LITTLE ROCK – Arkansas wineries are holding their own during the recession, in part because they’re not aiming at the high end of the market.

“I haven’t noticed any decline at all in our sales,” said Michael Post of Mount Bethel Winery south of Altus, the center of Arkansas’ wine country.

Post – a grandson of the founder of Post Familie Winery in Altus – said, however, that there was a problem with sales holding steady.

“Our cost of goods and cost of doing business has risen, making our profit margins somewhat slimmer,” he said. “Wine bottles, wine labels, sugar – all those things have gone up.”

At the Post Familie Winery, Joseph Post, vice president of sales, said Monday that wine sales have held up well.

“We feel truly blessed here,” Joseph Post said. “Our sales have actually picked up statewide.”

However, sales of some high-end fruit juices that the company also produces have been hurt by the nation’s economic downturn, he said, as consumers cut back on luxury purchases.

“Muscadine juice is a luxury item,” he said. “We pull out all the stops and put out a high-end product, competing in niche markets. We’re feeling the effects of that.”

Reduced sales in luxury markets reflects what The Wall Street Journal reported recently in an article that said luxury vintners – those producing wines selling for $25 a bottle or more – were being hurt by the recession.

But most wines produced in Arkansas sell at prices well below anything that would put them in a “luxury” category.

“We sure wanted to sell a $20 or a $30 wine,” Joseph Post said. “But you’re better off being a little more humble.”

Dennis Wiederkehr, vice president and national sales manager for Wiederkehr Wine Cellars at Altus, said that company’s products also are priced below the luxury range. Most sell for $5 to $8, he said, “and a smaller percentage of our products are in the $9 to $14 range.”

Wiederkehr is doing as much as it can to pick up some of the sales to buyers dropping down from the luxury range, he said.

“We’ve been flat for the most part – some items have done better than others,” Wiederkehr said. “We haven’t seen the sales loss that others have seen.”

Wiederkehr Wine Cellars also operates a restaurant and conducts tours of its winery, and Wiederkehr said both were getting good traffic.

“It’s more local, from two to four hours away, people who haven’t been around before that are not very far away,” he said.

Audrey House, who founded the Chateau Aux Arc – pronounced “Ozark” – winery at Altus in 1998, said “we’re doing OK” in the recession, with business down about 15 percent.

But a bigger factor than the national economy for Chateaux Aux Arc, she said, was a late freeze in 2007 that destroyed that year’s crop of grapes, especially those used in producing a wine variety called Altage, which she said was the company’s best-seller.

“It’s always been our No. 1 seller since we opened,” House said. “We lost 99 percent of our crop in 2007.”

That year’s crop would have provided this year’s bottled wine, she said, and there is no 2007 Altage for sale.