In New York’s Finger Lakes wine country, a region long known for its Rieslings, a new name is emerging in the sparkling wine scene. Erin McMurrough, founder of Little Clover Wine Company, is taking a different approach to wine—one that blends history, sustainability, and a commitment to the traditional method of winemaking.
McMurrough’s Journey to Winemaking in the Finger Lakes
McMurrough’s journey to winemaking was anything but conventional. A former theater professional, she took a harvest internship at Lakewood Vineyards in 2012, a decision that altered her career trajectory. Instead of returning to the stage, she immersed herself in winemaking, eventually launching Little Clover to focus on traditional method sparkling wines crafted from sustainably grown grapes in the Seneca Lake AVA.
Unlike many producers who rely on classic Champagne grapes, McMurrough embraces varieties tied to New York’s viticultural heritage. She works exclusively with Delaware, Riesling, and Cayuga White—grapes that reflect the region’s unique history. Delaware, in particular, has deep roots, having been used in sparkling wine production as early as the 1800s.
Positioning the Little Clover Brand to Stand Out
In an industry where differentiation is key, McMurrough has positioned Little Clover to stand out. Rather than a traditional tasting room, she has relied on pop-ups and direct consumer engagement to build brand awareness. Now, she plans to take that approach further with a mobile tasting room, allowing her to reach customers in new ways while keeping overhead costs low.
Market insights have also shaped McMurrough’s strategy. Initially, she expected older wine enthusiasts to be her primary buyers. However, she quickly found that younger consumers—particularly those born in the ‘80s and ‘90s—are driving demand. These buyers appreciate the history and craftsmanship behind Finger Lakes sparkling wine, and they actively share their experiences on social media, creating organic buzz for the brand.
Giving Traditional Methods New Life to Create Lasting Impact
For food and beverage entrepreneurs, McMurrough’s story offers valuable lessons. Finding a niche, leveraging non-traditional marketing, and adapting to consumer demand have been central to her success. As she scales Little Clover, she is proving that innovation—both in product and strategy—can create lasting impact in a competitive industry.
Transcript
This transcript has been edited from its original form to support readability.
Maureen Ballatori: I’m Maureen Ballatori and this is Spilled Salt, a podcast on the thrills and spills from the food, beverage, and agriculture industries.
Today’s guest is Erin McMurrough. She is the founder and owner of Little Clover Wine Company. Little Clover makes traditional method sparkling wine and they strive to create the best possible sparkling wines using sustainably grown grapes from the Seneca Lake AVA, which is in the state of New York in the Finger Lakes region.
I love that Erin’s story took a huge turn from the theater industry in 2012 when she took on a six week grape harvest internship at Lakewood Vineyards. That decision laid the groundwork for Little Clover to be possible today.
Erin makes a sparkling Riesling, a sparkling Cayuga White, and a sparkling Delaware. On today’s episode, she shares why she is intentionally using those grapes, what her growth trajectory for the brand has looked like and what the future holds. Enjoy the conversation.
Maureen: Thanks so much for joining me today. I’m so excited to have you on the show.
Erin McMurrough: I’m so excited to be here.
Maureen: Great. So start us off with your background. Where did your career start?
Erin: So I am a Chicago native. We say we’re from Chicago, even though we’re, you know, 45 minutes north, but I’m from Chicago, from the Midwest.
I was a theater nerd growing up. I love theater. And so my career actually took me to get a joint philosophy and theater degree from the University of Notre Dame, which led me to not knowing what to do, but I ended up following my passion for theater.
I worked in London at Chicago, at the Shakespeare’s Globe, and then I moved to, my God, it was amazing. It was the inaugural season there too, to be at the opening. And then I came back to Chicago, was at Chicago Shakespeare Theater for a while, and then moved to New York City to work on Broadway for a company called SFX at the time, which then became Broadway Across America and is now known as the John Gore Organization. And I worked there for a very long time.
Maureen: You mentioned that when you graduated from school with a philosophy and theater degree, but weren’t really sure. Obviously you applied that and you were in theater for a number of years, but also help me understand the philosophy angle.
