio, and she bills herself as the state’s sole black female professional brewer. Ferguson’s interest has always been wine and cider, she says of her work path.
According to Cider Culture, she cooperated with Sundog Cellars Ciderhouse & Winery in the summer of 2020, and a portion of the proceeds went to her LLC, DOPEbrands, to help her launch her business.
Explaining why she named her company DOPE, Ferguson noted it is an acronym that stands for Dwelling On Positive Energy. “When I first started DOPEbrands, I was doing events, trying to bring open mic nights, poetry, spoken word, and the like to people in their 30s,” she explained.
“I knew that whatever my business would be, it would have to be dope, and the name stuck. I wanted the name to have a meaning, and my brother came up with the acronym,” she noted.
Prior to founding DOPE, she started investigating cidermaking and discovered that it was the same as making wine, and in Ohio, cider-making requires a wine license.
Sundog Cellars began as the only winery, but had to adjust its business plan to focus on cider because the beverage is faster to create than wine, and it is also quite popular right now, according to Ferguson.
“So while Sundog still makes wine, cider is their moneymaker. For me, starting with wine would take at least six months to produce, and it would also be dependent on the season for getting grape juice,” she noted.
Ferguson’s interest in creating cider was piqued following the cider partnership, when she examined the number of black-owned cideries.
She explained her company’s operation, mentioning that it obtains its juice from Hays Orchard in Columbiana, Ohio. Ferguson colors it with concentrated strawberry juice puree and flavors it with coconut and pineapple.
Her journey has been three years in the making – part of which she spent trying to find a location, because, without a location in Ohio, one cannot get a license.
“As a small business, it’s already challenging to get capital, and when I found a couple of locations, there were some issues,” she added. “However, if you’d asked me five or 10 years ago if I would turn my hobby into a business, I would have said no.”