Jumping into the barrel with Ashton Kutcher, Tony Hawk, Jason Momoa, and other celebrities, Stephen and Elizabeth Wampler are thrilled to introduce their very own Wampler Red Blend wine from Nocking Point Winery’s “Wine with Impact” collection.
The collaboration came as a surprise to the Wamplers, who received an email from Drew Harding’s wife who is one of their 760,000 followers on TikTok. Harding, who founded sourceaudio.com, along with actor Stephen Amell, best known for playing DC Comics’ “Arrow” in the television series, started Nocking Point Wines after a road trip in 2012 led them through the Paso Robles wine region. First they established the winery in Walla Walla, Washington where Harding grew up. Now they have a winery, tasting room, and wine club, with 150,000 members and growing, as well as a coffee club. One part of their mission is “Wine with Impact”, which has so far donated more than $2 million to charitable organizations. This is the first wine for the Stephen J. Wampler Foundation, with two additional varieties in the works. Check out all the other celebrity collaborations from Nocking Point Wines.
After connecting via email, Elizabeth says, “We had an instant connection, and it took less than two months for this to become a reality.” The Wampler’s don’t drink wine, so they took the blend to a sommelier who loved the wine and emphasized “the world needs to taste this.” They then collaborated with their friend Dani Rivera to design the wine label that would impart their vision of taking away the sadness from disabilities and instead celebrate them. The front of the label says wine in sign language, and the back denotes the symbol for all disabilities, with a prosthetic leg, hearing loss, sight impairment, and physical issue symbols. There is also a QR code link to their foundation.
The Wampler blend combines Merlot, Cab Franc, and Malbec, with notes of blackberry, black cherry, plum, and vanilla, and deep rich ruby and garnet colors. It is considered medium-bodied, floral, with fine tannins for the palate. Nocking Point Wines touts it as a wine “you’ll want to pair with hearty meat dishes including steak, lamb, and roasted vegetables.”
A go-getter who loves to share their story with everyone to help normalize disabilities, Elizabeth has long wanted to collaborate with a product. When this came out of the blue, they couldn’t have been more excited to help market their wine, for which they get a percentage of each bottle sold. Currently, Wampler Wine is available direct to consumer on the Nocking Point website. Elizabeth and Stephen say they are hoping to get it in local stores, restaurants, and then potentially nationwide if possible. For them, the more bottles sold equals more money for their Foundation to send kids to Camp Wamp in Northern California. The camp hosts summer camps for disabled kids, who come from across the nation, at no cost to their families.
The Wampler Foundation is a small but mighty, family-oriented, non-profit organization which has a year-round staff of five and gears up to 50 employees in the summer for Camp Wamp. This year has brought extreme challenges with 30-feet of snow covering the camp.
“We have been successful because the people in Coronado have supported us for the past 21 years,” comments Elizabeth and Stephen. They want to continue to extend their reach with the positive message of “It’s about what you can do.” The emphasis is on helping make people comfortable with disabilities, celebrating optimism, and taking away sadness. Elizabeth exclaims, what better way to celebrate than with wine that helps send kids to camp?
This opportunity came about because of the foundation’s TikTok videos, which are posted by their son Joseph, and they are surprised and humbled that several of their videos have gained traction and one family collage even had 25 million views. Stephen has done three TEDx talks, and Elizabeth has done one. Some of their media highlights include being in an American Express commercial, being on Good Morning America twice, NBC Nightly News, winning the Chipotle contest to have the ““Wamp-urrito” named after them, and having Ellen DeGeneres sing “The Climb” to Stephen when he climbed El Capitan. “Wampler’s Ascent” is available to watch on Amazon Prime.
Learn more about the amazing story and cause of the Stephen J. Wampler Foundation at stephenjwamplerfoundation.org. Check them out on TikTok and on Instagram at @the.wampler.way. You can order the Wampler Wine from the Nocking Point website.
