Meet the Host: Jennifer Estelle and the Gut Decision That Sparked Endless Mountains Vineyards

She didn’t buy a vineyard because she knew grapes. She bought it because her gut would not let it go, and then she built the skills, the community ties, and the mission around it. We sit down with Jen Estelle of Endless Mountains Vineyards in Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains to talk about how a scenic winery can become an intentional gathering place, a small business with soul, and a platform for real local impact.

Jen shares the origin story behind the Be and Let Live Project, her nonprofit focused on bridging human and animal welfare with a special emphasis on pit bull type dogs. We get into fostering, why dogs need time to decompress outside the shelter system, and what responsible pet ownership looks like when you support adopters with trainers, vet resources, and a safety net. She also teases a vision for dog friendly cabins and glamping sites that could turn a weekend getaway into a direct lifeline for a foster dog.

We also talk shop on marketing a destination vineyard, building demand through networking, and designing events people actually want: small weddings, bachelorette parties, showers, educational workshops, and wellness experiences like yoga and qi gong. Plus, we dig into Pennsylvania wine myths, small batch winemaking, and what it takes to balance sugars and acids when Mother Nature calls the shots. If you love wine tourism, holistic wellness retreats, and stories where purpose meets place, this one is for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a reason to visit PA wine country, and leave a review with your favorite moment.

To learn more about Endless Mountains Vineyards visit:
https://www.EndlessMountainsVineyards.com/
Endless Mountains Vineyards 
296 Vineyard Lane  
Falls, PA 18615
267-785-3814  

Transcript

Welcome To The Vineyard Story

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Endless Mountains Vineyards Podcast, where the landscape slows you down, the wine invites conversation, and every visit tells a story. Join your host, Jennifer Estelle, owner and operator of Endless Mountains Vineyards. Nestled in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania's Endless Mountains, this podcast is an invitation into intimate vineyard experiences, small gatherings, meaningful events, and stories that live where people, purpose, and the land meet. Endless Mountains Vineyards, where life is grape and connection is intentional.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Welcome everyone. Jed, it is great to be with you. We're excited to hear more about you. Over the years, you've worked with many families and for babies across Pennsylvania. Some listeners might not be familiar, though, with your full journey. So if we could take it from the top, could you share a little background about your company and what you do?

Buying A Vineyard On Instinct

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Sure. Thanks, Julie. We are actually in northern Pennsylvania. So we're northeast. We represent Nipa, and we are in the Endless Mountains region. So we have a great outdoor landscape here at the Vineyard. This is our fourth season, my third year living here, but going into our fourth season. And I was telling you earlier, I didn't know much about grapes when I purchased the vineyard. I purchased the vineyard because I basically wanted to have a place to operate my nonprofit and be more involved in rescue and advocacy work. And I ultimately wanted to have a holistic health and wellness retreat center. And I stumbled upon the vineyard and, you know, just my gut told me this was the place to move forward with the transaction of buying the vineyard. And I've learned so much in the past four years on Pennsylvania wine, the growing industry, our partner industry. We work a lot with local vineyards and wineries. They have all been open arms. It brought me a whole new respect to farmers and agriculture and just the history behind everything that's here in the Endless Mountains and being at the vineyard and being our fourth year and being able to operate and sell wine and just really educate the community on all of the things that are brewing here has been really awesome.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

Well, congratulations on this amazing feat of starting this company and all your rescue work. And may I ask, have you brought many dogs there and like what's going on now with that? And you talked about prior to this hitting the record button, you talked about some very cool plans of what you want to do with uh dogs there.

Foster Dogs And The Nonprofit Mission

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Can you expand on that?

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Oh, yeah, of course. So dogs are just really my sole food. I had dogs my whole entire life. About 10, 12 years ago, I adopted a pit bull type dog and it changed the trajectory of my life. I moved to Philadelphia for a little bit. I'm native to Northeast PA. After COVID, I started a nonprofit. I'm seeing some gaps in rescue, and I wanted to be more involved. And I thought it'd be really cool if I could have some land and I can have some cabins on the property, and every cabin would have a foster dog. And my nonprofit is called the Be and Let Live Project. And our mission is to help to help bridge the gap between human and animal welfare. And we specifically focus on pit bull type dogs just because they're the dogs that are overwhelming our shelters right now. So our biggest initiative is responsible pet ownership and being the resource for the family that adopts the dog, and of course, span neuter initiatives. So I stumbled upon the vineyard when I started looking for land to buy, and I thought, you know, I can operate a vineyard. What's so hard about that? And I was telling you before, I naively bought this vineyard. And I'm so glad I did because I did follow my gut, and I'm a big believer in signs and synchronicities, and I kept asking the universe for signs, and it kept providing all of these signs. So when people would say, Why are you buying a vineyard? I'm like, because my gut's telling me that this is the place. And then I can also incorporate my rescue work, my advocacy work. So there's so much intention and passion behind everything that we do here at Endless Mountain Vineyards that allows us to have a profitable nonprofit to give back to the community.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

Oh, that's so wonderful. And I mean, you had me at being an animal lover and then a winery. I mean, you just bringing those two together, dogs and wine.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Yeah, we're gonna have some glamping sites this year. So um, yeah, we you asked the question was how many dogs? Um, since I've moved here, I had two dogs, and then I did foster fail, my very first foster. And then I've I am on my fourth foster now. So Buddy is our fourth dog that we've been able to stop from going into the shelter. Our dogs have been able to come here, decompress, get what they need, and then go into their forever home. And then that's where the Be and Let Live project steps into. We're a resource for those adopters. So if the dog is, you know, showing some behaviors that they need to learn how to adapt to, or they need a trainer, or he's got to go to the vet, or you know, I'm always saying, bring him back, I'll watch them for a week. We just wanted to make sure that if you are adopting a dog, that you have a resource between, you know, shelter and home life, and that dog will always be and their family will always be part of the Be and Let Live project that happens to be here on the vineyard, which is just a beautiful event space in itself.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Yeah, I saw images online, but what a beautiful landscape. And I mean, you could just feel like a calming, relaxing kind of impact or effect or something. But

Marketing A Purpose Driven Winery

SPEAKER_02 6:08

I, you know, I have to ask you about marketing here too, because it's such a unique blend of uh what you're doing in a very powerful one. How do you market your business?

