A Family Affair and Bait Shop.

Tim and Tammy Partin run the 101 Grocery and Bait Shop in Gamaliel.  They get up early every morning and work every night to provide drinks, grocery items, bait and pizza to the folks who live nearby.

They’re not from around here.  The Partins are from Fort Wayne, IN.  Tammy was an accountant, Tim was a garbage collector.  They came down here on vacation a while back and tried out the fishing at Lake Norfork and fell in love. 

They met Frank Schubert, the former owner of the 101 -- a Chicagoan who’d purchased the place from its previous owners nearly six years before.  When he decided to move on six years ago, he sold the place to the Partin family and it’s been theirs ever since.

Their son Travis was 15 and their daughter Tracie was 11 when they made the move.  Travis now works at Ranger Boats over in Flippin while Tracie is still in high school.

“But they help us out.  There’s always one of us here,” Tim told me.  “We just live out back of here so that makes it easy.”

The Partins loves to fish and hunt, and they see a lot of different sorts of game and fish come through their store.  Tim has a box of photos he and Tammy have taken of folks who have been through.  Every sort of fish -- walleye, trout, crappie, bass, striper, you name it -- are in those photos, along with people showing off their trophy deer, turkey and boar. 

The grocery itself started in 1947, a tiny building that now comprises the center of the long facility.  The bait shop on the north end used to be an ice house; the pizza station on the south end used to be an ice cream stand.  Between those ends you can find everything from soda to soup to sandwich makings, household items and novelty gags. 

The Partins have a real sense of humor.  It’s reflected on the sign out front, which advertises “Naked Minnows.”

Tammy didn’t miss a beat when I asked.  “Our minnows have no clothes on.”

They offer lots of things to folks passing by -- maps of the lakes, guide referrals for those who need them.  They can pick up the phone and get you a place to stay and they know where to send you for dinner if you had a rough day on the water.

The store never closes for the holidays.  “We’re here every day, five in the morning to ten at night, even on Christmas,” Tim told me.  “We never take vacations, because we’re always on vacation here.”

101 Grocery and Bait
3287 Highway 101
Gamaliel, AR 72537
(866) 746-5596
www.101groceryandbait.com

California in the Ozarks.

Raimondo Winery may be small, but its Sicilian-come-California vintages are making an impact here in Arkansas.

You’ve heard of many of the bigger wineries in Arkansas. But did you know there’s one in the middle of north central Arkansas? It’s tucked away in Gamaliel at the Blue Lady Resort.

That’s where Margie Roelands is continuing a family tradition. She’s a third generation winemaker, and she’s using her family’s California-grown grapes to create amazing wines in the Ozarks.

Roelands’ grandfather, Marty Raimondo, moved from Palermo, Sicily to California in the sixties. Since he was the person in the family who knew how to make wines, the family immediately gave him those responsibilities, and Marty made his wines from grapes found there in California -- Mission and Zinfandel grapes, the closest he could find to what was used in Sicily. The family wines were marketed under the name “Grandpa and Grandma Raymondo’s Family Wine.”

Roeland’s uncle Tony Raimondo went back to Sicily in the ‘80s, learned the true spelling of the family name and found the family crest -- both of which were introduced in 1988’s crop of wines.

Margie, along with Tony’s daughter Lisa Garcia, started learning the business in the 2000s -- though Margie will tell you wine’s been part of her world her entire life. That being said, she had worked her way up the ranks in the corporate world. Yeah, might seem strange, but Margie was the marketing guru for the Adobe Reader. That’s something else.

She and Lisa took classes at UC-Davis and in Napa Valley, and by 2005 they had both made their first barrels of wine.


So how did Margie end up here in Arkansas? Well, back in 2005 she and her husband Brian came to our state for a vacation on Norfork Lake. They fell in love, and when they discovered Blue Lady Resort was up for sale they jumped for a chance to own their own Arkansas resort… and eventually, wine cellar.

Margie’s still using the family grapes to make her wines. She goes back to California and chooses the specific grapes, then they’re shipped here to be produced and bottled here. 18 wines are on the list right now. They’re all considered California wines, and they all have quite distinctive identities. Margie’s wines are mostly dry or semi-dry; the Moscato Secco is in my opinion a romantically expressive beauty, though I do believe my favorite is the effervescent Grand Cuvee Brut.

She’s been hoping to utilize Arkansas fruit in her wines, and it looks like that will happen this year. It’s a different sort of business model from what you’ll find at the state’s other wineries, but it works for the Roelands.

One more thing Margie has going for her -- and that’s the oils and vinegars her wine cellar also produces. The oils are pressed with a variety of different herbs and spices to create incredibly rich flavors. The balsamic vinegars are similarly spiced but piquant and sharp with their own amazing blend of flavors. Margie offers a wine, oil and vinegar tasting that’s just marvelous, worth the drive to Gamaliel to try them all out.

Raimondo Winery * 149 County Road 820 * Gamaliel, AR * (870) 467-5115 * raimondowinery.com