North Hills Businessman Combines Pizza-Making With Wine-Making
RICHLAND (KDKA) -- Frank Mazzotta who owns Adrian's Pizza in Richland has been making wine since he was a kid.
"I still use the wine press that my dad used to use," Mazzotta told KDKA money editor Jon Delano on Friday.
But now he is turning the second floor above his pizzeria into a fully licensed winery where he can sell both bottles of wine and conduct wine tastings.
This wine in plastic casks has already been fermenting for a while.
Delano: "What kind of wine is this?"
Mazzotta: "That's a Concord. That's an American standard."
Delano: "And how long will it stay in this container?"
Mazzotta: "It'll stay in there for about eight months to a year."
After which it will get bottled and corked at this machine.
Mazzotta offers all kinds of wines and has won numerous awards, but he's especially fond of his many different fruit wines which have become popular even for those who don't like traditional wine.
Delano: "This is Very Raspberry Wine?"
Mazzotta: "This is made from raspberry juice. We ferment it and then add some juice back into it to give it the flavor."
While Mazzotta and his assistant Sean Berger make wine upstairs, downstairs his crew is preparing pizza.
What makes this place unique in Pittsburgh is that it's the only pizza place in the area where you can get homemade pizza and homemade wine to go with it.
Customers can either buy a bottle of wine upstairs and drink it downstairs or buy bottles to take home, knowing, as Mazzotta says, "We make it in-house. We don't buy it from other companies."
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