For years, One Woman Wines & Vineyards has had the kind of problem most small producers would welcome: more demand than supply.

On release days, bottles of its Grüner Veltliner and gewürztraminer routinely sell out within minutes, according to Melissa Principi, one of the Douglas Elliman brokers representing the property.

“ It was kind of funny because someone was asking me, ‘do they have a wine club?’” Principi said. “I said, they have such a loyal following that they used to have a wine club, but they literally just couldn’t produce enough wine to service the wine club.”

Today, sales are handled through a mailing list, with allocations offered on a first-come, first-served basis, a system that underscores both the winery’s popularity and the limits of its scale.

That dynamic has become a defining feature of the property’s recent listing, which has drawn attention not just for its $9.4 million asking price, but for what brokers describe as a rare, fully realized “farm winery” model on the North Fork. News of the vineyard going on the market was first reported by The Suffolk Times.

At a time when many vineyards have added event-driven revenue streams or leaned into hospitality to remain competitive, One Woman’s tightly controlled output and preservation-first land strategy stand out.

Demand and capacity

The tension between demand and capacity is a key reason the Southold property has entered the market after more than 20 years of careful, deliberate growth.

“They put all the pieces of the puzzle together and now, at the extent that they’ve … built, they definitely need to bring on a new owner because they’ve built something that they can’t really sustain with the way they’ve always been doing things,” Principi said.

In that sense, the potential sale is less a turning point than the latest step in a long-term plan that dates back to 2002, when Claudia Purita purchased what had been a potato farm.

 ”This was always their intention … to have a real farm winery,” Principi said. “It’s really the way [Claudia’s] family had a similar sort of farm in Italy.”

Gabriella Purita’s grandfather and Claudia’s father, Domenico, operated a vineyard and self-sustained farm in Calabria throughout his life, with Claudia helping to tend it, Gabriella told Edible Manhattan in 2014.

Claudia had owned a home across from the property for years before it came on the market. When it did, Gabriella said, her mother saw an opportunity to continue her father’s legacy.

After purchasing the land and selling the development rights, Claudia began by hand-planting 2.2 acres of gewürztraminer — a modest start that would shape the winery’s future.

Prioritizing preservation

Principi said that decision to preserve much of the property for agriculture was foundational.

“The way they structured this is because they wanted to preserve the land in the back to always be farmed,’ Principi said.

The 18 acres of preserved land cannot be developed beyond agricultural use. While it can accommodate structures like a tractor barn or other farm-related buildings, commercial construction is not permitted.

That left four acres available for the winery’s tasting room and production facilities, which the Puritas expanded over time. Today, One Woman operates with both a farm winery and a farm distillery license, a relatively rare combination in New York, Principi said.

 ”The only reason they got this site plan approved is because they sterilized the farm [from development] in the back,’ she said.

Planting Grüner Veltliner

Even with that structure in place, building the winery was a long process. Principi estimated that it took nearly a decade to secure approvals from local and state agencies, including New York’s health department and state liquor authority, Suffolk County, and Southold’s building department and planning board.

Alongside those regulatory hurdles, the Puritas made early strategic decisions about what to grow — choices that would help distinguish One Woman in a region where Chardonnay was dominant.

Claudia Purita chose to plant Grüner Veltliner in 2008, following advice from Austrian wine producer Fritz Weininger, a year after producing her first vintage of gewürztraminer, she told The New York Times in 2011.

“Everyone was planting Chardonnay [then],” Principi said. “They do have Chardonnay, but they didn’t want that to be their focus. They wanted something unique and they did it well.”

That emphasis on differentiation extended into vineyard practices as well.

“ If it needed a little extra work in the vineyard to make a really great varietal in the tank, they could do it,” she said. “I think they wanted to differentiate from what was already planted on the North Fork and they wanted to do it well.”

Over time, their land-use strategy, regulatory persistence and product focus helped build a brand with a loyal following, while remaining intentionally constrained in size.

Principi said the Puritas have been as meticulous about building the business as they have been about making their wine.

Now, with demand continuing to outpace production and the physical and regulatory limits of the property firmly in place, the winery has reached a point where its next phase may require a different scale of operation.

For the Puritas, Principi said, that moment was always part of the plan.