Noticed that the long-awaited opening of Black Ankle Winery has been pushed back until early September, according to its Web site. That's no surprise considering that Ed Boyce and Sarah O'Herron have tried to use as many building materials from their farm as possible, such as the maple ceiling boards (in the photo) that will make up part of the interior of the tasting room at the winery's Mt. Airy, Md., location.
Morris Zwick said earlier today that consumers almost unanimously have applauded the boxed wine that sets Terrapin Station Winery apart from any other producer in the region.
“There’s the rare person who just sort of snorts at boxed wine,” Zwick said, “but for the most part it’s been very positive and, especially from the public, they seem a lot more receptive to it. Particularly younger people, they love it. The issue we’ve had more is with the retail stores that kind of look at it and ‘[Ugh], boxed wine. I don’t know about whether we’ll be able to sell it, that sort of thing.’”
Currently they are selling eight wines in the unique cube, which holds a bag filled with 1.5 liters of wine, essentially two bottles worth. Zwick said that they use all of the grapes they grow on their 46-acre farm, filling in the holes with purchases from a few other producers in-state. A potential deal with a provider in California could further diversify their list before the year is out.
Buyers would recognize several of the varietals that carry the Terrapin Station wrapping, so to speak: Merlot, Shiraz and Vidal Blanc. But what they’ve torn open the most is Traminette, a relation to that white with a bite, Gewurztraminer. “That’s been our best seller, by far,” Zwick said. “And it’s a grape that the general public isn’t that familiar with. But we sold out of it in the first five weeks. Once people had a chance to try it, they loved it. We still have people asking for it.”
Their farm is located in the proximity of Elkton in extreme northeastern Maryland, close enough to be able to drop-kick one of their boxes over the Mason-Dixon Line over I-95 as it heads toward Philly. If you don’t catch them at one of the festivals that have run Morris, his wife Janet and three kids in circles since the spring, you can find their wines at several shops in Cecil and Montgomery counties. At some point they plan to convert the early 18th century barn located on the property into a combo tasting room/gift shop/event space.
No matter how much folks like their wines, however, it’s the container that probably will leave the biggest impression. Zwick, who made a number of family sojourns to Italy as he was growing up, called the traditional glass bottles and corks “sort of an anachronism. Really, the association of that and fine wine is more fixated in the United States than anywhere else.”
Corks, in his mind, leave too much to chance. “If you’re a winemaker, you’re trying to convince somebody to buy your wine, and let’s say 6 percent of them through no fault of your own [drink a bottle where the integrity is compromised]. They just assume the wine is bad, so they’ll never go buy it again. I just feel that is incredibly self-defeating.”
Screw caps didn’t make much financial sense because of the inability to find a bottling line that they could lease. That left the boxes, which are lighter to ship and easier to store a far greater friend to the environment. “I’ve heard figures that say hundred of thousands of tons of carbon goes up in the sky in the transportation of wine from California to the East Coast, just because it’s in glass,” he said.
While there remain a few creases to iron out, they’ve been delighted with the route they’ve chosen (produced by Scholle) and the reaction to it. Kevin Atticks, the director of the Maryland Wine Association, said recently that folks attending a festival earlier this summer were raving about concept. Zwick added that there are more compelling reasons for people in their back yard to change traditions.
“It’s got so many nice features to it,” he said. “We’re at the top of the bay and we have a lot of boaters around us. It’s perfect for boating with; the waves won’t tip it over and cause a problem. It won’t break and shatter glass everywhere. And you don’t have to guzzle down a liter and a half of wine all at once. You can drink it over a period of weeks. It’s just like a baby bottle; the bag collapses around the product. We puff nitrogen in when it’s getting filled. And so it stays in good shape, the oxygen egress is actually quite low. So all of those factors really appealed to us.”
And they’re likely not done experimenting. Zwick said he could see a day when they follow the lead of Wolf Blass wine in Canada and offer a .750ml container made out of lightweight polyethelene terephthalate, known as PET, rather than glass. In fact, a story on the Pennsylvania Wine Association site noted that Eagle Rock Winery in Sullivan County has started to bottle its wines in the plastic bottles.
“I checked with the Ball Corporation several years ago and they weren’t selling them yet and I couldn’t find an in-country manufacturer for the bottles,” Zwick said. “But I knew that Ball would get there eventually. They’ve done .375s [ml] for awhile, and they do the smaller bottles for the airlines and stuff like that.”
And he has no doubt that those will be as popular as the cubes have been.
“I just want to emphasize that the issue is not been with consumers,” he said. “They generally seem to like the packaging once they understand there are two bottles of wine in that box. The issue has been more with the retail chain because [at this point] they just don’t know how to deal with it.”
Two quickies before I head off to work. Wrote Bert Basignani at BasignaniWinery in Maryland's north Baltimore County a few days ago asking how the vineyard was holding up through this summer. His response? "Things here are pretty good. A lot of rain early when we needed it, but not too much now. A pretty good growing season so far but a lot cooler than last year." No doubt that winery owners from Virginia north will be watching the tropical system move up from Florida through the week. Current Projections at the National Hurricane Center show what's left of the storm to be located in western North Carolina by Saturday.
