Make Your Own Wine on Long Island
Our winemaking experience in Hicksville starts with your hands in the grapes. You crush fresh fruit from California or Chile, come back to press it, taste your wine from the barrel as it ages in oak, and bottle it under your own label about a year later. There are no concentrates and no shortcuts, just grapes, time and our winemaking team guiding you at every stage. By the end you have around 240 bottles and a clear understanding of how wine is made.
Community barrels from $325 per couple
How does making your own wine work?
Every barrel follows the same four stages, and you are there for each one. It starts with the crush, in the fall for California grapes or the spring for Chilean grapes, when you crush the fruit and start the fermentation that turns juice into wine. About a week later you come back for the press, when the wine comes off the skins and goes into an oak barrel. Over the following months you return for a barrel tasting, which is where you see how time and oak shape the flavor. The last visit is bottling day, when you cork and label your wine and take it home.
Private barrel or community barrel?
If you have a group, a private barrel gives you a vintage that is entirely yours. One person acts as Barrel Captain and rallies the group, and we handle the wine. An American oak barrel produces around 240 bottles and suits up to 10 winemakers, while French oak gives a more complex wine and around 280 bottles for larger groups. If you are on your own or a couple, a community barrel lets you join other winemakers over three visits, crush and press, a mid-season tasting and bottling, and take home one, two or three cases. If you would rather try something in a single evening, our 90-minute wine blending class sends you home with a bottle of your own blend.
Who makes wine with us?
Most of our winemakers start with no experience at all, and our team provides the grapes, the equipment and guidance at every step. Couples make a vintage for a wedding or anniversary, friends and families turn it into a yearly tradition, and companies use it for team building on Long Island, with the company's label on every bottle. Around 240 bottles sounds like a lot until you start giving them away, which is why barrels often end up as wedding favors, client gifts and the start of a home cellar.
