"The Madison County Winery story...
My name is Eric Hensley. I'm 28 years old and I started expeirimenting with making wine 14 years ago. Yes, that's right I was 14 years old making wine in my bedroom. My parents would often find my wine and dump it out. Needless to say when your 14 year old is making alcohol in his bedroom, you get a little concerned. About 4 years ago I started making beer after taking several years to simply buy my beer. I soon started experimenting with wine again and discovered that my wine was not only better than my beer but in my opinion just as good or better than any wine I'd ever bought.
At that point I had my parents try it, they reluctantly tried it (they don't drink) and politely said it was good, the next day they went back home to Florida. Late that evening they called and said they had been talking about my wine all day and they both wanted to get a few bottles of it for themselves. I said if they like it maybe I should open a winery and they agreed.
On June 25 2008 we purchased 7 acres just east of Markleville, Indiana. Today is July 11. Since the purchase of the property, we have had a fire every day to burn boards and other trash left on the property by the previous owner's tenants. We have also been cutting up and recycling various metal objects left lying about. After extensive work on the property we started selling wine by January 9, 2009.
On September 24 we got our federal alcohol permit approved then finally on December 17 we got our state permit approved. We opened for business January 9th 2009.
(To all who may buy or try our wine in the early stages of our operations I apologize for the wine not looking as good as other commercial wines but please be patient. I can guarantee taste but the recipes that I developed while making wine at home in 5 gallon batches do not convert perfectly for making 500 gallon batches. It will take some time to get the recipes perfected again.)"
LOL
|