With legislative hurdles cleared, Brandywine farm enters winemaking business as other farmers take a wait-and-see approach

As a half-dozen friends and family manned a makeshift grape-sorting station in the driveway of his Brandywine home, Joseph Romano scrambled around his garage-turned-winery, tinkering with the six large metal fermentation tanks installed inside.

Several hundred feet down the driveway Aug. 26, his wife, Jo-Ann Romano, was working with a few other friends and neighbors to cut bushels of grapes from rows of vines on their two-acre farm. Aside from the occasional crate of grapes that spilled on the way from the vineyard to the driveway, things ran smoothly.

The Romanos' harvest marked the beginning of the first attempt at commercial winemaking in Prince George's County. Local zoning codes and state liquor laws prevented wineries from operating in the county in the past, but a successful lobbying effort in late 2009 and earlier this year by local farmers and statewide winery interest groups cleared those barriers.