MURFREESBORO, TN (WGNS) - If you’ve ever wandered past the demonstration vineyards at the UT‑TSU Agricultural Extension Service at Lane Agri‑Park on John R. Rice Boulevard, you’ve seen a little‑known piece of Murfreesboro’s agricultural story. Those vines have been producing grapes for years, not to compete with Napa Valley, but to show what truly thrives in Middle Tennessee’s climate — and now they’re part of a much bigger conversation about how Tennesseans choose their wine.
Researchers with the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture are digging into a surprisingly simple question: what makes you pick up one bottle of wine over another. Is it the price tag, the alcohol content, the region, or that new Tennessee Quality Assurance Program logo that started appearing on bottles in 2023. Their work is aimed at understanding what attributes matter most to Tennessee residents and visitors when they’re evaluating wines grown and produced in the state.
Here in Murfreesboro, the Lane Agri‑Park vineyard quietly supports that effort. The vines aren’t the classic European grapes you’d find in Napa — those struggle in our humidity and winter swings. Instead, the vineyard grows hardy American and French‑American hybrids, the grapes that actually succeed in Middle Tennessee. They’re fruit‑forward, aromatic, and built for our climate, not California’s. And that’s the point. The vines at Lane Agri‑Park help show growers which cultivars can handle Rutherford County’s conditions and what kind of wine styles make sense for this region.
Meanwhile, UT researchers are taking the consumer side of the story even further. A recent grant extension — nearly $189,000 — allows the team to study how buyers respond to the QAP logo, alcohol levels, and whether a wine comes from one of Tennessee’s four American Viticultural Areas, including the newly established Nine Lakes AVA in East Tennessee. Early results show that people are willing to pay more for wines with the QAP label or those sourced from a Tennessee AVA.
With more than seventy wineries across the state and a $610‑million economic impact, the stakes are real. Many of those wineries sit in rural counties, where tourism and local sales matter. Better understanding what buyers value could help strengthen those communities.
And it all connects back to places like Lane Agri‑Park — where the grapes growing quietly along the fence line help shape the future of Tennessee wine.
