The owners of the Blaze restaurant group, which operates several restaurants across the state, has acquired a Lincolnville winery and what amounts to a $1.8 million business loan for the winery from regional newspaper owner Reade Brower.
Matthew Haskell and his wife Evelina bought Lincolnville’s Cellardoor Winery in late May and renamed it Cellardoor Farm. They paid $1.8 million for the property, according to real estate transfer tax documents filed with the state — the same amount as Brower’s loan to the Haskells. The couple intends to expand the winery to offer lodging, a beer brewery, another Blaze restaurant as well as a second, high-end restaurant.
The Haskells will repay the $1.8 million loan from Brower over time, according to documents filed with the Waldo County Registry of Deeds. If they are unable to repay the loan, ownership of the property would be transferred to Brower.
Brower said he has provided some mentoring to the Haskells and is helping them find a bank to “provide permanent financing.”
“That is the extent of my involvement,” he said.
Brower owns the Midcoast Villager, The Ellsworth American and the Mount Desert Islander. Until 2023, he owned 22 other papers in the state, including The Portland Press Herald and the Lewiston Sun Journal before selling them to a nonprofit news organization for $15 million, as reported by the Boston Globe.
Haskell responded on Tuesday evening after the initial publication of this story but declined to give further details about his purchase of the winery.
On the Facebook page for Blaze Camden, which closed in 2023 after a fire, a post said that the company plans to offer lodging, a new Blaze restaurant, and a second, “very thoughtfully higher end” restaurant.
The company will move its beer brewing operation to the Lincolnville winery spot, according to the post, where it will also operate a co-packing facility that other beverage companies can use to produce alcoholic and non-alcohonic beverages.
Haskell owns Blaze restaurants in Blue Hill, Bangor, and Bar Harbor as well as an orchard in Limington.
Bettina Doulton, who owned Cellardoor Winery since 2007, wrote in post on her website in May that “a confluence of events, many gut-wrenching and others simply forcing reflection, has led me to step aside now so two eager, next-generation people can assume the mantle of caretaking for this beautiful place.”
Haskell, she wrote, “sees what this property can be in its next phase.”
“It speaks to him, as it has spoken to me,” she wrote.
Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately described the nature of a loan from Brower to the Haskells.