Who's Who among Long Island winery owners

WHO: Harold Watts of Ternhaven Cellars

Owner and winemaker Harold Watts in the tasting room of Ternhaven Cellars, the "last winery before France."

By Julie Lane

Harold Watts went from making wine in his New York City apartment to operating Greenport's Ternhaven Cellars, the North Fork's easternmost winery. The former Columbia University economics professor traded in his academic life for the challenge of operating Ternhaven Cellars in the late 1990s.

What motivated Mr. Watts to want to make wine? It all started while visiting friends in Pennsylvania, who were in the business. He found himself traveling between New York City and State College more and more often, learning their techniques. Back in New York, he and his students scrounged around looking for used equipment they could install at the professor's apartment.

Then, in 1994, he bought five acres of land on Alvah's Lane, just off Route 48 in Cutchogue.

"If you buy some land, you can always grow some cabbages," he jokes. Farming is something he knew from his childhood. He grew up on a family farm in Oregon. And although he gravitated to New York City, he still remembers the two-room schoolhouse he attended as a child.

Mr. Watts completed his undergraduate studies in economics at the University of Oregon and his graduate work at Yale University. Then he spent six years teaching at Yale and was assistant director of a research organization there before a fellowship took him to Norway. His academic career took him to Wisconsin for 14 years and to Washington, D.C. He worked in President Lyndon Johnson's administration at the Office of Economic Opportunity, where he was involved in research for LBJ's War on Poverty.

Ever the academician, Mr. Watts won a Guggenheim Fellowship that took him to California and Europe. He then spent a year back in Washington, D.C., at the Census Bureau, and another year at the Urban Institute.

After 42 years, Mr. Watts decided it was time for a change. The idea of opening a winery easily captured his attention. At first he had rented his Cutchogue land to a potato farmer, but potato farming was becoming increasingly difficult and the farmer "went broke," said Mr. Watts. That's when he decided to plant grapes. Of course, it took a few years for them to take hold and mature. In the interim, he bought grapes from local growers and from California.

Land was still reasonably priced here when Mr. Watts bought his property, and he got his winemaking equipment from his Pennsylvania friends. "I got into it fairly cheaply," he says about his entry into the ranks of East End winemakers.

The production house and wine tasting facility opened in 1997 at the corner of Front and Fourth streets in Greenport Village. The relatively tiny winery isn't much bigger than a garage, but the wine that comes out of that facility has won its share of prizes, says Mr. Watts. Among the awards he has won at the New York Wine & Food Classic are a double gold for his 2000 Merlot, a silver for his 2000 Claret D'Alvah, and a silver for his 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon.

Featuring only premium Bordeaux-style red wines, he produces between 500 and 700 cases a year.

A sign outside Ternhaven boasts that it's the last winery before France. He likes the North Fork's business climate and says his competitors have been generous with advice. This year, he has been "drafted" into the presidency of the Long Island Wine Council, he says.

"It's a very comfortable envelope for me," he says about operating a winery on the East End.

As an educator, Mr. Watts made a natural transition into wanting to share his winemaking expertise with others. Accordingly, he has held winemaking classes at Ternhaven to pass on his skills to those interested in learning the art.

Good grapes are the essence of good wine, he says.

Mr. Watts stays involved in economics as a consultant to federal employees who serve outside the U.S. That group brought class action suits against the government, seeking cost of living allowances and, with Mr. Watts's help, won two such suits. That prompted the government to develop "safe harbor rules" to prohibit further lawsuits in exchange for settlements. Mr. Watts has been involved in the lawsuits and negotiations for years and has traveled to Hawaii, Guam, Alaska and Puerto Rico to meet with lawyers for the group.

Back on the North Fork, he finds time to serve as treasurer for Community Land Trust of Southold, an organization dedicated to creating permanently affordable housing in the town.

Downtime will usually find him surfing the Internet or going to movies or dinners with close friends, he says.

A divorced father of four, Mr. Watts says his children have their own careers and, while they encourage him, they aren't interested in the winemaking business. He doesn't spend much time thinking about the future of Ternhaven. At the moment, he says, he's simply content to be doing what he's doing -- making prizewinning wines from good grapes.