Studio Winery and Geneva Lake Distilling

About Us:

The Winery:

Studio Winery started with a blue ribbon won with a wild grape "ditch wine"entered in the Wisconsin State Fair in 2007.

That one blue ribbon started the dream.

Working towards that dream, we started studying at the University of Missouri, and working for Burr Oak Winery in New Lisbon, WI. We were living in the middle of the Southern Kettle Moraine State Forest in LaGrange, WI. A beautiful area, but not good for growing grapes. So where to put the winery?

Nearby Lake Geneva didn't have a winery, so we started to look in that area. Along came the Great Recession of 08 which enabled us to buy the building for our future winery.

It had been a machine shop for 50 years and was a bit dirty and run down. But it was perfect in every way. It sat on an acre of land to put some grapes. It was on a main street. And it had a nice big apartment above for us to live in!

After an extensive rehab, we opened the winery doors in May of 2012.

The Distillery:

Then came a little trip over Thanksgiving of 2018 to a friends place in the Ozark's of Southern Missouri. Looking for other things to do, like wineries and distilleries to visit, we came across a place called Affordable Distilling Equipment and decided to buy a little "hobby" still.

Now there is no thing as a "hobby" still. It is illegal to operate a still unless you have a federal permit from the TTB. We had looked into it in the past, and thought we weren't able to get a distillers permit. The feds don't allow a distillery in a winery, or a distillery to have an attached residence. As we live upstairs, that's 2 strikes against us.

Or so we thought.

On our long trip home, we got to talking. How come this winery can have a distillery? And that winery? So there must be a way around that one. So what about the residence?

I started googling and found ADI forums. That's where I found "a guy". This guy, Dave Dunbar, is a former TTB agent that now works as a consultant helping people navigate the paperwork.

Cheers to Dave! Without him, we would be making illegal hooch on the roof!