Delayed again: Duplin Winery in Panama City Beach now expected to open in summer

PANAMA CITY BEACH − Residents and tourists will have to wait a bit longer to enjoy a glass of wine at a highly anticipated winery on the Beach.

According to Jonathan Fussell, co-owner of Duplin Winery, the brand's Panama City Beach location, which is being built along Panama City Beach Parkway (Back Beach Road) near North Glades Trail, is now expected to open in about May or June.

Duplin officials originally hoped for the facility to open in December. That was then pushed back to spring, and now summer.

"It just keeps being pushed back," Fussell said. "Anytime you are building something, you learn a whole lot. One of the things we've learned is things happen that (you) don't have any control over. ... We would have loved for it to be done way before now."

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He dubbed ongoing staffing shortages as a key factor in the recent delay.

"We are having a tremendously hard time hiring folks," Fussell said. "Our contractors are having the same issue. They're dealing with the same thing we are, and because of that, they're showing up at a job that needs 20 people (with) only four.

"When you've got four, it takes five times as (long) to get that job done."

The local Duplin Winery will be the brand's third establishment, with the others in Rose Hill, North Carolina, and North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The company is the highest selling muscadine winery in the world, having distributed more than $560,000 cases of wine in 2021.

Duplin's PCB location is being built within the footprint of the former Hombre Golf Course, which closed after Category 5 Hurricane Michael hit the Panhandle in October 2018. It sits on property owned by Fussell Real Estate Holdings, a real estate developer of which Fussell is a managing partner.

Registered out of North Carolina, the company purchased in 2020 about 70 acres on the former golf course, and it is using about 3 acres for the winery. Vertical construction of the development began in June 2022.

The local winery will feature five tasting bars, retail shop, wine slushy bar, fudge bar and a 13,000-square-foot pavilion. It is expected to create more than 60 jobs.

Regarding any residents and tourists who might be not only excited for the winery to open, but frustrated by the delays, Fussell said he is "just as excited to meet them."

"I hope and pray that they will come see us and sample of the products that our folks have made, and we hope that we can entertain them and get to know each of them," he said. "We're looking forward to it."

This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Duplin Winery in Panama City Beach now expected to open in summer