NOTE: Throughout the month of July, BrownwoodNews.com is publishing stories daily on 40 standout citizens under the age of 40 making a positive impact and contribution within the Brown County community.
Fourteen months after opening, 10 Mile Productions has already exceeded the expectations of 33-year-old owners Hayley and Sara Cox, who have even grander visions of what their business can become.
“It has grown since the first day we opened the doors,” Hayley said of the tasting room located at 401 Center Avenue in downtown Brownwood. “We had our first soft opening on April 16, 2021. Since then, we’ve grown as far as wine, as far as expanding our menu. We’ve got some really great people in the kitchen, and we’ve expanded our vineyard as well. We just planted Brownwood’s first earthen vineyard on Avenue C.”
Plans were always for much more than a tasting room, but the success the couple has already experienced caught them slightly off guard.
“We started out as a little tasting room with just wine and beer,” Sara said. “In December we were doing food and that was just to accommodate people and what they were looking for when they were coming to drink wine and hang out. We started doing music on Saturdays to try and provide a little bit more of a music venue for Brownwood. None of this was planned. Then in May we got the opportunity to plant 40 vines. And I went ahead and ordered 80-plus more from California we’ll put into the dirt, so we went from having a tasting room and just wanting to be a part of downtown to really going from grape to glass within the next two years.”
Hayley added, “We chose Productions in the name for a reason, because a winery or tasting room or vineyard wasn’t going to capture it all. Hopefully in the next year or two our crush pad, our wine making facility will be in Brown County if not Brownwood. The long-term goal and the romanticism of being in the industry is being like it is in California where you have a tasting room, a vineyard, a crush pad, an estate all on site that’s specifically in or near Brownwood.”
The 10 Mile Productions idea was fostered during their two-year stay in Comfort.
“I was the assistant winemaker at Kerrville Hills Winery making wine for about 20 other big companies down in the Texas Hill Country,” Hayley said. “Sara’s an Army National Guard veteran and an electrician and was wiring huge wineries and places in Fredericksburg, but we decided to come back to our roots, and we wanted to create something here in Brownwood.”
The support 10 Mile Productions has received has not gone unnoticed or underappreciated.
“They are really what makes 10 Mile who we are to this day, our community,” Sara said. “We’re a place for them, but they provide the atmosphere.”
Hayley said, “Just the downtown community is phenomenal, the people that are a part of it. It is such a moving piece. All the people that go into the Lyric, it’s people from Early, it’s people from Dallas, there’s a lot of moving parts downtown and it’s cool to be one of the cogs in the works.”
The couple credited the welcoming feel of nearby businesses and that camaraderie not only for their success, but the overall growth of the downtown area.
“Through social media and the start of 2nd Sundays, that started with Levi (Packer) over at Saturdays having a vision and he asked us and we said yes and more people kept saying yes,” Hayley said. “It just comes down to all the work we’ve put in collectively as a whole. There’s not just one cog in the whole group, everybody is working together to create something bigger and I think it will just grow from there.”
“We all have our own vision and we all get to participate,” Sara said. “Everyone’s attitude and energy for the growth of Brownwood, there’s a lot of synergy.”
Aside from work, Hayley and Sara Cox are both passionate about the arts, and have hosted fundraisers to assist a number of local businesses as well.
“We try to do as much in the arts as possible,” Hayley said. “We’re part of the Art Center, we regularly like to be part of Keep Brownwood Beautiful, basically any type of philanthropy we can be involved in, or if anyone needs our help, we always try and help. NaNook and NaKoda’s Big Paw Rescue, we’ve done a fundraiser with them, Operation at Ease is another one that we’re huge into as well. Any moving part that works for a part of Brownwood and they ask us to participate in, we’re there for it.”