Joseph Carr discusses hometown and success of Josh Cellars.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s nickname, Josh.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou 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\u2019s been with me my whole life,\u201d Carr said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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,\u201d Carr said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like mom, I never heard anyone in our house call our father Josh, what\u2019s going on? That\u2019s right, anyone who called your father Josh wasn\u2019t allowed in her house,\u201d Carr said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd my mom wrote the word Josh on a piece of paper,\u201d Carr said. \u201cShe had really good calligraphy. And I said, that\u2019s it. That\u2019s that\u2019s the label boom.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s 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,\u201d Carr said.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was my soulmate,\u201d Carr said. \u201cShe was the unrecognized force behind Josh Cellars.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason I\u2019m successful is I had, I had someone that really believed in me,\u201d Carr said. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFor Related Stories:\u00a0Wine<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Rensselaer County<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Josh Cellars<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Joseph Carr<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Berlin<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joseph Carr discusses hometown and success of Josh Cellars. BERLIN, N.Y. (WNYT)- Joseph Carr says the values he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18,8714,8713,8712,8711],"class_list":{"0":"post-9105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-berlin","9":"tag-joseph-carr","10":"tag-josh-cellars","11":"tag-rensselaer-county","12":"tag-wine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}