By Christopher Holland • The Current Contributing Writer
First Street in Lehighton has seen a lot of revitalization over the last few years, and businesses continue to grow and flourish on the main street of the borough.
Tina Henniger of Aquishicola and her husband Mike, and son Owen, recently opened Wine & More on First Street.
Originally from the Lehigh Valley, Henniger and her family relocated to Carbon County where they have now resided for more than a decade.
The new business offers a variety of services related to wine and beer, and Henninger took time to participate in an exclusive Q&A with The Current.
The Current: What is the full name of the store, and who are the owners?
Tina Henninger: Wine & More on 1st is the name of the business. I, Tina Henninger, am the owner, although it is a family business that I share with my husband, Mike and son, Owen, who do the remote events (such as festivals). Owen creates many of our wine cocktails such as the salted caramel apple pie and chocolate desire wine cocktails. He’ll be cooking up some beer cocktails in the near future as well.
The Current: What are the main services provided by the store? What events do you host?
Henninger: The main service is as a tasting room for alcoholic beverages, although non-alcoholic choices are also available including smoothies, boba, sodas, coffees, etc. Predominantly we serve wine from Stone Mountain Wine Cellars, a family-owned farm in Pine Grove, PA that specializes in unusual varieties of grapes that survived Prohibition. During the Prohibition era, if you grew grapes that could not be used in jams/jellies they were ripped out and the roots burned. This is why Concord and Niagara grapes are so common in our area, whereas the Norton and La Crescent grapes are fairly rare. We serve the wine in-house and sell bottles to go.
We are also waiting on PLCB [Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board] approval to bring on a nano brewery, Cave Brewery, which has a retired nuclear engineer as the owner and brew master. He also makes hard seltzers which a lot of the local ladies are anxious to try. I will be able to serve his creations to enjoy in our shop but we need to wait for the PLCB approval of a special license before we can sell in growlers or cans to-go.
Our mixed drinks, beer cocktails and wine cocktails will be made using Insurrection Distillery spirits. We try to source our items locally whenever possible and are always on the lookout for local vendors and suppliers.
We sell artisan cheese from Jubilee Heritage Farms, homemade jams, jellies and pickled items from Taste Of Country. We also carry painted wine glasses, tumblers and coasters from 3 Imaginations Creations. Our shop will be BYOF (Bring Your Own Food) either from home or from one of the many restaurants that surround our shop.
Events will vary. We intend to do paint and sips on Monday evenings, but instead of canvasses, our Paint & Sips with Creations by Tammy use wooden forms. The classes range from $25 for smaller (table top) items to $65 for large outdoor/porch items, like the 3-foot-tall bunnies we recently did for Easter.
We will also be hosting trivia nights and my son is working on plans for tabletop/gaming nights which will be a bi-monthly event, probably on a Sunday evening but, I’m waiting for the final word from him.
We will be adding events, such as a mixer for singles – which is basically a low/no pressure way to meet other single folks in the area.
The Current: What made you get into the business/industry and how long have you been doing it? Did you have prior experience before branching out on your own? If so, in what positions and where?
Henninger: I started off selling a different, pricier wine when I worked for someone else and I did a respectable job of it, had a lot of repeat customers who trusted my recommendations and I enjoyed it. When that vineyard transferred their shop license to a location in New Ringold I was offered the opportunity to take over that space with a new vineyard if I could find one. So I did, and in November of 2019 I opened the Palmerton Tasting Room in the back room of another shop.
I did very well considering the small area I had to work with and was consistently doing sales of between $2k-$3k every month. I ran the Palmerton Tasting Room on Delaware Ave. until Covid put an end to that. The shop was far too small to be able to run it at 25 percent capacity as even at 100 percent we could fit 12 to 15 people at most in that space.
I moved my sales to online while we looked for a larger property in Palmerton. We couldn’t find anything that worked (size/layout) at a reasonable price in town. So we expanded our search to Weissport, Bowmanstown and Lehighton. We found the perfect building and decided to use my experience running a small tasting room and upgrade to a shop that can hold over 100 people.
The Current: If you didn’t have prior experience in the business/industry, what did you do leading up to opening your store? Do you have a business degree?
Henninger: I don’t have a business degree. I worked in medicine until I developed a chronic illness and realized I couldn’t go back to 12 hour shifts without causing myself undue physical harm and putting patients at risk in the process.
The Current: Where does most of your clientele come from?
Henninger: Previously, most of my clientele were locals from the South Carbon County area but, with my move to a larger shop on a main artery I am expecting a healthy mix of both locals and tourists. I am the sole commercial outlet for both the winery and the brewery. So, unless you travel to the Heffner Family farm in Pine Grove, or make an appointment with the brew master in the rather sizeable out building on the outskirts of Bethlehem, my shop is the only place you can find their products.
