‘Ocean City Winery’ owners drop plans for an on-site tasting room

Mike and Robin Halpern still plan to make wine at the former Cape May County tree farm they turned into vineyards, but after a year of fighting with neighbors, they say they’ve dropped plans for an 80-seat tasting room there.

“We will continue moving forward,” Mike Halpern said Tuesday. For now, the tasting room will be shelved, though he said the winery would seek to open a satellite tasting room outside of Upper Township.

Despite its proposed name, the winery is located over the bridge and outside the borders of Ocean City, the famously dry Shore town.

Halpern said the couple has resubmitted the required agricultural management plan before the Cape May County Agricultural Development Board (CADP), hoping that without the complicating factor of a tasting room open to the public, the project can proceed.

He said they had determined that financially, the winery still made sense without an on-site a tasting room. He said this year’s harvest in Upper Township was “so much fun,” and was used in wines made elsewhere that were well-received.

“Such a nice season,” he said. “The grapes grew. That’s joyous.”

“It’s much cheaper for me to run a vineyard not connected to a winery,” Halpern said. “It doesn’t have to be beautiful.”

The winery plans have been mired in controversy for at least a year, with neighbors questioning his use of pesticides, including paraquat, the potential for traffic and disturbances that might stem from a tasting room, fear of it evolving into a wedding venue, and other complaints. They argued the site adjacent to a residential neighborhood was not suited for a winery and tasting room.

The neighbors hired a lawyer, Richard King, who appealed the plans. King said Tuesday he was consulting with his clients before commenting on the Halperns’ new plan.

Upper Township attorneys also opposed aspects of the Halperns’ plan, which is currently under review by the county Agricultural Farm Board. Frank Corrado, who represents Upper Township, said he had not yet seen a new application without the tasting room, so could not comment.

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Two miles as the drone flies from the actual Ocean City, the former Trop’s Tree Farm on Bayaire Road was to be rechristened the “Ocean City Winery,” which would surely turn some heads — and cars — off the Garden State Parkway.

The Halperns took steps to designate the 5-acre property a commercial farm under New Jersey Right to Farm laws. It was already preserved land, continuously farmed since 1970, with development rights sold to the county by the former owner for $216,132 in 2005.

The couple moved from Collingswood three years ago to live full-time on the farm near Beesley’s Point. They purchased the farm in 2005 for $333,000. They built a pole barn and began growing grapes.

But relations remained tense along the vineyards behind Bayaire Road. The neighbors dug in for a long fight, while Halpern installed a system where he is alerted if neighbors cross over from their backyards onto his property. One was recently warned about trespassing.

Halpern said the delay in their plans allowed them to analyze “how N.J. wineries survived the pandemic business restrictions on operations.”

“The result is that we believe we can meet our financial goals by foregoing an on-site tasting room and instead relying on off-site and online sales,” Halpern wrote in an email. Their revised application focuses “solely on farming functions, namely the growing of fruit and the associated processing and packaging of the crop.”

As for the future, Halpern said, “I’m not saying we’re never going to do a tasting room.”