Making Sanitizer

A Tupelo wine maker is converting her business to produce a valuable weapon in the global war against the Coronavirus.

A tupelo wine maker is converting her business to produce a valuable weapon in the global war against the coronavirus.

Wcbi's chad groening has more.

Queens reward meadery opened its wine production facility on mccullough boulevard in may of 2018.

Owner jeri carter was a long time lee county school teacher who liked to make wine as a hobby.

And her wine is made with honey.

"wine with honey is called meade.

It's exactly the same process as wine making.

The only difference is that the main formentable in our product is honey instead of grapes.

We use all mississippi honey so when you drink our major you're literally taking a sip from back yard which is really cool."

But when the coronavirus crisis hit carter's business like so many across the country was ground to a halt until her family came up with the idea of converting their wine production into making hand sanitizer.

"and we saw this need and we realized well we've got part of the process here.

We can already do part of it.

What we needed was a still, which would take the alcohol level high enough to actually kill germs and kill the virus.

And so we started looking just to see if we could find one and everything just fell into place."

Carter says they were able to purchase this still from a company that had intended to use it at trade show, that was cancelled because of the coronavirus.

"so we able to get this still and get the other equipment to go with it.

We bought it on a monday.

They had it loaded on a truck by monday afternoon and the truck driver knowing what we wanted to this drove all night long and had it here to us by tuesday."

And thanks to some help from electrician and plumber friends they were able to get it installed by saturday.

During world war two the nation converted much of its industrial base from consumer products to creating what became known as the arsenal of democracy.

Now in 2020 queen's reward is converting its wine production into making hand sanitizer part of the arsenal of the new war against the coronavirus.

"so we're going to make it as fast as we can.

We just put it out on social media last night.

We have been flooded with calls and requests from people that personally want it and businesses and first responders of the people that need it so we're going to make it as fast as we can and make it available to everybody."

And carter says it's good for business.

"this gives us the ability not only to keep our business going but to get people employed.

Right now all of our employees we've had to lay off because we've had no work for them to do.

I can call them back and have them come back to work and possibly even hire some other people."

Carter says they will make the hand santizer as long as there is a demand.

She hopes to have some product available for purchase next week.

Chad groening wcbi news, tupelo.

Carter says once the hand sanitizer is available, it will cost 6 dollars for a 8-ounce bottle or 75 cents an ounce if you have