Beginning a Winery

Congrats! Next time I head towards Pittsburgh, I'll stop in for a taste!

salcoco said:

the first wine I would make should be dedicated to your wife. give it a fanciful name and put a picture of your wife on the label.

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LOL - Heck no!!! She's the root cause of the license delay and she can't have anything to do with the winery (except of course to drink the merchandise).

Now comes the tedious issues of determining what you will charge for your wines, printed info about your wines for the customers, and getting additional labels approved.

Bill, I submitted one that came back rejected. I called and the girl said it was fine and resubmit. I did and three days later rejected again. I called again and got a different girl. She said my AVA was not eligible. I told her it was a legit one and she looked it up in her book and said nope. When I told her it's on every bottle around here since the 60's she looked in another book and she says "yup it is good" but in the book they're suppose to use it's not in it. I asked her if it's going to get rejected again when I resubmit she said don't worry about she was the one that sent it back. I had approval in two hours.

Do you have any tips for the design/construction of wineries to save energy/water down the road?
I've heard of some things like epoxying floors to make cleaning easier or buying tanks that don't have hard-to-clean areas. Anything else that would help reduce water use?

I've heard of setting up the winery to run on gravity instead of pumps to save energy. Floor heating is supposed to be worthwhile to heat the winery. A friend of mine has solar panels on his roof (via a grant/assistance from the state of NJ).

I think we will go and look at an old church from the 1880's and consider using it as the winery. The church would have to be dissassembled and moved, but the price would be right. It would also have to be de-sanctified by the church elders and have the religious items removed. But this would be a nice building with some character to have the winery.

We also ordered 10,000 labels for our bottles today.

That sounds like it would be a really nice building. I know some people who are in heritage buildings. They all seem to complain about "legacy issues" that makes installing things or operating more difficult, but I haven't heard one who would give up a beautiful old building to avoid those challenges.

There are a couple of gravity wineries in Niagara which are really interesting to visit. Like Stratus Vineyards, they don't pump any wine at all.

I just heard today about a winery in an older building with a cold room they use to stabilize wines. Because the floor isn't well insulated the cold creeps along the concrete floors causing condensation and mold which results in a lot of water use to keep clean.

Bill, have you gone to Geneva Ohio yet looking at wineries?

not yet Dan, but we are looking at next weekend, if you're off and want to join us....

I would love to but not available, sorry. Debonne, Ferrante, Harpersfield, but South River is the one not to miss. It is an old church and is just beautiful. He also owns a distillery next door.

We went and checked out a church from the 1860s to use as a winery. The building is about 40 by 60 and is currently aluminum sided and does have an attic and stained glass windows.

We would have to purchase land in my area (no small or inexpensive feat), purchase the church, disassemble it, transport it to our area, reassemble it and then modify it to a winery.

On this past Sunday, we officially became a winery. We obtained a farmer's market permit to sell wine and did so very successfully (our daily take exceeded my expectations). My wife (who got a new job that did not have a PLCB permit attached to it) made a mulled wine and offered samples. It was a big hit. We will be selling again this weekend. the only glitch was that the satellite winery on the premises was upset that we were selling and their rep came out and demanded our permit and threatened to call the state police because he had not signed our permit (PLCB said he no right to sign nor is he required to sign). This caused 4 of our customers to hurry up and purchase wine before the state police got there (we found out they were never called).

Congrats, Ho! May this be your first sales of many more to come.

Sorry you had to deal with a jerk, but it sounds like it was very successful despite their efforts.

..."We obtained a farmer's market permit..."

This is not yet legal in my state but would like to hear from those where it is legal so we can perhaps get our state legislature to change some laws.

Well, being that we did so well last Sunday, the eldest brother of the 3 farmers pitched a fit. It seems that our booth did so well, no one wanted to go inside to purchase from the other winery, causing the brother to lose his 30% commision per bottle (we were there at the request of the sister). So due to the disfunction of thier family, we will not be selling there anymore until they realize that 2 wineries on site are better than one.

So instead of selling this weekend, ffemt and I are going down to NC to pick muscadines. When life deals you lemons, make skeeter pee....

From my experiences two wineries on site are not always better than one. I have dealt with markets a lot and work to keep harmony with the other wineries there with me but I must say that sales are never as high when there are multiple wineries there. There is a finite amount of potential wine sales and more wineries dilutes each of the vendor's sales. I used to feel that it helped to have more as customers were more likley to find a wine they like and leave happy. More often than not however they just buy from the first winery they stop at. This is coming from a man who does 5 markets per week all summer.

We can't do farmers markets but I suspect it is a lot different than having close by wineries for a wine trail. The latter seems to bring more customers and people are comping specifically for wine tasting. Most folks aren't going to a farmers market to try and buy wine.

Help

Hello! I am new here and have never posted on a forum a before. I hope I am doing this in the correct way. I have really enjoyed reading through all of the posts. My husband and I have been very interested in starting a small winery. We are getting closer to making that a reality! We currently live in northwest Ohio. We have decided that a move is in order. So we thought we could ask you lovely people if anyone could give examples of states that would welcome someone becoming a new resident and would be very friendly towards a new winery business. Thank you for any information.

I would suggest moving in an area with a lot of other wineries. This will increase your sales if they're part of a wine trail plus you'll pick up a lot of tourist trade. Remember in some states you can sell your wine in grocery stores unlike PA where you can only sell in State Stores.

Northern Georgia.

Starting a winery, an easy way to turn $1,000,000 into $100,000.