Seyval featured at Nissley's 30th fete tonight

A glimpse of the crowd at a recent Nissley evening concert.

Judy Nissley admits that she’s more a Vidal Blanc fan when it comes to that or the Seyval Blanc that Nissley Vineyards & Winery Estate in Bainbridge, Pa., produces. But this year’s Seyval is a special blend with a significant role: It will take a spot tonight as the feature wine for the winery’s 30th anniversary celebration when Music in the Vineyards 2008 rolls out its second show of the season. Big Band Nostalgia is the headliner.

Nissley said the anniversary designation fell to Naughty Marietta when the winery celebrated its 25th birthday in 2003.

“When we started years ago, in 1978, at the very first opening, we had seven wines on our list, and of those seven there are still two. And the list itself has expanded to 26 wines. Now, those two are the only ones we have. So five years ago for our 25th anniversary we featured the 25th vintage of Naughty Marietta,” she said Thursday night. “This year, we didn’t want to repeat that . . . [instead] we wanted to use a dry wine instead of a semi-dry or sweet, so we selected Seyval Blanc.

“So the Seyval Blanc this year now has a the label that says 30th vintage on it, and we were very particular how we made this blend. And we think we came up with a really super wine. I said, if we are going to really highlight it with a special label, it needs to taste really good, so we went through three or four trials on it to come up with the best wine we thought we could get. I think it’s really good.”

One of the reasons Nissley generally leans toward the Vidal, she said, is that it features less oak characteristics. But that wasn’t the case with the 2007 harvest, which found the wines come in with decreased acidity. “And so automatically it’s going to probably be a little more appealing to people because it doesn’t have that mouth-puckering characteristic that you get from the higher acids years. Some people really like that in a drier wine, other people want something that doesn’t have quite so much punch, something more in the California style. I’d say. This one doesn’t [have that mouth-puckering characteristic]. It’s smoother.”

That probably won’t put much of a dent in what’s typically the winery’s biggest seller at these concerts, which are among the region's longest running, now in their 26th season. They generally go through 60 to 90 cases a concert of Rhapsody in Blue, Nissley said. “That’s part of the reason we named it that way. Basically [it was] in honor of the concert series, and it’s a semi-dry white wine that’s very drinkable and is far and way our most popular wine.”