Joseph Carr discusses hometown and success of Josh Cellars.

BERLIN, N.Y. (WNYT)- Joseph Carr says the values he learned growing up in Berlin stayed with him and shaped the wine brand that now bears his father’s nickname, Josh.

Carr talked about his childhood in Berlin, a town of 1,800 in Rensselaer County near the Massachusetts state line. He said his parents taught him small-town values and hard work that stayed with him for life.

“You learn to help people. Our values were my parents had really good, you know, small town values. And I never took that for granted. And it’s been with me my whole life,” Carr said.

Carr went to school in Berlin and became a wrestler at Berlin High School after a teacher brought him to the wrestling room. He said he played Taps for local veterans who died and worked several jobs in town, including at a factory, a greenhouse and a bar across from his family home.

“I put on my boy, my Boy Scout uniform and stood next to guys as they did a twenty one gun salute, and I played taps. And then I hid behind a tree and cried,” Carr said.

His parents, Jean and Joseph Carr, raised him and his twin sister, Lisa, with a focus on work and responsibility. Carr said his father left school at 17 to help support his family after his stepfather died.

Carr said he returned from California with little money but a wine blend he believed in. He said his mother suggested naming it after the nickname friends once used for his father when he raced cars at Lebanon Valley.

“I was like mom, I never heard anyone in our house call our father Josh, what’s going on? That’s right, anyone who called your father Josh wasn’t allowed in her house,” Carr said.

“And my mom wrote the word Josh on a piece of paper,” Carr said. “She had really good calligraphy. And I said, that’s it. That’s that’s the label boom.”

Carr said the brand did not take off right away. He and his wife, Deirdre, put up what they had to produce the first vintage in California, which was one thousand cases at the cost of around $70,000.

He said Deirdre helped sell those first bottles from the back of an old Land Rover. Carr also said attention from New York Times wine writer Eric Asimov helped the brand grow.

“She’s like, this is dangerous. And I would take it around and pull out samples and talk to people about my dad and how I made the wines,” Carr said.

Carr said success for Josh Cellars came with deep personal loss after Deirdre Carr was diagnosed with brain cancer. She died April 5, 2018, and Carr said she had been central to the brand’s growth.

“She was my soulmate,” Carr said. “She was the unrecognized force behind Josh Cellars.”

Carr said Deirdre believed in him through success, adversity and failure. He also said he is grateful his mother lived to see Josh Cellars become widely known before she died in 2021.

“The reason I’m successful is I had, I had someone that really believed in me,” Carr said. “And when you have somebody like, I tell people when you succeed you cheer the loudest. When you face adversity, they hold your hand. And when you fail, they pick you up. And I had that.”

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