Ground to Glass, local farmers win

[Mash]

The state of virginia is very fond of its agriculture. I have leased a piece of property a couple of miles away in Walkers Creek Valley that Appalachian Mountain Spirits will grow its own corn and barley. Thus we come under many favorable tax and code requirements.

Now to find a corn shucker......

[Scott @ Twenty2Vodka]

Thus we come under many favorable tax and code requirements.

Do those favorable tax and code requirements outweigh the real extra time and $ of operating a farm in addition to a distillery? If they do, fantastic.... However having experience on the distilling side of things, I could not imagine what my day would be like if I had to convern myself with growing the raw material too. This is not intented to knock the ground-to-glass philosophy, but I'm curious if your are up for the true challenge of begining (and then perfecting) 2 businesses from scratch?

Best of Luck,

-Scott

[David Mutch]

It is hard, so far I can only run the farm and have been working at starting the distillery for about 4 years now, not enough daylight hours in a day to do both

[RevDrChris]

We're doing a similar approach, but we'll have an easier time than most. Our farm is operated by our neighbor, so we can focus on the distillery, while still having all the grain grown on site to our specifications. It allows us to keep the companies separate and focused.

(null)

[PeteB]

I'm not so sure about the term "Ground to Glass"!

When looking at the topic notification on my small I-Phone screen I was thinking it was a newspaper headline where a farmer must have won a court case over "ground glass" haha

Good luck with it, I believe that if you have a hand in more of the production chain it gives you even more of a reason to call your product "hand crafted". Customers will buy a bottle for the story behind it and hopefully will find the product worth a repeat purchase.

"Paddock to Bottle" is often used, or even even "Plough to Bottle" is what I call my process.

I can make a lot more money per day spent in the distillery than I can make on my farm, so I employ an extra part time person to do the farm work that I don't have time to do.

For me, hiring a farm worker is cheaper than hiring a distillery manager.

For you, be careful not to spend too much time on the farm at the expense of your distillery.

There is a lot of farm work to do before you need---- " ---to find a corn shucker......"

[Mash]

The farm owner is my friend, I lease the ground for a buck,then buy the corn for near market price. Gotta buy from a local farmer any way.