From the Crusades to how an Irish Setter discovered a winery

ELIZABETHTOWN – In the weeks surrounding the excitement and anticipation of nationally-known recording artist, movie and TV personality, Trace Adkins, who came to Cape Fear Saturday night, there is a larger-than-life local celebrity that prefers to remain out of the spotlight who sat down to share his heart and a look at his life as the owner of Cape Fear Vineyard & Winery.

“My father’s from Elizabethtown,” Alexander (Alex) Munroe II, CFV&W owner said. “He was the first Morehead Scholar at UNC Chapel Hill.”

The Morehead-Cain Scholarship is merit-based and considered to be one of the most prestigious undergraduate scholarship programs in the U.S. The program aims to foster intellectual curiosity, leadership, and global perspective in its scholars.

“He went to medical school at Chapel Hill and then went on to Gainesville – to the University of Florida,” Munroe said. “That’s where I was born – was in Gainesville. And it’s always been on my mind that my dad was a part of the team that invented Gatorade for the Florida Gators. Me and my brothers were some of the first people in the country to actually try it.”

Dr. John Francis Munroe completed his internship and residencies at Shand’s Hospital at the University of Florida – Gainesville, specializing in internal medicine.

Even when talking about his beginning – he first gave honor to his father, which is a trait of Munroe to give you the facts, but in doing so, put someone else in the limelight. Munroe is first and foremost a man who finds his purpose in life by blessing and serving others – both around him and around the world.

Whether that is taking time to feed the winery’s famous peacock, Elvis or playing guitar for 5,000 people in China.

“What always stuck with me from a little kid growing up is that Gatorade became popular,” he said. “So, I always considered my dad not necessarily a doctor, but also somewhat of an inventor.”

A doctor is called to a purpose to serve and help mankind to heal. An inventor who innovates and makes a way to bring forth the medicine is the doctor that goes above and beyond. Munroe has always kept his father’s examples in the forefront of his mind and has followed in his footsteps. You could say that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

After living in Florida, Dr. Munroe moved to his native North Carolina, where he established his private medical practice, Southeastern Internal Medicine Group. He practiced medicine for 55 years and was instrumental in developing the local medical community including the establishment of the first Critical Care Unit at the old Columbus County Hospital, construction of the current hospital, and the recruitment of new doctors into the area. He passed away at 79 years of age in 2014.

Alex Munroe, although he grew up in Gainesville, he comes from a family that is four generations of Bladen County. When Munroe reminisces about his dad, and speaks about the time he was with him in Raleigh and they stepped into an elevator with a former Governor. Dr. Munroe saw something in the man that caused him speak up and tell the politician that there may be a medical issue he was unaware of. Dr. Munroe was correct and the Governor after having the medical issue corrected wrote a letter of gratitude.

“I thought that was interesting, just going up the elevator with him,” Munroe said. “Mark Twain used to say that the riverboat captain, which he wrote about in The Life on the Mississippi, never looks at the river the way others see it. He sees the eddies and the rocks and all the dangers. He doesn’t see the beauty of the river; he sees the challenges in it. My dad became that way.”

That spoke volumes to young Alex who has also turned out to be a problem solver. As for the Twain quote and the massive museum of signed art that has been collected by Munroe as a child and hangs on the walls at Cape Fear Vineyard & Winery. That side of him undoubtedly would come from his mother, Sylvia Munroe, who passed away in 2011.

It was said of her that “She enjoyed classical art, travel, reading, and was an active participant in all of her children’s sporting and academic activities, and family and church activities. Sylvia is most honored and remembered by her family and friends for her shining grace, unwavering faith in God, exemplary dignity and for her overwhelming love and compassion for all people. Sylvia was passionate about the ocean and pelicans, the mountains and snowfall, little furry animals and big-hearted people.”

And once again, an example of the brilliance of a parent living on and being augmented in the children.

When you follow that brightly colored thread, you see it emerge in the tapestry of the path Munroe has traveled, the decisions he’s made globally and the wonderous things he’s created in Bladen County.

Upon the family’s return to North Carolina, Munroe graduated from Waccamaw Academy which was a private school in Columbus County.

