Villa Mari, the mostly underground winery and tasting room under construction on Old Mission Peninsula, has scored its head winemaker – a member of the "first family of Old Mission wine" from the 40-year-old Chateau Grand Traverse (CGT) just up the road.

Sean O’Keefe, part of the family winery founded by his father Ed O’Keefe Jr., since 1998 and a champion of Riesling wines, is leaving the family business to head up winemaking operations at Marty Lagina’s new Villa Mari on January 1.

“I’m keeping my ownership there, but going to be out of the day to day operations, leaving that to my brother,” O’Keefe tells The Ticker. Brother Eddie remains CGT president. 

He says between the strong growth at CGT along with the opening of the Villa Mari winery and tasting room it’s time to stop “straddling two worlds.”

“It’s really too crowded there right now,” O’Keefe says of his family business, which is now producing some 30 commercial wines. “It really excites me to be involved with a cool new venture, to start it from the ground up … to go from a 40-year-old winery to creating something from scratch.”

O’Keefe has actually been making the wine for Villa Mari for the last six years under a freelance arrangement. He has spent much of the last decade developing a drier style of Riesling, which has earned him and this region recognition around the world. At Villa Mari, he'll produce what he calls a "high-end Riesling." 

Villa Mari Vineyard & Winery at 8175 Center Road (between Black Star Farms and Peninsula Cellars) was originally slated to open this past fall but instead the target opening is fall of 2015.

“Three-quarters of the winery is underground,” explains Lagina.“It is so deep and the foundation and footing work was a little trickier than we originally thought.”

The 3,000 square-foot underground space will house three wine caves for proper aging of the red wines (a first for this region) and the wine processing facility. The winery’s ground level will feature a 1,500 square-foot tasting room and a second story for offices.

Lagina is bringing his interests in the energy field – he’s also owner of Heritage Sustainable Energy in Traverse City – to the new facility with a goal of making it carbon neutral (i.e. a net zero carbon footprint). Some of his renewable energy will come from the wind turbine on M-72 West that Heritage purchased from Traverse City Light & Power last week.

“The winery will buy that green energy for its electricity,” Lagina says, adding the windmill will be up and running by the first of the year.

He adds that the facility will have low thermal requirements due to it being largely underground, but he is planning to meet what heating needs there are with a high-efficiency smoke-free wood gasification burner using the dead ash from his peninsula property.