The most inventive alcohol producer on the North Fork just picked up the one license it did not already have. On September 9, the State Liquor Authority issued a winery license to Matchbook Distilling Company at 230 Corwin Street in Greenport, effective October 1 and running through the fall of 2029. As of next month, the building that already distills spirits and ferments cider will be licensed to make wine.

For most producers a new license is paperwork. For this one it is closer to a missing puzzle piece, because Matchbook is not a distillery in the way the word usually means on Long Island.

The drinks lab on Corwin Street

Founded in 2016 by distiller Leslie Merinoff Kwasnieski and her partners, Matchbook built its reputation on an unusual model: rather than pushing one house brand, it operates as a research and development facility that designs and produces custom spirits for bars, restaurants and beverage brands, many of them far from Long Island. Gins built around a single farm's botanicals, liqueurs and amari that exist nowhere else, one-off runs conceived with the bartenders who will pour them. The industry noticed; InsideHook named Matchbook its distillery of the year in this year's Spill Awards.

The license stack at Corwin Street tells the same story. State records show the company holding a micro-distiller license, a farm distiller license and a farm cidery license, along with a combined craft status it has carried since 2021. The winery license issued this week joins that set, and it means the full range of fermentation and distillation, from cider to spirits to wine, can now happen legally under one Greenport roof.

Why the wine license is different

The instrument matters here. Most North Fork wine producers hold farm winery licenses, which come with a condition: the wine must be made from New York grown fruit. What Matchbook received is a commercial winery license, which carries no such restriction. That is the flexible version, the one that lets a producer work with whatever fruit a project calls for, from a Cutchogue vineyard's merlot to something no farm winery could touch.

Given how Matchbook works, that flexibility is the point. A facility that designs beverages to order was, until now, unable to say yes when the order involved wine, vermouth or anything else in the winemaking family. Starting October 1, it can.

Timing that writes itself

The license lands at the exact moment the North Fork turns its attention to grapes. Harvest on Long Island's wine trail begins in earnest in September and October, which means Matchbook's winery license becomes effective in the very weeks that fruit is coming off the vines a short drive up Route 25 and Sound Avenue. Whether the first Matchbook wine project involves North Fork grapes is the company's news to make, but the geography could hardly be better arranged: an experimental production house, newly licensed for wine, sitting in the middle of New York's most established wine region at picking time.

A busy year in Greenport

The winery license caps an expansive stretch for the company. In June, state records show, Matchbook added a food and beverage license under the name Days Like These, its cocktail bar identity, at 305 North Road in Greenport, effective July 1. Its tasting room on Corwin Street has become a fixture of Greenport's off-Main-Street draw, the place visitors go to taste spirits that will never appear in a liquor store.

For readers keeping score of Greenport's remarkable year, this is another entry in a long list: a new butcher shop on Front Street, a hotel reborn as Oyster Estate, and now the village's drinks laboratory clearing the way to make wine. The East End's most walkable village keeps finding new things to be.

Nothing announced yet says what Matchbook will make first under the new license, and the company has not said whether visitors will see wine in the tasting room this fall. What the public record establishes is capability: as of October 1, the village best known for boats and oysters holds a winery license, and it belongs to the least predictable producer on the Island.