Another month and a half and my wife and I will be down there picking for the fourth straight year. You can pick there on various Saturday mornings through late September and October. It all wraps up with a homemade lunch and some fruits from the vineyard just after the noon hour. No one puts out a better spread to celebrate the harvest than the lovely Lynne Basignani.
Also, many in the Philly area saw this story in Sunday's Inquirer on the latest hearings for House Bill 2165, the latest bit of legal fallout since a federal judge in 2005 ruled against the state's ban on direct-to-consumer shipments. This new bill would limit direct shipping to wineries that produce 80,000 gallons or less per year. No one we've talked to in this state's wine industry is happy about the bill, including Bob Mazza, the president of the Pennsylvania Winery Association, who talked about the subject in a post a couple of months ago. The most recent hearing was held at Paradocx Vineyards in Chester County.
So the biggest hurdle that Anthony Vietri of Va La Vineyards in Avondale will have with this second batch of a white blend called Fioretti that he’s just finished bottling? It won’t be selling out of it, since he figures he’s making only about 70 cases of it, a little more than the first batch they made. “This one is longer aged and has a slightly different blend to it,” he said the other day. The difference is very small. We [first] wanted to kind of trickle it out and see what the response was and it was very strong. So we felt a bit more confident to actually go to the second batch.”
Probably the most vexing problem is getting a batch into his uncle’s hands in New York. Fioretti means little flowers, Vietri explained, “and that refers to the varietals that are in it. It also refers to my uncle, whose name is Fioretti, just kind of a tip of the hat to him.”
The blend features mostly Viognier, but also contains elements of Toccai, Petit Manseng and [Hungarian] Bianca. “It’s kind of an unusual blend,” he said. “It’s designed in our lineup to go with mostly white sauces, cream dishes including mushrooms and a white sauce, if you’re doing that kind of thing.”
It’s served, he added, around 50, not too chilled or it will subdue the aromas and flavor of the Viognier. There are similarities to La Prima Donna, another white Va La blend. “This one would be fatter because it has a higher percentage of Viognier, less of the pronounced aromatics that Prima Donna has,” Vietri said. “It has aromatics . . . but is in a different style. It’s hard to describe.
“The idea with this was a Rhone white. So we wanted to have some fatness but still have some acidity, so when you serve it with the dishes that I was talking about, including risotto, which I should have mentioned before, that it has the ability to stand up to them.”
Scenes from the 2007 Wine, Jazz & Art Festival at Fiori Winery in Pylesville, Md. The event, this year being the 19th annual, will be held at Fiori from noon to 6 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday.Even those of you who are regulars of the Nissley Vineyards & Winery Estate might not realize that the series, now in its 26th year and expected to end next weekend, instead will continue for another week and end when it’s supposed to, on Labor Day weekend.
“It just didn’t feel right to quit on Aug. 23,” Judy Nissley, the winery’s proprietor, said this afternoon, noting that some years the last concert didn’t end until the first weekend in September. The winery for years had started on July 4th weekend and continued through Labor Day weekend, but Nissley said earlier this summer in an interview that it was difficult getting help on those holiday weekends and that they were reducing the number of concerts from 10 to eight. Well, make that nine. The last one will take place on Aug. 30 and feature the area band Flashback headlined by singer Donna Mark.
Nissley noted that they’re not planning heavy advertising for this subbed-in show, so while it might draw a bit smaller crowd that might please the regulars who will have a little more room to dance than they normally do.
No doubt that whoever shows up will be bringing in everything from tables and tablecloths to candelabra and flowers. And loads of food. Nissley, whose winery is celebrating its 30th year in business, noted in an interview earlier this summer that the fancy silverware crowd, and those are my words, began to evolve this popular central Pennsylvania event about 10 years ago. Now it’s a show just to arrive early and watch the rest of the crowd file through the tent and head for a vacant spot on the grass; it takes some groups 5 to 10 minutes to finish setting up and uncork their first couple bottles.
“I think part of the reason they do that,” she said then, “is that we try to make an upscale presentation, and by that I mean, the band area is sort of rustic, the whole thing is a little rustic, but we . . . used to chill our wines in a big trough, which was a cattle feeding trough -- we still use it on big nights -- but we installed refrigerators and put them in cabinets that look antique, hoping they look that way, and that’s just one example. So that when people [come up for their wine] we don’t say, ‘Here’s a bottle, here’s some ice cubes,’ [instead] they get a chilled bottle of wine.”
They’ve made other improvements, she said, such as replacing the gravel in the archway with flagstone and laying macadam on the parking lot.
“So it gradually took on a better look,” she said. “It gradually became increasingly upscale. We also charge, not an expensive admission, but, it is $15 per person, so the people who are willing to spend that are probably . . . let me phrase that a different way. People in their 50s and 60s, especially the women in that age group, they like to be pampered, and if there’s not going to be anyone there to pamper them, they pamper themselves, and I really do think that’s a lot of what that candelabra is. They want to feel like . . . they're in a nice place.
