GUILDERLAND — People have seen the grapes from the road, and have been stopping to ask what’s going on, said James Besha, of the vineyard he owns in western Guilderland. But, while he will need customers in the future, he has nothing to show yet and hopes to “tamp down expectations” for now, he said.

James and Joyce Besha bought the property next door to their home and will be building a farm winery there, at 4730 Western Ave., as well as expanding the vineyards at some point and adding in other agricultural uses, James Besha said. The land on their newly acquired property is forested, and while much of it will be cleared for those uses, much of it will be kept as forest, including a 50-foot buffer of trees along Route 20.

A farm winery, Besha said, is one that makes wine from grapes grown on a farm. “It’s a winery where we can grow product, but it’s not a large-large scale commercial winery,” he said.

Besha appeared before the zoning board on Wednesday to request a special-use permit to allow a winery, which he said he anticipates possibly starting to build late this year. The board continued the public hearing to its June 20 meeting, before which Besha is to submit a stormwater-pollution prevention plan to the town-designated engineer, Delaware Engineering, for its consideration.

“We have a lot of permits we need to get, which are in process now but take a long time,” Besha said, including licenses from both the federal and state governments to produce the wine. “It’s a slow process,” he said.

Wine production is new territory for the couple. Joyce Besha is retired from working as a Berne-Knox-Westerlo school nurse; she has a green thumb, her husband said. James Besha owns Albany Engineering Corporation; its primary work, he explained, involves owning and operating hydroelectric projects.

“We make electricity,” he said.

He and his family “enjoy growing things.”

The wine business is “really three processes, obviously,” he said — growing grapes, producing wine, and selling it. He and his wife like the challenge of each part of the business being a little different.

The Beshas both grew up in Guilderland and went to Guilderland High School but later moved to the Hilltowns and raised their family there, spending about 40 years there. “It’s hard growing things up there,” James Besha said. “There’s a lot of rocks up there.”

The couple moved “back down here — wonderful soil — and we said, ‘Let’s grow something,’” Besha recalled. Their two sons have moved to Guilderland too.

“We’re back to where we started,” James Besha said of the couple’s return to Guilderland.

They planted grapes about four years ago and expect to have wine to sell next year. They hope to open late next spring.

They harvest the grapes in the second or third week of September. “We try to get them before the birds do,” said James Besha. His wife added, “You know they’re ready because the birds come in.”

They are growing cool-climate grapes that have been developed by researchers at Cornell University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin — “grapes that are very similar to the grapes you already know about, like Chardonnay and Riesling, but they’re grown for colder climates. And they make a very good wine; it’s just slightly different names.”

The couple will sell about six white and six red wines, some drier and some sweeter, Besha said.

Cool-climate grapes are becoming a “major phenomenon” in the Northeast and Midwest, he said.

Some of the grapes have been developed, for instance, from Pinot noir: “They’re kind of grandchildren; they’ve been cross-bred with other varieties that are more cold-tolerant, so they have different names than some of the ones you’re used to hearing.”

The couple has been able to make a couple of small-scale test batches already.

“We haven’t plowed the vineyard up yet. We think we’re on the right track,” Besha said with a laugh.

“Calling it a ‘vineyard’ is high-falutin’,” he added. “We’re grape farmers.”