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Well, you do a lot of networking, there's a lot of overlap. So our target market audience is anyone that's outdoorsy, loves river, loves food, loves wine, loves yoga, any kind of holistic wellness workshop that we offer here. Um, we have a lot of avenues that we can take, but mostly just networking and you know, trying to get the word out there. We are, like I said, we're in our fourth year, and the marketing part has been a big learning curve.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

And

Events Wellness Workshops And Wine List

SPEAKER_02 6:51

what kind of wines do you offer and what experiences can somebody, you know, have when they come there if they maybe wanted to do like some type of group or party activity?

SPEAKER_00 7:01

Yeah. So we offer all kinds of events. We're an intimate space, so we offer small weddings, bachelorette parties, bridal showers, baby showers. Um, we also do educational workshops. We had an educational workshop here last weekend with the University of Scranton service dogs. We're having a workshop this weekend. We have someone coming in teaching qi gong, which is really nice because it helps you ground, connect with the property, connect with nature. And then we're going to take some of the old grape vines and make reeves, forage, talk about the medicinal plants that we have here. And then the wines that we have are we want to debunk that myth about Pennsylvania wines too. We don't do fruit balm wines, we do a specialty um blends of we have a white, we have a cab franc. Our white blends are Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Tramonette is one of our biggest ones. We planted Riesling three years ago, so hopefully we'll have a nice little batch this year. We're small batched wines. Everything we do here is done with love and intention. We prune all of our own vines, we um harvest all of our own grapes, we hand pick them, we hand select them, we crush them, we press them, we ferment them, and then we turn them into wines. I'm gonna have to send you um our list. We have a really nice wine list here this season. I'm very excited about it.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

Oh, it sounds like a wonderful selection. Thank you for sharing that. And so I have to ask you like a couple fun questions too. I mean, other

Leaving Corporate Life For This Work

SPEAKER_02 8:36

than I mean, you're doing amazing things. It sounds like, like you said, you you've always been like a huge dog lover. Did you know you'd always, like when you're younger, you would always go into some type of rescue work?

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Well, no. Um, I didn't understand, you know, what how how needed rescue and advocacy work was until I adopted a pit bull type dog. But my background is in healthcare. So I was an X-ray and I did ultrasound. So I was the one that told you if you were having a boy or a girl. And then I went into the corporate world and I worked for GE Healthcare up until this past January. I just left my corporate job. So I was in sales and then I was in education, and it all kind of tied in to it aligned perfectly to me, like building my business, operating the nonprofit. Um, so no, I didn't think that I would be a vineyard owner. I always knew that dogs would be a part of my life, but I didn't know how to combine that passion and to make it like something, you know, profitable. Not that rescue work is profitable, it feeds your soul, which you know, then the abundance comes. So no, I didn't set out to be a vineyard owner um or you know, a pit bull advocate, but it found me.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

That was perfect timing. They said, I we found you too, mom. Um, and then I I like to ask this this is the last question. What did you uh major in? Then was it in the something in that had to do with healthcare in college?

Energy Nature And Making Great Wine

SPEAKER_00 10:07

It was in science. So my um my bachelor, I have a bachelor's of science, but I mean that's very broad too. And to think about ultrasound was very physics driven, which is very it, you know, if you think about it, what you give is what you receive. So it's all about energy, which later in life I became a yoga instructor and I I've learned a lot about mindfulness and meditation, which is all energy work, and that ties into the wine and the nature, you know, mother nature's in charge. Every season has been completely different from our first season to this season. So we're constantly playing this balancing game of figuring out what the grapes need and then bringing it into the wine production as well. So you're always balancing the sugars and the acids and the and you know, mother nature is in charge, and we're just kind of helping her balance it out so that we can prove that what she produces is just amazing stuff. And if we go with the flow, amazing things happen.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Well, I want to thank you so much for sharing more, you know, information about your business, the your rescue aspirations and your past. We really appreciate you, Jen.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Thank you. This is gonna be fun. I can already tell we're gonna be best friends.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

Yes, and I mean your dog, I hope your dog approves. That's what it sounded like. So he agreed. Yeah, yes. Well, we'll see you next time. Can't wait. All right, thank you. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Thank

Visit Details And Farewell

SPEAKER_01 11:40

you for spending time with us on the Endless Mountains Vineyards podcast. Whether you're discovering Pennsylvania wines, exploring the beauty of the Endless Mountains region, or simply looking for experiences that feel personal and grounded. Endless Mountains Vineyards offers something a little different. This is a place where wine brings people together with purpose. We'd love to welcome you to the vineyard, share a glass, and invite you into the experience. You can call or text 267-785-3814 or visit Endless Mountains Vineyards.com to learn more about upcoming events and vineyard experiences. Endless Mountains Vineyards, where life is great and every visit gives back.