Maryland's growth: more spurt than squirt

Kevin Atticks, the executive director of the Maryland Wineries Association, and Jennifer Eckinger, who manages the Pennsylvania Winery Association, have been extremely helpful to me in trying to launch this site.

I talked to both a couple of days ago about the growth that both states are experiencing, which seemed like a good place to begin this idea of covering regional wine as a beat. What follows below is the interview with Atticks, and the one with Eckinger will run in a day or two. Once I get a few technical issues resolved, I’d like to finally post a podcast I did with Carl Helrich of Allegro Vineyards in The Brogue, Pa. Carl, hang in there. Haven’t forgotten you. Never thought the simple task of moving an audio file to blogger would knock me down for the count, but it did. I’m back on my feet. Hope to have it posted by Tuesday, May 6, and then move this into more of a daily posting.
Cheers.



Own a bottle yet from Cascia Vineyards? How about Galloping Goose or Running Hare or Serpent Ridge? Didn’t think so.

These are four of the eight Maryland wineries – the other four are Knob Hall and Cassinelli Vineyards and Perigeux and Heimbuch Estate Vineyards & Winery – expected to open at some point this year. And there will be more to come, based on everything executive director Kevin Atticks is seeing.

“It was pretty stagnant until 1998, ‘99,” Atticks said by phone the other day. But in the eight, nine years since then, “we have more than tripled. And we see that continuing because there’s just a bigger interest in wine. I’ve talked to three people today who are starting vineyards-slash-wineries who I didn’t know of yesterday. Now they could be five years out, six years out. But there are multiple people a week that I talk to about legitimate start-up.”

This passion for wine and winemaking is one of the reasons this blog makes sense now. This area of southern Pennsylvania and Maryland remains an adolescent in terms of growing grapes, certainly young when compared nationally to the more established states such as California, New York and Virginia, among others. It’s safe to say that many wine drinkers are oblivious to the wineries that exist in their state; in fact, even those aware of the growth are most likely unfamiliar with how many are out there. It was the Uncork York tour last year, which took my wife and I to 11 wineries from the Susquehanna River west to Gettysburg and north to Harrisburg, that provided the seed for this idea.

Atticks said right now there are 33 wineries across his state. “That’s licensed wineries that are making wine,” he said. “I expect to have 37 or 38 by the end of this year…. these are big jumps for a state our size.”

That increase, he expects, will continue at around a 20 percent pace for the next five or 10 years.

Now, not everyone who calls the Maryland and Pennsylvania wine associations will be churning out Chambourcin or Vidal Blanc by 2015. Some might never get beyond dreaming about it.

“They may never have the land,” Atticks said. “They may go away, which is what, think, most people do. It’s romantic . . .then they start seeing what it really means. It’s a lot of work.”

Because of the time at takes to move that dream along to a working vineyard, the more accurate numbers in assessing state growth are tied to sales.

“If I look at what the fed tells me is the number of wineries in the state,” Atticks said, “they tell me there are 49 wineries in Maryland. And that’s not true. What they are looking at is how many people have received their federal license to manufacture and they may not make themselves known to me until they are two years out, which could be three years from now. So we always go by gallons sold, because, practically speaking, that’s what’s on the ground.”

While that footprint has expanded to southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore over the last 10 years, Atticks said the biggest growth area heading past 2015 likely will occur in the Piedmont. “You have this region between Baltimore and western Maryland … kind of north of 95, [where] you’ve got the hills,” he said. “It’s just a great place to grow grapes. From Baltimore, out toward Frederick, and past Hagerstown out west. It’s going to be the best growing area. Excellent.”