A big splash: York trail's Nouveau event overflows tasting room at Naylor Wine Cellars

Dick Naylor said he looked at the 50 or so folks who visited his winery in Stewartstown on Friday and wasn't quite sure what the rest of the first Uncork York Wine Just Off The Vine promotion would bring. Turned out to be almost more than he could handle.

Naylor said they thought maybe 150 or 200 would stop by Saturday to taste his 2009 vintage wines. Instead, they wound up doubling that. "It was phenomenal," he said by phone Monday afternoon, confirming just by his tone that this likely will be an annual event for the trail. "We had over 350 people in here on Saturday. It was just nonstop. What happened, there were so many people we took care of them as far as the tasting [out of the barrel] was concerned, but when it got into the tasting room there were just so many people that they couldn't get up to the bar to buy wine, and a lot of them left."

Saturday alone he said they sold close to 14 cases, and almost 40 of those bottles were the Naylor Port, produced from the Chambourcin grape. Ten wineries on the trail participated int he event; the cost to stop by all and taste the Nouveau wine was $10 per person.

The Stewartstown winery had another 155 or so on Sunday, plus 54 to their winemaker's dinner. All of which left Naylor knowing that they have some work to do in the tasting room before the trail's next big event, Tour de Tanks, in March 2010.

"I told my son-in-law, I said, where we have the wine supplies at the end, we're going to have to knock that wall out," he recalled. "I told him that three weeks ago. In March, when we had this thing, we lost a lot of business because people [couldn't find a path to the bar] and get waited on. I wish I had knocked the thing out last week so we would have had the room available Saturday."

Not only is Wine Just Off The Vine behind Naylor now, but so is the Wines of the World community education course that he taught in conjunction with Penn State Harrisburg. It ran on Thursday afternoons over a period of six weeks. The finale almost two weeks ago featured wines of the East Coast. Naylor said he served a mango wine from Key West, Fla., a cranberry wine from New Jersey, and wines from Connecticut, New York, Virginia and Maryland (Boordy and Fiore).

Uncork York plans Nouveau weekend event

The Uncork York Wine Trail that stretches from the western part of Lancaster to Gettysburg and up to Harrisburg has decided that its spring event was so successful that it would try one in the fall, after harvest time, similar to what the Bucks County Wine Trail members do.

They're calling it the Wine Just Off The Vine weekend, schedule for Friday, Nov. 20, through Sunday, Nov. 22. That's the weekend before Thanksgiving. Tickets are $10 per person for the event, which will start at 11 a.m. and end at 5 p.m. at the 10 participating wineries.

It's one of those rare chances to leave the tasting room and head into the winery and/or cellar to take a quick lesson in how grapes are transformed into juice and what they go through on the way to the bottle. Awaiting visitors at the end is a taste of the Nouveau wine, an easy-sipping fruit-forward liquid that brings a special appreciation when you realize that it came from grapes that were still hanging on the vine three to six weeks ago.

York County tourism is developing this with the same strategy as it does for Uncork York in the spring, incorporating packages that include area restaurants, hotels and bed anbd breakfasts. For more, click on this link, call 888.858.9675, or contact one of the participating wine trail members, including:

Adams County Winery
Allegro Vineyards
Cullari Vineyards
Four Springs Winery
Moon Dancer Vineyard & Winery
Naylor Wine Cellars
Reid's Orchard & Winery
Seven Valleys Vineyard & Winery
Tamanend Winery
West Hanover Winery