Cisco Brewers expansion more than half complete
BY PETER B. BRACE
Out at Cisco Brewers, the metal-roofed distillery building is up.

Retail/tasting rooms for the distillery and winery are also constructed as are, per Nantucket's building code, a three-hour firewall between the brewery's and distillery's new retail/tasting areas and handicap accessible men's and women's bathrooms.

Between the original brewery building and new distillery facility of Nantucket Vineyards, Cisco Brewers and Triple-Eight Distillers, the developing little libation campus was abuzz with activity at the end of last week.

Work crews attached trim to the brewery addition, others worked on the interior of the winery tasting space while a steady stream of brewery visitors passed in and out of the brewery, undeterred by the chaos of expansion.

"Doesn't seem to be slowing down the flow," said Brewer Randy Hudson. "When we first started putting up the distillery, and we had some pictures of what was going to happen here, everybody said, to a person, 'I hope it's not too fancy.' Little do they know we're not financed in such a way that we can get anything fancy."

Hudson, not wanting to put a specific date on when the town-mandated expansion would wrap up and be ready, said that it should all be done by the summer of 2007.

"It's the half-full, half-empty theory," he said last Thursday afternoon walking around the complex. "Are we half-full or half-empty, Dean?" Hudson asks winery co-founder Dean Long.

Long laughs a nervous, but positive laugh, hinting at his own cautious optimism that the project