“There were nine people in my graduating class,” he said and smiled wryly as he finished his thought. “On my college applications I said that I graduated in the top 10 of my graduating class. I then went on to UNC-Chapel Hill where I majored in journalism and graduated in 1989. At that time, it was the No. 1 journalism and mass-communication school in America. Interesting fact is that I never heard the word ‘internet’ until three years later. After I graduated from UNC, I went to graduate school at NC-State for English for one day. They gave me my reading list for the next week and I realized I couldn’t do that for the next three years.”

During that time in America, there was a recession and a lot of companies had hiring freezes. Jobs were almost impossible to find. The unconventional problem solver in him came alive and he accomplished his own kind-of post-graduation education.

“I bought a ticket to Nairobi, Kenya and then I had a ticket home from London,” he said.

If anyone cares to do the math, the miles between Nairobi and London is 6,209 miles. Obviously, some travel was to occur and Munroe had come up with a plan.

“I spent about eight months traveling through Kenya, Tanzania, through the Nile Valley, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and then into Egypt,” he said. “When I got into Egypt I tracked the first crusades.”

He wasn’t with a team. He went on his own. He was tracking “The First Crusade.” It was pretty much the Homer Alexander Munroe expedition and he gained an education that no institute could provide and harvested memories that would last a lifetime.

“When I was dropped off in Nairobi, I just started walking,” he said. “It was then that I took a good look at what I had taken on and when I got to Tanzania, it was hostile and tough getting around. When I got to Syria, there were travel advisories – especially in crossing the Syria/Turkey border on foot. Since Australians travel all over the place and from time to time I’d team up with them and pretend I was an Australian. Nobody could tell from my accent. When I reached consulates, then I would tell them that I was an American.”

The big question that looms at this point was his end game. Was there a book in the works? Perhaps a thesis? Nobody takes that kind of grueling travel punishment and calls it an exotic vacay.

“I wrote an article called ‘Through the Eyes of a Pilgrim,’” he said. “It was published in the Whiteville News Reporter. I wrote a series for them for about three or four months. I took a lot of notes and it was fun. I came back home and then had some job opportunities.”

His endeavors and a few well-placed mentors provided some great job opportunities from that point. The dreamer in him came forth and he explored his options.

“At that time, I told someone that I’d rather go to Alaska and work on a fishery boat,” Munroe said. “Maybe go in the summer and make a lot of money so that I could take the winter and go to Mexico and write. I had pretty much decided that writing for newspapers just wasn’t for me.”

Munroe got his captain’s license and although Alaska was on his horizon with a job offer, his parents stepped in and led him to an offer he could not refuse.

“I went to work for a startup company,” he said. “I became a salesman, moved to Florida, lived out of my car. I took out a loan and put all the money into that company and worked for it for 6-8 months. That company then went bankrupt. So, there I was in my 20s and I was in debt.”

In 1992 a little-known paragraph was added to the ADA stipulations for acceptable design standards. It made wheelchair ramps mandatory – especially in places where a curb had to be removed with a slight cement ramp. Visually impaired people, however were using canes to detect curbs and when these curbs were removed, people were walking into traffic.

Enter the company that had gone bankrupt making “detectable warning surfaces” or “tactile paving.” These surfaces are characterized by a distinctive pattern of truncated domes or raised bars that can be detected by a long cane or underfoot.

Because these had never been implemented before, the DOJ decided to do a five-year study on the products – resulting the halting of all future sales until further notice. Many people who had invested in the company lost everything.

When the law finally did come back and the implementation was once again called for, many investors who had gotten bit on it the first time didn’t want to make the same mistake again.

“Well, when the opportunity came back, I said that I’d take a stab at it,” Munroe said. “I bought it out and worked it for 20 years. It was called Cape Fear Systems and the product was called ‘Alerttile.’ It panned out for me and I actually patented the penetrator anchor that helped secure the tile into the concrete. We sold those all over the United States.”

One Munroe helped develop Gatorade; the son helped develop tiles to help save people from walking into traffic. Both, in their own way made contributions and inventions that saved lives.

