The very first bottles of his new wines arrived on Matt Harmon’s birthday, December 18, 2020. “One of the things that kept me going,” he says, “was that I thought my wine was coming every week from early September on. For some people that might be a little discouraging, but I was like a kid on Christmas, just super excited, regardless of how realistic I really was.”
It was a happy culmination of a bumpy year. Harmon had moved into a new marketing job at the end of 2019, but the work evaporated when the pandemic hit. After a couple of months casting around for a new nine-to-five, he realized it was time to go all-in on an old dream. He steeled himself: “Now’s the time to go after it.”
Harmon had known for years that he wanted to get into the wine business. There’s a deep love of food in his family, going back even to a grandfather who ran a restaurant in Charlottesville—the name of which has unfortunately faded from family lore. He’s long been a passionate wine drinker. Even before the pandemic, Harmon had filed for almost all the permits he needed. He knew he wanted to change the perception of who drank wine, how they drank it, and what they drank it with. He knew he wanted to help make the wine world more accessible. He knew his new line would be called Harmony Wine.
By July, he realized he couldn’t put it off any longer. He started writing to wineries across the country, tasting samples of their product (the coolest way to spend a pandemic, he says), designing labels, and planning pop-up events.
It wasn’t long before he had found a partner, Texas Custom Wine Works, and settled on an eclectic slate of five wines to launch the brand: a sangria, a red blend aged in bourbon barrels, a peach wine, a carbonated gewürztraminer, and (for the traditionalists) a cabernet sauvignon.
“The Texas climate is a little bit more diverse than I think people know,” Harmon says. The grapes for his peach wine grow in the mountains, but “unless you’re well-versed in the wine world, or even into Texas geography, you might not know that Texas even has mountains, or that they grow grapes there. That opened up a whole new world for me.”
The sweetness of the Texas wines was what appealed to Harmon. “They say that the farther south you go, the sweeter the sweet tea—and it’s like that with wine as well,” he says.
Once he finally had bottles in hand, it was time to start getting them out into the community. Harmon launched a podcast back in 2019 called “Bad Guy, Good Wine,” and it gave him an opportunity to talk to people in the beverage world throughout central Virginia and the Washington, D.C., area. Those connections proved critical for getting some of his early visibility. This past spring, he served his wine at a Back to Black pop-up event with Serenata in D.C., and he worked with Pro Re Nata to make a sangria.
A good deal of what he’s sold so far, though, has been straight to wine-drinkers, hand-delivered by Harmon himself to avoid the hassle and delays of the congested postal system.
The next big step is to bring his wines home to central Virginia. Harmon was born and raised in Charlottesville, and it would feel more natural and authentic to him to sell wines produced nearby.
It was difficult to break into the Virginia wine scene before he could actually hold up bottles with his name on them, but now the opportunities are coming quickly. He’s found an excellent local mentor in Culinary Concepts AB founder and chef Antwon Brinson. He plans to offer his first Virginia chardonnay by the end of summer. Pippin Hill donated its proceeds over Juneteenth weekend to help Harmon grow the business, and he’s in talks with Veritas about collaborating on a wine this season or next. He’s dreaming about offering a full slate of Virginia wines that highlight the talent in the region.
Harmon’s vision is an appealing one, if not especially new: wine, not just for experts, but for casual drinkers. Thoughtfully paired not with inscrutable small plates, but with barbecue and burgers. Enjoyed not just in fancy dresses and suits, but in sweatpants on your couch at home.
He’s certainly not the first to inveigh against a stuffy and exclusive wine culture. But it’s considerably more rare that a passionate outsider like Harmon finds the drive and puts in the work to create something new. “Wine is for everybody,” he says emphatically.