GENESEE COUNTY/Corfu
Busy bees turn honey into wine at Corfu winery
450 hives with 50-80 thousand honey bees in each hive are just a few of the hard workers behind a Corfu winery’s signature product, honey wine.
Michael Potoczak and his sons John and Jonathan along with family, friends and neighbors are what make the new wine operation a success.
Michael’s cousin, Tony Cefali, who is a home winemaker and head of research and development at the winery, encouraged the Potoczaks to jump into the honey wine business after they had mastered the honey making business.
Michael has been tending to honeybees since the 70’s and at the age of four, his son John started helping out and learning the hobby of beekeeping.
Since retiring from the University of Buffalo as a teacher of math and physics, Michael has been spending more time with his bees and the family business.
Since honeybees have been dying off rapidly for some reason, Michael decided to take his bees to a Florida orange grove last winter to split the stronger hives and come back home with more healthy new bees that have been feeding on the orange blossoms all winter long.
After a year the new hives contribute to the honey making process.
John says the bees make 75-150lbs of a honey in a season.
Blending the honey with fresh pressed apple juice from local orchards allows the mixture to ferment.
Right now Midgard offers three types of honey wine, sweet, dry and hot pepper. They also have two fruit wines, a blended grape rose and a blueberry wine made with all NYS blueberry juice.
“A good winemaker is one that can make a dry wine, but not make it taste dry. If they are smooth, that’s the mark of a good winemaker,” Michael says.
Domenic Carisetti, who is semi- retired from the wine business after 30 years, is a consultant for the winery. He graduated from the University of California with a Masters in wine making and worked for the Taylor Wine Company.
“He tried some of the stuff we were making and said you guys ought to start doing this, he actually motivated us to become commercial. He oversees what we are doing and makes sure it’s done right,”says Michael.
Midgard Winery has been experiencing growing pains since they officially entered the winery business with their honey wine two years ago.
“Our biggest issue is finding enough space for the entire wine making operation,” says John Potoczak, President of Midgard Winery.
“We started in a small room and we found very quickly it was not enough space, so we moved operations to our storage facility on Bell road. We retrofitted it complete with heat and insulation, the whole nine yards.”
Because honey can be stored and does not have a shelf life, Midgard has gone to producing wine all year round this year.
“It has been going really well, we are really happy with the reception NYS has given us. A lot of people really like our wine, our biggest issue right now is just making enough wine to keep our local liquor clients stocked.”
Midgard Winery will be participating at the Buffalo Wine Festival April 1, 2017 at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center.
Here is a link to buy tickets http://www.eriepromotions.com/BuffaloWine/default.aspx
For more information on the winery here is a link to their website
http://www.midgardwinery.com/about