Erin: Well, I love to read. For a while, I thought maybe a religious path would be a good choice for me too. And it wasn’t, but that was part of the philosophy, that I felt I had the best college education. I really studied what I wanted to study. Did it prepare me to walk right into a job earning [the kind of money] people want to earn, no. But that was okay.
Maureen: What made you want to leave show business?
Erin: Well, I don’t think I’ve ever left show business. It’s still incorporated into everything that I do with those production elements. But at the time I was working at the company had shifted and I was working on lots of sponsorship for Broadway properties and things like that and less with actual producing.
It was one of those moments where I thought, well, I can keep doing this. I enjoy it. I love the people I work with, but I didn’t feel like I had total control of the projects I was working on. I thought, I’ve done this for a long time and I’d like to do things that I’d like to do.
Maureen: Then what happened?
Erin: So then, I love wine and I was drinking a lot of wine. New York City affords the opportunity to try anything and everything under the sun. So I decided to leave Broadway Across America and jump right into the wine world.
I first got an internship at a company called Wineberry and then they hired me full-time in sales and they were focusing on Bordeaux varietals. It exposed me to French wines, which I totally fell in love with.
I really enjoyed sales. So I could talk about wine. Of course, I love to read. So I was reading about wine. I took the introductory sommelier class, but I didn’t know how wine was made.
At the time, I was living in Brooklyn and there was a woman named Allie Sharper who owned Brooklyn Enology and she had a tasting room and it was like the coolest experience because she had these maps of New York state and all the different wine regions so I could walk there from my apartment and taste these wines that I had never had before and which got me really excited not only about the Finger Lakes but also Long Island.
Then I sent out applications to do a harvest. And this is going back to 2012, either in Long Island or the Finger Lakes and ended up choosing the Finger Lakes thinking I’d be there for six weeks. It was Lakewood Vineyards who hired me for a six week internship. And the questions basically were, can you lift 40 pounds? How do you feel about mice? [Important] if you’re going to be a bin inspector.
And I was like, okay, you I can do this. could, so I did. So I came up, still had my apartment in Brooklyn, still thought I was going back there, but I didn’t.
Maureen: First of all, I didn’t know that a harvest internship was a thing, but I’ve also had Silverthread on here before who said something similar about doing a harvest in Australia and that that was a big way that he had learned. And so I didn’t know that was a thing. Is that common in the wine industry for people to intern as a part of harvest to gain education?
Erin: Absolutely, because at that time it really is all hands on deck. And so the staff that you have on year round is not going to be able to fill in all the hours. It’s just there’s so much cleaning and picking and all of the things.
So yes, people are always looking for extra hands and they’re not looking for these, you know, interns to stay in all year round. It’s just the harvest is crunch time where they need more help.
Maureen: And so what made you pick Lakewood and the Finger Lakes over a Long Island opportunity? Was that just so happened to be where you had the opportunity or what drove your choice?
Erin: It was twofold. One, I felt that if I went to Long Island, I’d be commuting on the train every day. So it’d be so much time going back and forth. And the Finger Lakes would make me actually leave my apartment and have an immersive experience where, did I tell you, I haven’t, I think I’ve told you where I stayed when I started.
Maureen: No, please do.
Erin: So in the basement of my future mother-in-law’s Beverly Stamp, the matriarch of Lakewood Vineyard. It was wild, because I was still paying rent in Brooklyn. It was so generous of them to offer a place to stay so I didn’t have to worry. And plus it’s right across from the vineyard so I could walk to work, which was great.
Maureen: So that choice really changed the whole trajectory of your life.
Erin: I think my parents are still so confused. They thought I was coming back to Chicago because I kind of thought I was too, you know? I love Chicago. We’re hearing less buzz about it now, but urban wineries were a big thing. And I was thinking, you know, Chicago, I could go back and do that. But that wasn’t what the plan ended up being.
Maureen: That was in 2012 that you did that harvest at Lakewood? Okay. And so you stayed in the Finger Lakes, you never left. You met your husband, it sounds like on that trip.
At what point did you decide, wow, this is really for me. I’m totally ready. I’ve gone through this immersive experience. I love the wine industry. I want to stay in the wine industry. I want to stay in the Finger Lakes.
Erin: Correct. That’s right.
