What started off as a basement hobby has grown into a full-grown family business for husband-and-wife team Steve and Katy Flood, owners of Hungry Run Wine Bar & Bistro.
The couple has made a name for themselves in the local wine game as Hungry Run Wine Cellars and recently expanded their business with a wine bar and bistro. The large location serves as the perfect atmosphere to enjoy some of their award-winning wine and offers new flavors and fine dining just over Seven Mountains at 10042 Highway 522 South in Lewistown.
But it all started back in the basement of their home in 2011, when Steve got interested in the winemaking process. He began with some winemaking kits and his hobby grew, as they sometimes do. He began experimenting and expanding his home operation.
“He started working with Chilean juice and started doing these small little carboy [jugs] in our game room with all these different juices,” says Katy. Family and friends who were the lucky beneficiaries of the newfound hobby really liked what they tasted.
With that positive feedback, the couple took what once was a fun hobby and turned it into Hungry Run Wine Cellars back in 2015. Originally, they partnered with another couple who distilled spirits, but the Floods ventured out on their own in 2019.
Through the years, Steve and Katy hit the wine festival circuit hard, growing their business, eventually shipping their wine to over 40 different states.
The “urban winery” uses grapes grown by other farmers to produce their product, offering a wide variety of styles, from dry reds made of fruit from Washington and California to whites and flavored sweet wines.
“All of our whites and flavored sweet wines come from Pennsylvania, including our fruit juices we use to flavor. We use Way Fruit Farm, as one example, for their Granny Smith juice,” says Katy. She adds, “People love our unique flavor combinations. We kind of get creative with our flavor combinations, like our strawberry watermelon, which is a Niagara base, and it tastes like a Jolly Rancher.”
In the new bistro, with its “industrial chic” feel, their drier wines are taking a more center stage.
“We have found that when we opened the restaurant, that those drier wines—our cabernet sauvignon, our cabernet franc—those wines are selling even better than our real sweet wines because people are ordering steak and want a dry red to pair with it,” says Katy.
The idea to open the wine bar and bistro sprung, like so many things, from the challenges of the pandemic. With wine festivals shut down, Hungry Run needed a way to reach customers.
“On Saturdays we would open our garage. We’d do wine and we’d have a food truck and lots of people. We thought, well, gosh, people love food and we want people to stay here and enjoy the food and the wine, so what is our next step?” says Katy.
They added on a 3,000-square-foot space to their winery location and got to work.
“We are kind of foodies. We love to cook and my husband loves to grill, so we decided we wanted to be known for our wood-fired steaks, wood-fired pork chops. … We wanted to do it a little higher end, because it is hard to find finer dining in this area,” says Katy.
Since opening in October, the response has been great, she says. The menu offers something for everyone, from homemade pasta, fish, salads, and wood-fired pizza to smash burgers, sandwiches, and shrimp or fish tacos. They are open for dinner Wednesday through Sunday and offer a full lunch Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They also serve brunch on Saturday and Sunday.
“We keep our menu very simple, not to overwhelm people with a million options. We use a lot of local ingredients. Fresh and local is really important to us,” says Katy.
With Steve moving over to grill master, their eldest son, Jake, has taken on winemaking duties. Jake started helping his folks at wine festivals and began assisting his dad in the winemaking process in 2019. Now the Penn State grad calls wine production his passion and has brought his wife along to the family business as well. Kasey manages the kitchen and social media.
In this true family business, the Floods’ younger kids help out too—serving, hostessing, and even washing dishes. It all makes for a wonderful work atmosphere, says Katy.
“We work really well together as a family. We are sort of a tightknit group. When it’s family, this is our business, so it is important to us. It is just us, so we get to decide what we want to do,” says Katy.
And, since October, what they have wanted to do is serve up good food to go along with their wine, providing the type of atmosphere that makes people want to stay a while and relax. As the weather warms, they will get to show off their outdoor patio, which will feature live music on Saturday nights starting the last weekend of May, giving diners another reason to stop on over and stay a while.
If you do, Katy says, “You are going to find really friendly service, in a slow-paced environment. We want people to come and sit and enjoy a glass of wine or two with their meal.” T&G
Vincent Corso enjoys drinking local and meeting new people at central Pennsylvania’s many interesting establishments. This column appears in the April 2023 issue of Town&Gown.
