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nakoda13

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Hi

we are in the proceess of setting up a distillery and was curious on what other micro distilleries building sizes were.

Basically how big are your buildings? sq footage, # of rooms, do you have tasting rooms, gift shops etc.

Thanks

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Hi

we are in the proceess of setting up a distillery and was curious on what other micro distilleries building sizes were.

Basically how big are your buildings? sq footage, # of rooms, do you have tasting rooms, gift shops etc.

Thanks

We have 3000 square feet of which is set in thirds:

Distilling room, Barrel room, a small tasting room and a packaging/bottling room

The ceiling is about 15 feet high

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I have to say our facility is gorgeous! My partner Mike was in construction, a contractor, and in light industry before becoming a wine maker. He is a mechanical genius and does extremely high quality construction. He basically built the place with the help of my other partner Jody, and now me helping as needed (since we both have construction experience as well.) We have three floors to our facility and several separate parts to the business. It's a stand-alone building with good parking (a small lot by our retail store and a large lot on the other side of the building), located on Main Street in the center of the small town of Winterport, on the Penobscot River, near Penobscot Bay, in Maine. Wehave river views, and a wrap-around porch for dining and relaxation. We get good tourist traffic from late Spring through to New Years, and very good local and area traffic all year. We have a winery, brand new brewery, and a distillery opening soon. We also have a retail store with tasting room, and a Food & Wine Culinary Education and Event Center, with restaurant/brew-pub. Basically it's seven businesses in one. The winery and retail store closes for two months in winter, but the culinary center is open year-round.

Basement: 3600 sq. feet- houses Winery with production, storage, bottling, and labeling. Around 7,000 gallons fermentation and bulk storage capacity, soon to increase substantially. Eight+ zones: Winery, Laboratory, Chilling room (for bulk cold storage and carbonation tanks.) Boiler Room (heating/hot water boiler for building and steam boiler for brewery & distillery.) Empty glass storage and tools/equipment. Retail Store storage. Bottled wine storage. Loading area/recycling area.

First Floor: 3600 sq. feet- Three separate sections to this floor. Section one- Retail store and tasting room for winery, brewery, future distillery, with restrooms and wine storage; attached Art gallery, and Main office. This has separate outside access for customers, and to the office space.

Section two houses the beautifully decorated Culinary School / part-time Restaurant / Event Center. The restaurant is currently for fine dining/wine pairing dinners as scheduled, with full-time lunch and possibly early dinner starting next summer. We can serve our (and others) wine and beer here by the glass or bottle. We may add hard liquor/cocktails next year. This area has a semi-open commercial kitchen with separate areas for supplies, and foods, and the dish-washing room. The whole space is designed for flow with high visibility of the kitchens, but other areas out of sight The fully open Teaching / Studio kitchen (TV show to start taping next year) is part of the Main dining room, which also has full view/contact with commercial kitchen so patrons can see and talk to the chef. Entrance parlor / lounge with grand stairway to second floor, coat check, restrooms. This space has two-story cathedral ceilings in most areas except the commercial kitchen area. We have a chef for the culinary school, and another for the fine dining.

Section three houses the seven barrel brewery and the distillery area combined with office and short term barrel storage, plus integral loading dock. Large viewing window of brewery / distillery accessible from culinary center or retail store. Access from outside, retail area, or culinary center.

Second Floor: apx. 1200+ sq. feet- two separate, unconnected areas. First, a secondary office over main office, access from main office and art gallery. Second, there is the second floor/loft of event center with two rooms. One a mid-size 30-40 person private event / conference room. The other a large, 100 person event/dining room with wet bar. This has 30' wide x 4' tall windows looking down onto the brewery / distillery on one wall and a 40' x 4' cut-out looking down on the main dining area and entrance lounge.

I anticipate a separate rick house / barrel storage to be built on the property or located nearby in the next 12-18 months.