Maureen: I heard you say that you didn’t leave the show business behind, but you left the theater industry behind. Tell me about some of what you were thinking and what led to those decisions.
Erin: That is such a good question. There wasn’t one pinpoint moment. It was sort of a gradual accepting and embracing of where I was and also a feeling like I didn’t want to leave.
I think more than making a decision that this is it, it was just following really my inner voice as cheesy as that sounds. It was knowing that this was the right place for me and the right place for me to be now.
Maureen: I don’t think that’s cheesy at all. I’m a big fan of that. I call it the pursuit of interesting.
I think there is a lot to be said for listening to your gut and kind of just following that thread of, man, this is really interesting. I kind of want to explore this. So how long did you stay at Lakewood?
Erin: So in the winter of 2013, it became clear that I was going to stick around and they needed help with wholesale at that time. So that was the role that I shifted into.
I stayed with Lakewood as their brand manager until September of 2024. A very long time. I am so thankful for that experience and I’m still living it.
As I say, I’m married to Lakewood because Dave, my husband, is one of the owners there. We live across the street from the winery.
Little Clover is so enmeshed with Lakewood as well, even though it is a separate business which I know we’re talking about that too.
Maureen: So take us there. What is Little Clover and how is it connected to Lakewood?
Erin: Little Clover was founded because I was spending so much time in the vineyard with Dave. Not by plan, but just that he would need help. And I was there. I would go out and help him whatever he needed, you know, an extra set of hands.
At harvest and then just other times in the vineyard, replacing posts and all the maintenance that needs to be done, you know, because we’re married, so I’m here and I enjoy it too.
It was probably about 2016 that I was looking at the fruit in the vineyard. I don’t know if you’ve walked the rows of Lakewood, but the fruit is absolutely gorgeous.
I may be a little bit biased because of my relationship to the grower, but I mean, I’m always just amazed by what’s happening in the vineyard, looking at what is grown there and the fruit, was thinking, why don’t we take some of this really gorgeous fruit, do a very small production, very high quality sparkling wine line, which is different from what’s happening at Lakewood.
The traditional method is definitely a labor of love. You don’t get into it because you think you’re going to make a gazillion dollars. You get into it because you love it. And that’s where this came from.
It was really the Delaware. So the Delaware in the vineyard was planted in the late 50s, early 60s.
Maureen: Which is a type of grape, right? Okay.
Erin: Correct, yes, and it’s a native grape. And this is the grape–so this is the reading history part of me.
This is the grape that they were using in the 1800s to make traditional methods of sparkling wine that were winning competitions across the world. So, so much rich history here with that grape.
I actually have this on my wall. There’s a page from Harper’s Weekly from 1895 and it’s titled An American Champagne Region. And it shows the vineyards and the women separating the grapes and the press and the traditional method, sparkling wine that was happening here, which at the time was all Labrusca, which was all native grapes.
Maureen: Where was that typically happening? Was that in the Finger Lakes region or were there other parts of the Americas where that was happening?
Erin: Hammondsport, New York. It was in New York. Yes. Amazing. It just gets me.
Maureen: Wow. That’s wild. It is amazing. Your enthusiasm for it radiates from you. I just love that.
I have the same passion for agricultural history too. My son did a field trip to Ganondagan, which is a local indigenous site here in upstate New York.
I think he did it in fourth grade and my daughter’s a third grader and I can’t wait until she’s in fourth grade and I can go on that field trip again. I love to walk the grounds there.
There’s a lot to be said for a strong connection to history like that, especially in agriculture I think is a really special thing. You keep referring to the traditional method. Explain what that is.
Erin: Yes, thank you. So there are many ways to make a wine sparkling. The traditional method is also known as the champagne method, where the secondary fermentation takes place in the bottle.
The other two methods that are widely used are the Charmat method, where the secondary fermentation takes place in a tank, you’ll find that in like Prosecco’s, or now it’s very popular to do a forced carbonated sparkler where the CO2 is injected right into the bottle.
Maureen: And so why do you produce it that way?
Erin: Because I love the flavor, the texture, the complexity, the elegance that you can only achieve from traditional methods, sparkling wine. And my aha moments with sparkling wine were always using the traditional method. Those are the wines that have stuck with me.
