A Winery Retirement

Pam and Larry Satek always dreamed of moving out of Chicago back to Pam’s hometown of Freemont, Indiana on the northeast edge of the state. Pam was a school principal and Larry was a PhD chemist with BP Amoco. He was also an amateur wine maker.

In 1993 they decided to plant some vines on an old orchard on the banks of Lake James that was owned by Pam’s great grandfather, Fred Kreibaum, a German immigrant who planted apples on the land in 1915. They started with 1250 vines on 3 acres. By 2001 they had built a winery right along the Indiana Toll Road in Angola, IN, giving them excellent visibility. They moved back home and now run the business full time. Pam said, “I retired to get up at 6 a.m. in the morning and work until 11 at night? That doesn’t exactly sound like retirement, does it?”

And, when I visited their operation last month it didn’t appear that retirement was on their minds. They talked of their dreams and vision for their relatively new winery. They were another great entrepreneurial success story that I found so often in my travels of the past year.