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Here in Colorado, we have a little over 3000 Sq. Ft. containing distilling area with room for two stills, a fermentation room containing 4-800 gallon tanks a retail store and tasting room, mixing and bottling area, label and box making area along with storage areas for Bourbon, Vodka, Gin and Corn Whiskey. It is large enough that we also give tours three or four a day. Coop

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I had been looking for about 3000 square feet but ended up finding a great deal on on just over 6000. A lot of boat builders are having troubles in my area and are vacating industrial space at a rapid rate. I was able to lock in all the extra space for less per month than the buildings 1/2 the size.

3000 would have worked just fine but 6000 will make it a lot easier to move around. I have no worries about having room to store large quantities of bottles, barrels, and whatever else I need while still having room to expand if I am fortunate enough to have that need.

I envy those of you like Jonathan who can operate in downtown areas. My local zoning limited me to light industrial.

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Well, I wouldn't call downtown Winterport, a downtown area. What there is of it is so small that it is almost all industrial/commercial/residential. We have homes on either side of the winery and industrial space at the marina across the street. The township is 27 sq miles with 3,600 residents. The village itself is 6 sq miles with 1600 residents. It takes less than a minute to drive through the town, at the speed limit, which no one ever follows. I mean it's so small that I have driven right by my house in the middle of town on Main Street several times in broad daylight because it went by so fast. My neighbors who live on Main Street keep hogs, which have escaped several times and I have helped run around herding them back home. My partners were calling me the hog herder and swine wrangler for awhile. If you go to this link you can read about it, at the bottom of the chapter is a piggy photo gallery of the wayward hogs. http://www.slashfood.com/2008/06/27/diary-...-and-raring-to/

I had been looking for about 3000 square feet but ended up finding a great deal on on just over 6000. A lot of boat builders are having troubles in my area and are vacating industrial space at a rapid rate. I was able to lock in all the extra space for less per month than the buildings 1/2 the size.

3000 would have worked just fine but 6000 will make it a lot easier to move around. I have no worries about having room to store large quantities of bottles, barrels, and whatever else I need while still having room to expand if I am fortunate enough to have that need.

I envy those of you like Jonathan who can operate in downtown areas. My local zoning limited me to light industrial.

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One thing I've thought about if I were to open a distillery in the US is that I'd look into buying an historical building (like a school, post office, church) as you are more likely to get them for much much less than a new building. I often use Pritchard's Rum as an example with their operation in a small very old country school in Kelso, TN.

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One thing I've thought about if I were to open a distillery in the US is that I'd look into buying an historical building (like a school, post office, church) as you are more likely to get them for much much less than a new building. I often use Pritchard's Rum as an example with their operation in a small very old country school in Kelso, TN.

Unfortunately many local governments make that all but impossible due to zoning restrictions.

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So do I, they leave you nothing for storing bottles, boxes, potatoes waiting to be processed, no alcohol storage or processing tanks and nothing for storing finished product in boxes waiting to be sold. Coop

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  • 7 months later...
I have to say our facility is gorgeous!

Jonathan ~ with your glowing description of your winery, brewery, distillery I zipped over to your website to look at the photos of what you described and alas there are none! Do you have photos hidden somewhere that we might see, it sounds fantastic, however your website does your description no justice.

Unless perhaps I am using the wrong web address? (Winterport Winery?)

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Eventually we will have the distillery and brewery website up. right now there is only the winery site... and it doesn't even mention me...

You can go to this link to AOL's food blog, Slashfood.com, for my journal with tons of pics from last May-December. http://www.slashfood.com/category/diary-of-a-distiller/ they are in order from last going back, so you need to scroll to the bottom of the page and go back a few times to get to the beginning.

The same info is here, but without photos since i haven't had time to put them in. http://www.diaryofadistiller.com

Jonathan ~ with your glowing description of your winery, brewery, distillery I zipped over to your website to look at the photos of what you described and alas there are none! Do you have photos hidden somewhere that we might see, it sounds fantastic, however your website does your description no justice.

Unless perhaps I am using the wrong web address? (Winterport Winery?)

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