Just hours in advance of North Texas Giving Day, folks from D’Vine Wine in Granbury made the trip to Fossil Rim Wildlife Center to do a lot of giving and a little giraffe feeding.
Diane Hedges and Josh Winters, who are co-owners of the winery with Tony Hedges, presented Fossil Rim Executive Director Kelley Snodgrass with a check for $3,245. The partnership between D’Vine Wine and Fossil Rim began in 2014, and D’Vine Wine began these North Texas Giving Day donations in 2016.
“There are so many great opportunities when you are working with a wildlife center,” Diane said. “Just think of the event we hosted in the summer with the animal art. That was a unique event, and I think people really enjoyed seeing the artist stories on the back of the paintings.
“In 2017, we enjoyed having Thomas Shea, the father of (giraffe caretaker) Molly Shea, come down from Wisconsin to showcase his beautiful paintings of Fossil Rim giraffes. People get the opportunity to meet the Fossil Rim staff at these events.”
The vast majority of the donation comes from sales of Fossil Rim wine, considering 25 percent of funds from each bottle sold are set aside for Fossil Rim.
There is Giraffe White, an unoaked pinot grigio. There is Rhino Red, a blend of Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon. There is Zebra Blush, a raspberry white merlot.
“The Rhino Red is very popular,” Diane said. “Our best-selling wines online are the Fossil Rim wines; we get orders from all over the country.”
Winters mentioned they have a regular online customer from Pennsylvania who loves the Fossil Rim wines.
“Granbury and Glen Rose are so close together; it feels like we are neighbors and tourism partners,” Diane said. “Sometimes, people stop by the winery and haven’t heard of Fossil Rim, so we try to send them this way.”
“I love coming out to Fossil Rim with my family,” Winters said. “We love staying the night and feeding the animals. Meeting the young rhino (today) was the highlight of my year.”
Snodgrass was more than happy to take the D’Vine duo to visit the giraffes on the donation day.
“We constantly talk about partnerships for conservation, and our relationship with D’Vine Wine is hopefully mutually beneficial,” Snodgrass said. “It expands the opportunity to make a broader footprint for both organizations and conservation in general. We cherish this association with a local business for the benefit of our animals. And when D’Vine Wine does host the Fossil Rim events, that’s a great time for our staff and volunteers to mingle among themselves and get to know each other in a social setting.”
To learn more about D’Vine Wine, check out http://dvinewinegranbury.com/.
-Tye Chandler, Marketing Associate