Maureen: The aha moment, tell me more about that. What do you mean by that?
Erin: When I was working at Wineberry, I had access to these really delicious grower style champagnes, which I had never tasted anything like before. I remember taking a sip and it was like everything went silent around me. I knew that somehow this was going to feature into my future and I didn’t know exactly how at the moment, but it was just such a striking moment that, and my boss at the time recognized that. And so then he was very generous and showed me more and more sparkling wines, which was great.
Maureen: So why, why Little Clover? You mentioned that Lakewood, you know, the sparkling wine was not their thing. And so help me understand the Little Clover brand, why you positioned it that way, you know, like what the brand stands for.
Erin: So, at Little Clover, I am producing the wine under an alternating proprietorship agreement. That means that I have access to the equipment at Lakewood. That’s where the wine is being produced.
The fruit for Little Clover is 100% sourced from the estate. I’m working with Dave on that. I will not make a wine if the vintage isn’t right, if the fruit isn’t right. But it also does limit me to what varietals I can use because I will only use what’s there. But that’s part of the story.
I want to do the grower style champagne, but in our vineyard. So always tied to a vintage, always tied to a varietal, tied to a grower.
To clarify, Lakewood makes really delicious sparkling wine. Bubbly Candeo is their number one selling wine. But the traditional method is not something that they were interested in expanding on at the time, like to make like three different varietals per year and all of that. So they’ve already got a full portfolio.
Maureen: I see. I’m glad you clarified that for me.
You were passionate about the taste profile and you were inspired by the history and you really wanted to start this and also build a strong connection to the growing story as well.
What was the moment where you decided I’m going to launch this, because you’re doing this full time now, right? You’ve left Lakewood, Little Clover is your full time gig. What does the growth trajectory look like? Like how far have you planned out?
I want to understand a little bit more about the, you know, the I’m going to do this moment and then into what does success look like as you continue to scale and what are the steps that you plan to take?
Erin: So when I started selling in 2023, the idea was this would be a side passion project and to keep my full-time job and do this on the side.
As you know, Maureen, when you’re juggling so many things with my daughter’s activities and school and all of that, doing that 23 and 24 to some degree were a real wake up call. I can’t do it all. And what was suffering was the attention to Little Clover.
Once I was able to focus on that full-time, then I got to see the potential and see the growth potential, I guess I should say, of this brand. So right now I am working to open up what is called a branch office. One thing that I’m missing is having a location where people can find me because I don’t have a tasting room.
Maureen: Well, and by that you mean a permanent, right? Because you are, I see you do a lot of pop-ups, but you mean a permanent location where people can always come find you and they know that little Clover will be there.
Erin: Exactly. I’m so small, I only produce three wines. I’m only making 75 cases of each wine per vintage.
Having a full blown tasting room at this point does not make sense. However, I think there are ways to have a kind of a home base that can be a little bit more flexible. So I’m looking, I’ve been looking at vintage trailers or shipping containers.
Frog’s Leap out in California did this really cool shipping container pop up in their vineyard during COVID. And it sounds kind of unusual and weird, but it totally works because you can be right there in the vines. It’s movable. So when Dave needs to come pick with the harvester, we can just move it out of the space.
And I think that makes the most sense for the next step in the progression.
Maureen: Absolutely love that idea. I love how different it is too, because there’s countless tasting rooms, right?
What it comes down to is how do you create demand for what you’re doing to attract that consumer to you? And one of the ways to do that is to make sure that what you’re doing is wildly different from everyone else.
And not just a little bit different, not just, well, we have a different connection to the grower and we have different, you know, methods. We’re doing traditional methods compared to some of these other ones. Those are so nuanced. They’re important.
Especially in the wine industry, to get that consumer to come to your door, your literal door of a tasting room, it needs to be wildly different.
And I love, love, love the idea of, especially a trailer, because then you can also hitch it and move it and take it places to continue the pop-up model that you’ve been doing.
Erin: Right. With better branding and better recognition of who’s there. I love your enthusiasm for it. And I agree with you completely.
I’ve been in this industry in the Finger Lakes since 2012. And one thing that we hear so often is that people visit tasting rooms and they forget where they go. So to your point, having something that is so radically different would be extremely helpful when we have so many wineries play so closely together.
