With the vines in the ground and all of our business paperwork put together, it was time to apply for our state license. A process that started in May, and wouldn’t end until September… Just after getting the vines in the ground, in the middle of May, we applied for the state winery license. We soon heard from our state investigator, Ronald. Ronald was an incredibly nice and helpful guy and we were so happy to have such a great representative from the PLCB. After dealing with him for about two weeks, he unfortunately had a family emergency, and that’s where things got messed up. While Ronald was out of work for two weeks, another person took over our case. We were waiting to hear from Ronald when he came back, but while he was out, the person covering his investigations simply closed out ours without even talking to us.
When Ronald came back, he gave us a call and told us what happened. This mistake would set us back another month, as we had to apply for a reinvestigation and await response. At this point, is was totally out of Ronald’s hands. Eventually we got approved for the reinvestigation, and we got to start everything over 2 months after we applied. From there, it was pretty smooth sailing. Ronald came out and spent plenty of time with us, answering all our questions and making sure we were comfortable and understanding with the process moving forward.
It wasn’t until about 5 weeks after our meeting with Ronald, that we finally received our winery license. As of September 1st, we were officially a licensed PA winery! I was in disbelief. Kristina O’Connell actually owned a winery, who would have ever thought that… with a HUGE help from Matt of course. I really couldn’t have done it without him. What was once a fantasy, became a reality. Now time was running out for the year. We were supposed to open at the end of summer, and here we are at the start of fall, just getting our license. Time to get some juice.
