Terry Dorsey Reveals Origin of Hiney Wine KSCS/Dallas Radio

[@kevinfodor3154]

I was there at the creation, if you will, of Hiney Wine. It happened when Terry did afternoon drive on WONE-AM in Dayton. I worked in the newsroom at the station.

[@brianmcdaid3178]

In Hobbs, New Mexico a country and western station ran the Hiney Wine commercials with the winery located in beautiful downtown Humble City where Big Red and Thor Hiney continued to use their Aunt Lotta Hiney's original recipe. One woman actually wrote a letter to the editor of the Hobbs Daily News Sun complaining about those horrible commercials for that winery in Humble City. I laughed with the commercials but that woman's letter had me laughing till I cried.

[@billsanders5067]

I heard the Hinney Wine commercials an AM station out of Houston in the late 1970's. Harry Hinney was the founder, in addition to Big Red and Thore, their sister Offelia was the office manager. Periodically they would have public wine tasting events at the winery located in Tivoli, Tx. Cheese from the Rank Cheese factory, whose motto was "When you cut the cheese, be sure its Rank". The jds were Hudson and Harrigan. They had several characters that would interview, their technical engineer was Jim Bob Jumpback who was a student a Texas Aggie.

[@richward2288]

I still have a Hiney Winery bumper sticker from WAKY radio in Louisville, KY. The mighty 790. I have a shot glass around here somewhere too. No way to post a picture here.

[@miketheshanmanmangan]

COME AND MEET OPHELIA AND GRAB A LITTLE HINEY!

[@rickcleveland5326]

It played on WHUG from Jamestown NY in the mid 80s. The winey was supposedly in beautiful downtown Watts Flats, NY. I was a teenager at this time in you guessed it, in Watts Flats. People use to come by the car loads looking for the winey. We (local kids) sent these people on wild goose chases all over the area, down dead end dirt roads, anywhere they'd get lost. I really the 15% was a very conservative number in our market.

[@westendmed]

I think you are right about it being more than 15%. I think it was more like 50% simply because there was no Internet back in the 80's to check our Hiney out and many listeners thought that if it was a commercial airing on a radio station...it had to be real. It was this mystique about the winery being fake or real that created all the conversation in each market. We had over 150 newspaper stories (many in major markets like Dallas and Miami) and were featured in PM MAGAZINE stories on many TV stations. We used the TV and newspaper stories to our advantage and sent copies to all the stations interested in picking it up in syndication. Stations also made a lot of money selling Hiney merchandise plus adjacencies to the Hiney Wine spots.