Shake up a bottle of sparkling wine, and it may explode out of the bottle. That kind of explosion is what happened when three Lowcountry entrepreneurs launched Don Luchi Prosecco in 2024 — the industry felt a tiny earthquake.
You hear about champagne in a lot of Black music — Notorious B.I.G. claiming success because “now we sip champagne when we thirsty,” or Bad Bunny “drinking lots of champagne, we’re never dry” for example — but you don’t hear about a lot of minority-owned bubbly companies.
“We’re the first Black-owned in the Carolinas, the first non-celebrity-owned,” said Justin Wages of North Charleston, one of the company’s founders. “We’re a high-end company owned by three Black guys and we’re shaking up the industry, but the wine industry was due for a shaking up.”
Launching a brand
Wages launched Don Luchi in 2024 with Charleston-area cousin Andre Grundy and friend David Kinloch in 2024. There is no headquarters, just a warehouse. The name, Kinloch explains, comes from the word “Don,” a symbol of respect and authority in Spanish and Italian, and Luchi is a blended word that he says implies light or luxury.
Kinloch, a music producer, helped to define the brand. Grundy, an industrial engineer by training, does logistics, and Wages does marketing and business relations.
Initially, the three friends planned to open a brewery, but a distribution issue made them rethink, and they landed on sparkling wine. None knew the first thing about starting a sparkling wine business, and the learning led to cold calls to vineyards in California, France and Italy. After a lot of “no,” one family in Italy agreed to meet.
“We said, ‘I guess we have to go to Italy.’ We got on a plane, spent a lot of time with the family there, and got our first shipment in two to three months. That sold out in a couple of weeks, so we went back to Italy and said, ‘OK, we have the proof of concept, we’re ready to roll’,” Wages said.
The wine comes from a little town called Valdobbiadene, about an hour and a half north of Venice, where the grape used in Don Luchi, Glera, is grown.
“The vineyard family had to make up a song just so we’d remember how to pronounce the town,” Wages said.
The extra edge
Charleston, already a sister town to Spoleto, Italy, has proved receptive to the sparkling wine from the tiny Italian town.
“We’ve got an extra edge in Charleston. It’s a hospitality city and we have the big wine and food festival and other events,” Kinloch said, adding that the bubbly will be served March 4 through March 8 at Charleston Wine + Food.
The prosecco is popular beyond Charleston, too. Wages said it is one of the country’s most sought-after sparkling wines. Although many focus on the relative rarity of a minority-owned sparkling wine company, Don Luchi didn’t get to where it is by sticking to Black drinkers.
“Being a Black-owned business, people assume that we focus on the Black market. Our overall goal is to provide a top-tier product for everyone,” Wages said. “Everyone can enjoy and appreciate great bubbles. And now that we have great hometown bubbles, we should be involved in every celebration in the city.
“None of us are sommeliers, although we hope to get our Level 1 this year,” he added. “We’re trying to make our wine approachable and not overwhelming so it drives people away. We’re tying our product into music, culture, everyday celebrations.”
Growing pains
The growth hasn’t been without hiccups.
“We jumped into this industry without learning the timing,” Wages said. “We had a time when we were getting ready to run out of product, we were waiting for a ship to get here, and we didn’t consider how many stops a ship has to make on the East Coast.
“Another time, a strike hit the port. It was one of the scariest moments, when we had to ship emergency cases by air for an event we put together because we didn’t have enough product for it.”
Recent tariffs on Italian products also created some stress.
“Prices went up 15%,” Kinloch said.
“A lot of people don’t know that when you import goods, that 15% is due up front,” Grundy said.
“You have to pay it as soon as the container arrives in port. For a small business, that can create financial instability, and you have to pass that increase onto the consumer.”
Kinloch added, “What’s cool about prosecco is that it’s an everyday drink, so even with the tariffs, it didn’t break the bank for people,” Kinloch said.
Even with the hard lessons learned, the trio is optimistic about the company’s future, especially because Charleston offers a nearby port and allows the producers to ship directly from the vineyard to the owners’ warehouse.
They say the next step is to expand into even more markets nationwide and hint at an expansion of products beyond prosecco.
“We have other products coming down the pipeline, but we can’t tell you everything,” Kinloch teased. “Just the fact that we changed our name to Don Luchi Wines (from Don Luchi Prosecco) should be a big enough hint for everybody. It’s going to be a lot of fun this coming year.”
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