Wine Off The Vine opens Friday and continues through Sunday at 10 midstate wineries

What the Uncork York trail is calling Wine Off The Vine, another name for Nouveau Weekend, will begin Friday and continue through Sunday at 10 wineries in midstate Pennsylvania.

Tickets are $10 to taste wine made from freshly harvested grapes at any of the participating wineries. There might be some minor variation, but the wineries are expected to be open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can buy those at any of the wineries involved, although note according to the Web site that a $1 processing fee will be assessed per ticket for anyone who used a credit card to purchase them.

A number of winemaker dinners are being held in conjunction with the event. PR coordinator extraordinaire Alison Smolinski noted in a Wednesday e-mail that the Allegro Vineyard's dinner in the Commonwealth Room at the Yorktowne Hotel in York this weekend is sold out. That's a total of 70 seats that will be filled for the food and drink, the latter produced by winemaker and owner Carl Helrich.

State wine trails, stores ring in the Nouveau

Wine moves to the forefront this week across the state, and not just because it's nearly Thanksgiving and you figure to be buying a few bottles or cases for your dinner table.

It's also Nouveau week, the first release of the 2009 vintage. The state makes it a big to-do Thursday when the Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau goes on sale and is complemented by a number of free tastings through the weekend. A number will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday throughout the Philadelphia suburbs and west to Lancaster and Harrisburg. You have a pretty good selection of wines to pair up with your Thanksgiving food, and one of those on the list is the Beaujolais.

This Beaujolias release on the third Thursday in November has become a regular event on the wine calendar in France and the United States. What is becoming more the standard among Pennsylvania wineries is a similar release, accompanied by plenty of hoopla and food pairings.

One will take place along the Lehigh Valley Wine Trail, where Nouveau Weekend will be held Saturday and Sunday. In addition to being able to taste and purchase the wines, trail members are expected to offer Thanksgiving-themed food pairings, live entertainment, and more.

Nouveau Weekend will be held at all nine wineries on the Lehigh Valley Wine Trail from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. A few wineries will be open as late as 6 both days. According to a release sent out on behalf of the trail, here's what some of the wineries are planning:

Big Creek Vineyard in Kresgeville is recommending a warm Spiced Apple as an aperitif and Nouveau Red with the big bird.

Blue Mountain Vineyards of New Tripoli suggests its 2008 Riesling - a refreshingly dry, intensely fruity and crisp wine with a very long lingering finish.

Cherry Valley Vineyards of Saylorsburg will serve its award-winning Cranberry Blush, a semi-sweet that is crisp and clean, similar to a white zinfandel with intense cranberry flavor. It starts sweet and finishes with a well-balanced citrus zest.

Clover Hill Vineyards & Winery of Breinigsville offers its new release 2007 Oak Vidal Blanc – upfront rich butter and cream flavor, the finish bursting with lemon and zesty acidity.

Galen Glen Vineyard & Winery, Andreas: Cellar White is a cuvee of the vineyard - Vidal, Riesling and Cayuga. Created in the style of German wines, it is an arrested fermentation (all sweetness is natural and from the grapes) with an elegant wild flower nose and brightly layered fruit ending.

Vynecrest Vineyards & Winery of Breinigsville will serve the Gamay Beaujolais Nouveau 2009 vintage wine, a perfect accompaniment to your holiday meals.

No Nouveau, but the old standbys should make visitors plenty happy at Pinnacle Ridge

Lehigh Valley Wine Trail will be among several in the state that will hold Nouveau Weekend NEXT weekend, a day or two after the Beaujolais from France is released in the state stores. You probably recognize the term even if you pay little attention to wine. Nouveau is, obviously, new wine that only a month or two ago was hanging out in clusters on the vine. All nine wineries will be participating in the promotion, which will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the 21st and noon to 5 p.m. on the 22nd.

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Pinnacle Ridge Winery will be one of those wineries, indeed open until 6 both days, only you won't be getting the Nouveau when you exit the Krumsville exit of I-78 and drive the half-mile or so to the tasting room. Had a chance to bust on winemaker and owner Brad Knapp on Thursday about Nouveau Weekend without the Nouveau, since he decided not to make it this year after producing it since 1995. The reason? Simple. Lots of effort for minimal reward.

"I had made a few from Chambourcin," Knapp said by phone, talking about the grapes he incorporated into his previous Nouveaus. "Which is troublesome because it's so late [to harvest]. It's hard to get the wine made in time. And then I was purchasing some Dornfelter, which is an early ripening German red variety, which works reasonably well. But I was not real happy frankly with the sales of that style."

Knapp said that he and wife Christy were touring wineries on Long Island when they entered Macari Winery, which "put out a wine called early Chardonnay, I think it was called. And it was an oaked wine, released very early. I think it was November. And they did very well with it and we decided to try it. They pitched it as an Austrian pub wine. . . . the taverns around Vienna will serve this newly fermenting wine in the fall. So we pitched it that way, that this was an Austrian-style Nouveau. And that actually did well. Slightly sweet and very fruity."

But, he added, no matter what he made, it was a lot of work to produce a small quantity of wine that just didn't have much appeal. "The bang for the buck was low, let's put it that way," Knapp said.

So what you'll get instead will be a few of Pinnacle Ridge's award-winning line of wines paired up with Turkey Day foods. They'll match up their 2008 Chambourcin and slightly sweet, fruity 2008 Chambourcin Rose with smoked turkey breast piled on lightly toasted baguettes. Those will be topped with a variety of Robert Rothschild spreads: Caramelized Onion Balsamic Spread, Champagne GarliC Honey Mustard or Raspberry Cranberry Horseradish Sauce.

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Check out the Web site to see the wide array of food to be served at Customer Appreciation Weekend on Dec. 5-6 and the chocolate and red wine pairing event the following weekend. Knapp said there have been plenty of customers to appreciate this year.

"Our business is phenomenal," he said. "We're doing great. My take on it is that most of us, myself included, there's a strong element of entertainment. And we're inexpensive entertainment. And we're local entertainment. So folks are getting in their car and driving around the countryside and spending a few bucks on buying a few bottles of wine instead of hopping in a plane to go somewhere or doing something more expensive."