So, whether you live down the street from the shop or if you’re visiting Carbon as a tourist, enjoying river rafting, or traveling along the D&L Trail, it makes my shop unique. And bearing in mind that I need to meet local needs as well, I have made certain that my prices are reasonable for our area. The average price for a bottle of wine is $12.50 (range of $9 – $20), and the average price for a can of nano brew is about $6.
The Current: Were there any challenges that you encountered while going through the process of getting proper permits, licensures, etc. to open your business? If so, what were they and how did you overcome them?
Henninger: Oh, so many challenges. Jay (The Jim Thorpe Current Ad Rep) and JD (The Jim Thorpe Current Publisher) have heard my wailing and gnashing of teeth many times over them. The State approval via the LCB was fairly straight forward and was obtained in Oct of 2020. However, the Borough of Lehighton was another matter entirely. In order to meet zoning specifications, my opening has been delayed by six months to the tune of over $15K dollars in construction, stamped architectural drawings, permits and so on.
To be honest, the hurdles caused by Lehighton zoning came very close to putting me out of business before I even started. I missed being open for Fall Foliage and for the Holiday season which is when we make the money that carries us through the bleak winter months when no one wants to leave their warm homes after sunset.
I bought the building outright knowing it needed work and had budgeted for that. But it was zoned commercial and had been a commercial building since the time the original building went up in the early-to-mid 1800s, so I didn’t anticipate having so many zoning issues.
The building was originally a furniture and coffin maker and later became the first embalmer in Lehighton. We found a copy of a business card in a history book from 1858 and while doing the renovations we found two cellars underneath the current basement, and discovered what is now my office had been the attic of the original building. We overcame the obstacles through pure stubbornness, although I do recall threatening to just turn the whole building into eight subsidized housing units more than once. But at that point I had invested too much to simply give up; this is literally my retirement plan.
The Current: Where are the sources from where your products come from? Are they locally sourced?
Henninger: They are all from PA, most from surrounding counties as it doesn’t make sense to have a tasting room for a winery or brewery you could easily drive to. I put my focus on family owned businesses. The wine is from a dairy farm and orchard that has been worked by the same family for six generations in Pine Grove, PA.
The main vintner, Ralph, is teaching his grandson, Kyle, to step into his shoes and Kyle has become confident enough to try a few interesting tweaks on Ralph’s more traditional style, such as using bourbon barrels instead of oak barrels to age their flagship Norton wine. The brewery was started by the father (who got into brewing as a hobby after his wife bought him a ‘make your own beer’ kit in the 80s) who is now teaching his son the art of brewing.
The Current: How many employees do you have? Do you expect to bring more people on staff in the future?
Henninger: Right now it is myself, my husband and my son, however we will be looking to bring on seasonal help. Specifically someone to help with the Summer and Fall festivals where we do remotes, and then someone else to be at the shop with me particularly during the busy holiday weeks.
The Current: What are the business hours? How would you describe the atmosphere at the business?
Henninger: My hours are seasonal. Usually noon-7p.m. but we’ll stay open later if we’re busy. We will usually be closed Mondays and Tuesdays, but come mid-November to New Years Eve we are open seven days a week, both for shopping and for taking a break from shopping, to put your feet up, enjoy a cold or hot drink, read a book, chat with friends, etc. The atmosphere is very homey, relaxing. Plenty of tables and chairs, sofas and such to find something that you feel comfortable on.
The Current: What’s the most exciting element of owning your business?
Henninger: The people I get to meet. I have one of those faces where people just feel comfortable talking to me, telling me all sorts of things about themselves. I’ve met everyone from uncertain brides to inventors to actors to war veterans to regular Joes and Janes, and each one has an interesting story, each one teaching me something.
The Current: Is there anything specific that you’d like to mention about your business?
Hennginer: That this is only the first step. Once the roof is redone this Summer, we’ll be working on the upstairs area, having a structural engineer draw up plans to turn the five large glass window area into a covered balcony where people can enjoy themselves, and rent out the area for receptions, parties, meetings and such. It’s about 35 feet wide by 75 feet deep so it’s a nice size for larger gatherings.
The Current: What does the future look like for your business? Do you have any special events coming up?
Henninger: Our ribbon cutting/grand opening is May 20, 2021. The Carbon County Chamber of Commerce did a lovely spot/commercial for us that will be up on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube that shows some of the ‘closed to the public’ areas, such as the original house in the basement and the old embalming room.
Our furniture is very eclectic. We’ve brought together old and new pieces, some from the turn of last century, to mid-century to items you could buy today. Our décor hovers somewhere between primitive and reclaimed which seems appropriate considering the age and assorted uses our building has had over the years.
Everything from a furniture store to a Montgomery Ward’s to an undertakers. Our ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] bathroom has the original mirror that used to be at the entrance of the shop. It had been broken prior to our purchasing the building but knowing that was probably the first and last thing a lot of families saw it only felt right to give it a place of prominence rather than hide it away or put it in the trash. We even found the mirror rosettes and re-used them, although it is the hand built frame that keeps the mirror on the wall now.
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