Chasing rabbits
Drawn on procreate for iPad with dragon heath brush.
Hello!
Starting a winery is no small task. Knowing where to start may be even more difficult. But with the same mentality that led me to start Nosy Beagle in the first place, I’m just going to go for it: explain who I am, how I got here, and why I decided to create a winery of my own.
For those who aren’t friends or family—which is somehow 95% of the email list so far—my name is Austin Montgomery, and I’m obsessed with craft beverages. So obsessed, in fact, that I earned a PhD in wine flavor chemistry from Cornell University. (Google Scholar link here if you’re curious, though I’ll candidly admit that it isn’t the most exciting reading.)
Truthfully, I may know even more about craft beer. On a graduate-student budget, beer offered more exploration per dollar, and years of “rigorous training” with roommates during COVID-19 and friends at Bike Bar in Ithaca taught me to identify styles, recognize faults, and understand how ingredients can be manipulated to achieve a desired result.
But wine has always felt different. It has always contained something extra that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
That is, until I completed an internship in Seattle.
The secret is surprise
A newfound interest in live jazz helped me understand what makes wine so special: surprise.
One day, I stumbled upon a bar called The Rabbit Box and heard a small jazz duo playing. At the time, I was curious about jazz, but I also had the impression that it was mostly for pretentious people who wanted to seem smart.
Midway through the show, a woman walked in without a word, sat down at the piano, and began playing “Someday My Prince Will Come” alongside the duo. I recognized the song from Snow White, but I had never heard it played like that—with such soul, precision, and improvisation. I was captivated.
I realize now that if I hadn’t recognized the song and had an expectation of what it was “supposed to be,” I might never have appreciated how completely the artist made it her own.
I think wine is a lot like jazz—specifically bebop. An expectation is established through a grape variety or musical standard, but the result should be both recognizable and distinctive. There is tension between familiarity and surprise, and that tension can be used to tell a story.
I think of wine as an art form. Some of that artistry may have been diluted by mass-produced wines and celebrity cameos, but it is an art nonetheless. Nosy Beagle is my attempt to tell a story through not only winemaking, but also labels and branding, all 100% done by me. It might not be the “best” or “most polished,” but I can promise it will be the most “me.”
No decision will be made to appease shareholders or appease consumer demographics. It will be my story—one that I hope can become a source of joy, friendship, and community, which is ultimately what I believe wine should be a vessel for.
Where does the beagle come in?
In January 2025, two major things happened in my life: I finished my PhD work and began working in a dairy lab at Cornell University, and I adopted my beagle, Booker.
While I greatly appreciate my boss and coworkers in the dairy lab, I felt stuck. It was doing the same thing every day. While play and creativity are celebrated in wine, milk production is much more standardized. I spent my days watching filtered milk drip one drop at a time from a reverse-osmosis membrane in a windowless lab that smelled like sour milk.
That experience motivated me to reach out to Apollo’s Praise, a standout winery on Seneca Lake, and take a part-time job in its tasting room. I’ve loved every minute of it. Driving home from AP one day, I realized that I could simply start my own winery—not with the goal of being better than anyone else, but simply to make wine of my own.
I’ve been working toward that goal ever since.
Booker enters the story because he is, without question, always chasing rabbits and following his nose. Somewhere between chasing him through the woods during one of his escape heists and trying to wrestle a rabbit out of his mouth, I realized that he and I aren’t so different. We both have a tendency to follow our noses.
Craft beverages have always been among the most fascinating things in the world to me, and I’ve gone wherever that fascination has led: to graduate school for a PhD, to Seattle for an internship at an upcycled-coffee company, and now to Nosy Beagle.
I don’t know exactly how this will go. I’ve never worked a harvest before, and I’ve never owned a small business. But my nose tells me to follow this passion, so here I am.
Nosy Beagle began with the belief that curiosity is worth following, even when you don’t know where it will lead. Booker will continue chasing rabbits, I’ll continue chasing interesting wine, and hopefully you’ll come along for the adventure.
