I'll drink to that where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business.

I'm Levy Dalton.

I'm Erin Scala and here's our show today. Oh, Fred Merrworth, the winemaker and owner of Herman J. Weimer, vineyards and the Finger Lakes of New York,

closer.

I'm great, how are you?

Very good to see you. Thank you for having me here. So your family was a dairy farmers. I grew up on a fairly big dairy farm in Easton Pennsylvania. My grandfather started the farm. My father took over the dairy under strange circumstances. In the 60s my grandfather had a farming accident and my father had to step in right, actually he was in college, he had to come home from college and take over control of the dairy while my grandfather was recovering.

And from that point on really grew methodically in terms of a number of

cows acreage and it was looking back and seeing my family evolve within the dairy.

I can see similarities to what we're doing now in terms of a slow methodical growth.

And I look back at what my parents and my grandparents

did in terms of creating a homestead

and a way of life around the dairy and knowing that to bring family in and keep family

active in it you had to grow and you had to become more than 60 cows.

So when my family ended up closing the dairy farm

in 1988, we were over 400 head of cattle.

And I grew up in that. I was nine years old when when they closed the

dairy in 1988 and I had been fairly involved in the farm and my older sisters and my older cousins all were intimately involved in taking care of animals and I was responsible with the chickens and I think those experiences being part of a family farm

I still see that in me today and what I'm looking for. And I think we've grown to a point where we feel comfortable

that we can do this as two families.

But it's actually really two businesses. Absolutely it is. It's an

interesting business because we are three units in a way. We're the

winery, the nursery, and the vineyard and there's no other

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