Maureen: Absolutely. Yes, because you can be the one that people remember as, that was the one that was the little hut that was out in the middle of the vineyard, right? Like, or the little trailer or, you know, whatever they call it.
I would brainstorm and chatGPT would be great for this. What can I call it? That’s not a trailer. Like, is it a mobile tasting room? Is it a sparkling experience?
Erin: Yes.
Maureen: I love that.
Erin: I’m excited. So there’s still a lot of regulations, of course, that I have to go through. I do have the address for where it’s going to be. And that’s the first step. You have to have a mailing address.
Maureen: So tell me, what does scaling look like?
You mentioned you’re doing three wines, you’re doing 75 cases of each, especially because it’s so challenging with how far you have to plan ahead with wines.
With some other consumer packaged goods, it’s, well, I’m gonna sell it and then I’m gonna make it. Not I’m gonna make it a year or two and many in some cases more than that years in advance, right? To be able to then sell it through the system you really have to plan.
I’m sure it’s beneficial that you’ve got that background in sales, but what’s your strategy there? Are you looking for more restaurants? Are you looking for bottle shops? Are you trying to stay local and go deep before you go wide? Tell me a little bit more about that.
Erin: So I am always looking for more restaurants and bottle shops, of course. My goal is to get better placement in New York City. Right now, I’m in a couple places, but that’s a market that I think would really embrace the mission of Little Clover.
Part of the reason is that I increased production in 2024. I tripled it because, well, the response here has been so great. And you know, not everybody likes sparkling wine and that’s okay. But the people who do love it, love it. And they love these wines. And it’s really the people that I have met over this past year and a half that have encouraged me to keep going forward.
Maureen: Good for you.
In line with that too, you and I were both at the B.E.V. NY conference this week where they said, and I think you were only there on the first day, right? Not on the second day. And so on the second day, they were sharing some national statistics about the industry and it was very well done the way that they approached it and shared that data. But they said sparkling is one of the only categories in wine that’s growing.
Erin: Wow. And you know what’s interesting? You know, my bottle price is $40 a bottle. So that is not for everybody. But what I have found is that my primary buyers are people who were born in the eighties and nineties.
They are curious about these varietals. They love sparkling wine. They not only are enjoying these wines, they’re telling their friends about it.
When I did the whole thing with putting together the business plan and who’s your demographic and all of that. And I was a little bit wrong. I thought it was going to be people who were in their 50s and 60s who would be willing to spend $40 a bottle and enjoy a nice bottle of sparkling.
It’s been a pleasant surprise because the people who are really excited about these wines are also the ones that are on social media and talking about these wines which has been great.
Maureen: I think it’s so important to observe who your customer is and be able to take that back, right, to, well, my observation is that I thought this and the reality is that it’s actually this audience, and then you can adjust your marketing methods to better align with that audience.
Those observations and being able as a business owner to be able to be honest with yourself about those observations too and notice those threads to be able to make those micro adjustments to improve your trajectory are so important.
Erin: Agreed. You can’t just hang on to what you thought because you don’t want to be wrong.
Maureen: So you tripled production for 2024. What’s the plan when you think about five years from now and you think about where you are, what does that look like?
Erin: Well, Maureen, I don’t know to be totally honest with you. I can map it out in my head and I really, I’m a very visual person, so I like to do things like charts and vision boards and things like that.
In my mind, there is a permanent tasting room down the road that is very sparkling centric and very pretty, and a place to go and escape and just embrace everything sparkling. But I do realize that in order to get there, I’m going to have to produce a lot more wine than what and sell a lot more wine than what I am right now.
I am the only one on payroll, right? Which means I’m, you know, having lots of help from friends and family at the moment. And I am extremely lucky that I do have people pitching in all the time, but that’s not sustainable for growth either. I don’t want to ever take advantage of friends and family’s time either. So there has to be some significant growth.
How I’m going to get there, I’m not exactly sure, but I do see the vision of what it will be at some point. Will it be five years? I don’t know.
