Midgard Winery on Bell road in Corfu is looking to rebuild after a devastating fire on Sunday morning.
John Potoczak/President of the winery says he and his family were alerted by a Sheriff’s deputy at their door on Sunday morning about 5:30a.m.
“By the time we got outside the entire thing was in flames,” says John.
A neighbor called in the fire when they noticed flames at the end of the road.
Midgard Winery lost all their current stock of wine and all the wine that was in process along with 25 barrels of honey.
They also lost all their extraction equipment for the honey along with all the new tanks and wine bottling equipment that was installed in 2017.
Midgard Winery was started after John’s father Michael retired from the University of Buffalo as a teacher of math and physics. Michael has been a hobbyist beekeeper since the 1970’s.
In 2017, the winery had about 450 hives with 50-80 thousand bees.
The bees are okay says John and were not involved in the fire. This was the first year the bees stayed in WNY for the winter. In the past the bees spent the winter in central Florida in an orange grove feeding off the blossoms.
Also lost in the fire were many tools that were used by John’s great grandfather in the 40’s, a wood lathe planer, a drill press and a radial arm saw along with some other hand tools that were from before the 40’s.
A local beekeeper has offered to extract and buy all of the honey for this year. John says the winery cannot do much right now as they are waiting to hear from the insurance company. It will be at least 8 months before another batch of wine will be done.
John says fire investigators were looking for the source of the fire, but because the fire was so intense they haven’t been able to get a definite answer.
https://www.gofundme.com/midgard-winery-and-potoczak-bee-farm-fire-reliefA GoFundMe page has been created to help assist the Potoczak family and the winery.