That Alerttile is what brought Munroe to Elizabethtown.

“I ran out of space with my company there in Wilmington,” Munroe said. “I called all over looking for warehouse space, but everything was either too small or too large. I got up with Chuck Heustess (Bladen’s Bloomin’ Agri-Industrial, Inc.) and he said, ‘Well, I’ve got a special incubator program that helps small companies grow.”

The porridge was just right and Munroe did what the incubator program called for and it led to a great and successful business relationship with Bladen County that was just about to step into a greater destiny.

“It was right around that time that I had an Irish Setter dog with me in the city of Wilmington,” Munroe said. “When we came out here, he was in heaven because I could just let him run. He would run over to the little lake and play. I saw what a beautiful property it was and inquired about it. I found out that it was being foreclosed on the very next day.”

The property is where Cape Fear Valley Vineyard & Winery currently is located. It did have the main building upon it which was used as a small mom & pop winery. When Munroe asked what the community needed, Heustess said, lodging, a good restaurant and we really need event space. The first day that Munroe considered it, he had a lease on the property.

Munroe rolled up his sleeves, reconfigured the existing building and in just a year, they were on their way. They even were awarded a national award for reconstruction of an urban building which is proudly displayed in the CFV&W restaurant, The Cork Room.

“In that first year it was gutted and we had an event center, a restaurant and I put in three cottages,” he said. “I said, ‘I’ll see if it goes and if not, I’ll have a little place for my own.’ When we found out it was pretty successful, I realized that we needed to develop more cottages and I designed them in kind of like Bald Head Island – keeping it North Carolina style. It has grown organically and I really didn’t expect to become this size.”

From an early glint of an idea to create an ostrich farm, it changed course and became a very popular wedding and event center. From there, a special friendship with a farmer revealed a homemade still and a recipe that even the Baldwin Sisters from the now defunct TV series, “The Waltons” would be impressed with.

“I went deep into the woods to a little barn where he had a little still where he was making moonshine,” Munroe said. “I said, ‘You know… we can do this legally now.”

So literally by the next week they got his still into his truck and into a little building next to the event center where eventually the Cape Fear Distillery was born. People were coming and liked it and it became kind of a novelty. At the time, North Carolina allowed you to sell it on the property – but the stipulation was that you could only sell one bottle to one customer per year.

“So, we made a Maritime Gin,” Munroe said. “The moonshine whiskey came first and then the gin. Because we were aging it, we couldn’t sell the whiskey so we had to find something to sell. With the gin, people were buying it and if you are a North Carolina distillery, the law said they had to give you space to sell it. So, we put it in the warehouse. We entered it into a national contest and lo and behold it made it and got a gold medal for label design and a gold medal for taste.”

In the back of the gift shop, The Tipsy Toad, managed by Tina Long, the custom-made bar is made from an old bus that was reclaimed from a salvage yard in the hills of North Carolina. All the spirits distilled by Cape Fear are on display.

“At the back is the bus,” Long said. “This is where all the magic happens. Customers can sample and purchase all of our original 13 award-winning spirits, our 9 divine wines and we even make barbecue sauce.”

All of the spirits are distilled, bottled and packaged on-site with the exception of the Blue Agave Tequila which has to be done in Mexico to be a true tequila. One of the most popular spirits is distilled on the property mixing the Blue Agave tequila with different coffee blends. The tequila coffee is done on-site. There is a distillery on the property as well as multiple warehouses across the street from the property. In addition to making their spirits available to customers, guests, gift shop and restaurant, Cape Fear brand spirits are sold at ABC Warehouse and other stores and restaurants in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, parts of Florida, parts of the Virgin Islands, Maryland, New Jersey and they are making plans to move product into Ohio.

Adding to the making of this world-class venue in North Carolina is both the impressive concert series on the outdoor stage and the Cork Room concert series in the restaurant. The concert series really was born out of COVID.

“Toward the end of COVID when people finally started coming back out, a concert promoter up in New Bern booked Jo Dee Messina,” Munroe said. “They had decided not to host it because of COVID. They had a star booked; we had a venue. We were asked to host her.”

