Lou Carrozzino’s fascination with wine began when he was 16 years old, but it took time to perfect the winemaking craft.
“It was error and error,” Carrozzino joked from his tasting room at Vino By Zzino, which opened at 1410 Fels Road in Quakertown in July. “The key to making good wine is making a lot of bad wine along the way.”
In the decades since he began learning from elders in his South Jersey homestead, Carrozzino has retired from his career as a mechanic to take his love of winemaking full-time. In 2014, after beginning to make wine professionally the year before, Carrozzino set up his business as an LLC.
“This was my retirement project,” Carrozzino said from his former barn-turned-tasting room accented by ornate bistro tables and wine décor. “I just want to be able to not have a real job and not have to worry about it.”
He had planned to open a tasting room adjacent to his Quakertown home and 2-acre property in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic “was the ultimate monkey wrench,” according to the winemaker.
Vino By Zzino is the newest member of the Bucks County Wine Trail, a nonprofit organization. Owned by Lou and Cheryl Carrozzino – the latter half of their last name deriving the “Zzino” – the winery is one of seven family-owned wineries along the Bucks County Wine Trail.
Carrozzino purchases wine grapes from established vineyards in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, and Chile to make the winery’s seven wine varieties, which include four whites and three reds. He would like to buy grapes from South Africa too. Buying grapes from other countries “gives us a whole second season” of winemaking, he said.
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