New details on plans for big Goshen building to make and store kosher wine and juice
GOSHEN - The family-owned company behind the well-known Kedem brand of kosher wine and grape juice plans to erect a 635,000-square-foot building to pool its operations from two states and secure an accessible spot off busy Route 17 in the center of Orange County for visitors to sample its wares.
In documents filed with the village of Goshen Planning Board, consultants for Royal Wine Corp. describe a facility that would make and store several million gallons of Kedem wine and juice at a time, just as the company now does at a 35-acre property in the Ulster County hamlet of Marlboro where it also grows grapes.
The Goshen building, to be built on 83 acres on Route 17M, also would serve as a bottling site and distribution center for the company's kosher wine and spirits, replacing the bottling and storage building in Bayonne, N.J., where Royal Wine is now based.
And it's expected to be a tourist stop that draws around 100 visitors a day, including busloads of children in summer to watch Kedem grape juice being made. Royal Wine's plans include a two-story visitor center with a tasting room; an outdoor patio for customers; and an overhead viewing area inside the plant to show where grapes are crushed and the juice and wine blended, bottled and stored.
The plans are pending before the planning board as a modified version of a 500,000-square-foot warehouse that the board approved for that site last year. The board held a public hearing on the Royal Wine proposal on Oct. 26 and will continue that hearing next week.
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Royal Wine, established in 1948, is owned and run by the Herzog family, which has roots in the wine industry dating back nine generations to the 19th century in what later became Czechoslovakia. In addition to making Kedem, the company sells kosher wines from around the world, as well as kosher spirts such as whiskey and tequila.
The building footprint would take up either 549,000 square feet or 585,550 square feet - the plans list both measurements - but encompasses 635,000 square feet altogether because the offices and visitor center occupy two and three stories.
The plant would contain 40,000-gallons tanks to store newly produced wine and juice. More product would be held in what drawings show as a "future outdoor tank farm": a dozen 46-foot-high storage tanks that line one side of the building and look like fat farm silos.
According to the plans, the business would employ about 100 full-time workers and an additional 20 part-timers during the harvest season, from August to October. The site would draw about 50 trucks a day except during harvest, when the daily average could climb to about 75.
The visitor center would be open 10 hours a day from Sunday to Thursday, until noon on Friday, and closed on Saturday. Two to three buses per week are expected in summer.
Part of the building would have an average height of 56 feet, which is 21 feet higher than the village limit and would require a variance.
Royal Wine expects to use an average of 81,000 gallons per day of village water except at peak production times, when usage could rise to as high as 164,000 gallons per day.
The facility would generate an estimated 66,000 gallons per day of wastewater on average, with an expected peak of 134,000 gallons per day, according to the plans. The company may build its own treatment plant for that effluent, or else a pre-treatment facility to filter its wastewater before sending it to the village's sewage treatment plant.
The public hearing on Royal Wine's plans is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 30 at Goshen Village Hall, 276 Main St.
This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: New details on plans for Kedem kosher winery and warehouse in Goshen