They hosted Messina and from there they have had many top artists on the stage and have also gotten to know a lot of the managers and promoters. CFV&W has developed a reputation called “talent friendly” which is what performers are looking for.

“Eventually we bought out the company that was in New Bern,” Munroe said. “We merged with them and formed a separate company called White Dog Entertainment LLC which Joey Schultz (Cape Fear & Vineyard Winery CFO and president of White Dog Entertainment) runs.”

Munroe has 12 pots on the stove and a five-burner stove – and he seems to thrive on the activity – having a handle on all things going on overseeing the gift shop to the management, the spa, the restaurant, the distillery and so much more.

“I eat a bag of Houston’s peanuts and drink four beers at the end of every day,” he said. “That’s my decompression. Sometimes it’s been difficult as we’ve grown and it’s been very challenging. I’ve gotten to the point now where I’ve got a great staff that helps with a lot of things and they see the same vision as I see.”

He actually retired one time. For one day.

“When I sold my business, I was going to put the winery up for sale and retire,” he said. “I did that and I planned a golf trip around the world. I flew to England and stayed at a golf resort and I’d done it. I played the first hole of golf and actually birdied the hole. As I was reaching down get the ball out of the cup, I said… ‘This isn’t what I want to do.’ All I could think about was the little winery back home. I literally took that ball out and went back to the lodge and booked my ticket home the next day. So, I spent one day in retirement.”

Munroe said that his experience has taught him that what bothers him today won’t bother him tomorrow. He has been places that have tested his courage and his mettle. He has seen things and walked paths that have prepared him for what he’s doing now.

And each morning he takes time to be grateful for what he has as he walks slowly away from his desk and out to feed animals in the petting zoo. And the animals adore him. From Elvis the famous peacock to stray cats to the kangaroo to the little “Toto” dog who graces the gift shop. He has a way. And they sense something deeper than a man who frequents a bag of peanuts and four beers.

So many see him at the events or walking the grounds, but so few see beneath the layers or all that he has done.

For instance.

“Probably one of the most rewarding things in my life that I’ve done is doing mission work in China,” he said. “I worked with the Chinese-Christian underground. I still do. You can make people happy with booze and stuff like that, but me and the Presbyterian Church in Wilmington and others, it took about four years of going back and forth to China. Because they have gone back underground now, and because they have a lot of churches doing a lot of good things they need helpers.”

A nationwide problem for the Christian churches in China. Munroe goes to China. Someone needed him and he always finds a way to do what he can. Although the church has once again gone underground in China, the government has a new respect for the church because of all of the good they have done in the country.

“If you go to a church in China, there may be up to 6,000 people a day attending,” Munroe said. “When I was there, at times they’d ask for me to stand up and preach and that is NOT in my wheelhouse. When I did get in front of them, I’d struggle a bit, but they couldn’t speak much English anyway and much was lost in translation when I’d recite the Lord’s prayer. Back then I was playing guitar a little bit and a few of the Christian ministers and I went one time to a little church and I saw a guitar and started just fooling around, tuning it up. Anyway, a couple of days later a woman came up and asked, ‘today after the service would you pray for us?” I told them I’d be happy to pray for them. I was going to do my little sermonette with the Lord’s prayer and I walked onstage and they handed me a guitar. She wanted me to play for them, but said “pray” and again, it was lost in the translation.”

There were 5,000 people there and he played “Can’t You See” by Marshall Tucker.

And he also was a part of an American team that met a great need. Not for Marshall Tucker music, but they need helpers.

“They don’t have enough ministers, they don’t have enough musicians, they don’t have enough child care workers and teachers,” Munroe said. “There are 300 million people in Jainsu Province and we created the first Chinese Christian training center. It’s a place where they train church workers.”

He does everything from feeding Jesus Donkeys in his petting zoo, hand-picks his employees, and puts out enough fires to qualify him for firefighter of the year. All, seemingly behind the scenes and maintaining a low profile – avoiding the limelight.

He is a gift to our communities in Bladen County and quietly and unassumingly he has put us on the map.