What's new in 2018
We've made progress towards our goal of becoming a licensed winery. 2017 was a year full of projects, challenges, some setbacks, and uncertainties. The Federal TTB requires all building construction to be complete before they approve a bonded winery application. The year started by working with the label designer and creating Frisky Fox Vineyard, LLP business entity. Then construction began on two tasting room bathrooms, wine tank storage room wall, and a wall to block off the garage from the tasting room.
We submitted our Federal bonded license application in March. It takes around 160 days to process the application so we kept busy by buying furniture and equipment. Spring sprung and it was time to maintain the vineyard again.
Spring led to summer and we were contacted by the TTB asking if our building was ready at the end of July. We made a last minute decision to build a sliding door and to epoxy the floor so we told TTB that we had a few projects to complete and we’d re-submit our application when done. We finished the projects and re-applied for the permit at the beginning of November.
Our Federal bonded winery permit was approved on January 5th 2018. Now we are working on getting label quotes, Federal label approval, applying for Iowa Native Winery licenses, sourcing fruit & grapes, ordering signs, and we have other smaller items on our to do list. Hopefully we will be up and running at some capacity in the summer of 2018. If it all goes well, we plan to fill our tanks up this year so we can build up our wine inventory for next year. This years wine supply is rather small so we would likely have our official grand opening spring of 2019. We'll keep you posted!
