Innovative winemaker Aaliyah Nitoto is trading in her overstuffed West Oakland shipping container for a massive wine warehouse in Livermore Valley.
That’s right. The trained herbalist and self-taught Black winemaker who first gained notoriety in 2018 for her organic flower wines made from locally-sourced roses and lavender — not grapes — is going to share a new production facility with Longevity Wines, an award-winning winery that has been in Livermore since 2008.
Free Range Flower Winery’s headquarters will remain in Oakland, but the new production facility with Longevity will be located at 2271 S. Vasco Road, Building C.
In an email, Nitoto told The Mercury News that a move from 320 square feet to 4,500 square feet will allow her to expand production three-fold to start. It will also allow Free Range Flower Winery to interact with customers via its first tasting room, which it will share with Longevity.
“We’ll have much more room for growth moving forward,” she said. “Onward and upward!!”
Nitoto’s dry, food-friendly wines — “L” Lavender, RoseHybiscus, Marigold, Rose Petal and Feijoa — have sold out every year since she began making them. Critical acclaim and praise from many outlets, from Wine Enthusiast to Cosmopolitan magazine, and placement in top Oakland restaurants Agave Uptown and Millennium, have helped fuel interest in Nitoto’s game-changing wines.
Longevity proprietor-winemaker Phil Long has called Nitoto a “unique” winemaker who is “defying odds at every turn.”
“She is not only a young Black woman getting into the wine world, which is not as diverse as it should be, but she’s also making a new category that doesn’t really exist in this industry,” Long, who is president of the Association of African American Vintners, told NBC Bay Area News in February.
The two met earlier this year when Nitoto reached out to Long for guidance on her growing business — and outgrowing that West Oakland space. As it turned out, Long was growing his operation, too, at that very moment negotiating a lease on a second Livermore warehouse next to his home base. He invited her to share the new space with him, Nitoto says.
“He is literally making my dream come true by believing in me and giving me the chance — when no one else would — to take this flower winery to the next level,” she says.
The goal is to have the tasting room open for pre-booking by Thanksgiving. In the meantime, new Lavender, RoseHybiscus, and Marigold vintages have been released and are available for online orders and shipping at www.freerangeflowerwinery.com.