Maureen: I think that’s fair. It’s one bottle at a time and you’re responding and reacting a little bit to the reflection of, this is the traction that we’ve gained thus far. And so therefore I feel like this is a good next step for us. I know, especially when you are where you are in the business, there’s so much to solve for.
I’m in a similar place too. When people ask me what my growth looks like, my answer is, “more, bigger”.
Erin: Love that. I’m stealing that. I love it.
Maureen: Which is not specific enough and it doesn’t mean anything to the people outside of my head, but it’s the intention to continue to grow with intention.
It is a goal of continuing to grow the agency so that we can employ great people and have a great place to work that people enjoy, do work with clients that is adding value, and all of those things.
But I don’t have a specific, it looks exactly like this and this is exactly how many people. I think that there’s something to be said for the flexibility that needs to be in place, especially for the founder. To be able to respond to what happens along the way.
So you chuckled a little bit to say like, I don’t know, but I think it’s so common. And you can now say your growth plan is also: more, bigger.
Erin: I’m writing that down.
Maureen: Before we wrap up here, you’ve made a couple references to the importance of the grape and your website in particular also says that we’re curious about using different varieties and hope to spark your curiosity, too.
I would love for you to elaborate on that a little bit. Again, I know you mentioned the Delaware grape and that’s historic significance, but help me understand a little bit more about what you mean by the difference in the grape variety in particular because that feels significant for your story.
Erin: Right. So when we were talking about the grower’s style champagnes coming out of France, they’re very limited in the grapes they can use. It’s Chardonnay, Pinot Mougnet, and Pinot Noir.
Those are the traditional grapes that you’ll find in champagne style wines, if coming out of champagne. And a lot of Finger Lakes producers are using those grapes beautifully to make champagne style sparklers.
The idea behind Little Clover was to really focus on not trying to do what champagne’s doing, but to tell the story of New York sparkling wine.
I specifically, at this point at least, have chosen not to use those grapes, even though we do grow Pinot Noir at Lakewood Farms. I’m using a Riesling because of course that is so central to the Finger Lakes wine story.
Cayuga White was a grape developed at Cornell in the Geneva breeding station. I wanted to use the Cayuga because it is so deeply tied to the Finger Lakes and makes such a good sparkling wine.
And then the Delaware of course is the history piece, which is really the heart of the whole project.
Maureen: I love that you’re being very intentional about uniquely New York, which is a tough thing to say, continuing to think about putting New York on the map and continuing that story from the history of Delaware and the innovation of Cayuga White and the reputation of Riesling and how that has become so notorious for the Finger Lakes region as well. So I just love the nuance of your story with those selections.
Erin: Thank you. Yes, and they all, I can’t wait to taste with you because the wines are just fabulous.
Maureen: I have had it, but I would love, of course, yes. I would love to sit down and do a tasting of all three, too, and have you help me understand the nuance and the difference in those three varieties, because I haven’t had a tasting with all three of them, which would be great.
So last question for you, tell me what’s next for you and the brand.
Erin: I am pursuing the branch office here in the Finger Lakes and looking at a vineyard site that is on State Route 14.
I would love to meet guests and host them in my own space, which would be wonderful. I am so thankful for all the pop-ups because they have really helped spread the word.
And the truth is the Finger Lakes is such a great community. The outreach and the kindness and the generosity of where I’ve been pouring my wines, like it really cannot be overstated.
I am continually blown away by the kindness with someone new coming in and sharing their space, which they work so hard to create. And so someday, like a lot of them have said, you I’d like to pay it forward and that’s why I’m doing this. And I hope someday I am also in a position to do that too.
Maureen: I’m sure you will be. I think that it’s one of those things that there are people that have that kind of mentality that are just good people that value, you know, those kinds of collaborations. And I’m sure that you’ll have an opportunity in the future to be able to blow someone else’s mind at the kindness that you show them.
Well, thank you for joining me today. This was wonderful. I really appreciate the opportunity to not only help listeners understand a little bit more about Little Clover, but I learned a lot today as well. Not only about Little Clover and the work that you’re doing with the brand, but also about sparkling and the traditional method. I didn’t understand what the nuances were there. And so you also gave me a little mini history lesson, which I really appreciate. Thanks for your time.
Erin: It was my pleasure. Thank you, Maureen.