“They are in a nice place but they want to embellish their experience.”
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SCHEDULED EVENTS
Adams County Winery, Ortanna: Free summer concert, Saturday. 1 to 5 p.m., food and wine available, bring along a lawn chair and blanket, http://www.adamscountywinery.com/
Blue Mountain Vineyards, New Tripoli: Sangria Sunday wine tasting ($$), Sunday, 2 to 5 p.m.; Fridays of Gary Day fund-raiser, Monday, 6 to 8 p.m.,
http://www.bluemountainwine.com
Boyd’s Cardinal Hollow, North Wales: Concert on Saturday, 5 to 8 p.m., http://www.cardinalhollowwinery.com/
Chaddsford Winery, Chaddsford: Reserve Tasting ($$), Saturday, sittings at 1, 2:30 and 4 p.m.; Thursday, the 21st, 7 to 9 p.m., “Look What We Dug Out of the Cellar!” with Chaddsford Wine Educator Melanie Chadwick, Melanie and winemaker Eric Miller went into the cellar to dig out a memory trip of Chaddsford’s best vintages. See what Eric has chosen, and how some of his favorites have held up to the test of time. $30/person; reservations at 610.388.6221., http://www.chaddsford.com
Crossing Vineyards & Winery, Washington Crossing: Wine Tasting for Singles ($$), Friday, 7 p.m.; Summer Concert Series ($$), Friday, 7 p.m.
www.crossingvineyards.com
Kreutz Creek Vineyards, West Grove: Summer Outdoor Concert & Slushyville ($$), Saturday, 6 to 9 p.m., Jimmy Buffet style music by Pelican Brief,
http://www.kreutzcreekvineyards.com/events.htmlMoon Dancer Vineyards & Winery, Wrightsville: Music Friday night and Saturday and Sunday afternoons; Summer Concert series Saturday night ($$), http://www.moondancerwinery.com
Naylor Wine Cellars, Stewartstown: “Summer Sounds” outdoor concert series ($$), Saturday, 7 to 10 p.m., http://www.naylorwine.com
Nissley Vineyard & Winery Estate, Bainbridge: Music in the Vineyards 2008 ($$), Saturday, 7:30 to 10 p.m., music by the Headliners, http://www.nissleywine.com/lawn_concerts.htm
Paradocx Vineyards, Landenberg: Summer Concert Series ($$), Saturday, 5 to 9 p.m. http://www.paradocx.com/
Twin Brook Winery, Gap: Gazebo Concert Series ($$), Saturday evening, 6:30 to 9:30, http://www.twinbrookwinery.com/Vynecrest Vineyards & Winery, Breinigsville: Summer Tours With the Winemaker ($$), Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m., about 1 ½ hours long,
http://www.vynecrest.com/whatsnew.htm
MARYLAND winery events can be found at this link and VIRGINIA events at this link.
($$) – Admission charge
Chris Carroll is one of the principal owners of Crossing Vineyards & Winery in Bucks County whose responsibilities spill over into directing the public relations and marketing. She’s also one of the key voices of the Bucks County Wine Trail, one of the newest among the seven or eight that stretch across Pennsylvania.
She’s a major proponent of the strength in numbers philosophy that the California wineries adopted years ago and that the wineries in other states, including Pennsylvania, have gravitated toward. “You learn that you can have a much greater impact when you work together,” she said by phone the other day.
The team philosophy makes particular sense for the eight members of the Bucks County trail, a diverse lot that Carroll said, at the most, are separated by no more than 15 miles. You couldn’t stop at all of them in a day, she noted, but you certainly could in a long weekend. It’s a strategy that has worked well for wine trails such as Brandywine Valley and Lehigh Valley. Draw folks to the area, where they can reserve a room at a local hotel and a table at a couple of restaurants, then spend a couple of days sampling wines at all the wineries on the trail.
To that end, Carroll said that they’ve applied for funding through the Bucks County Conference & Visitors Bureau to assemble a brochure that provides basic information on each winery in the trail, info that can be placed at the multitude of B&Bs that dot that region. If it “gives them a reason to stay even that one extra day,” then it’s worth the investment, she said.
The trail is a mix of old -- Buckingham Valley, Peace Valley and Sand Castle -- and new -- Wycombe -- wineries with the mix of varietals and blends that you’d expect from such a diverse group of winemakers. Several are open just on weekends, such as Rose Bank Winery, while others such as Crossing Vineyards & Winery, Sand Castle Winery and New Hope Winery open their doors daily.
Already they host what would be considered the mainstays of a wine trail’s annual schedule: a Spring Fling in May, a Harvest Celebration in October and a Holiday Celebration in December. What's planned for the future is continued development of the Web site and an improvement in the trail's outreach. In addition, that events schedule figures to get longer in the coming years. Those aforementioned events complement a unique mid-November celebration called a Nouveau Release, which gives wineries a chance to roll out some of the juice from the recently harvested grapes just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Saw the term "bottle shock" used in a newsletter I received last week from one of my favorite wineries. It had to do with wine that was tasted in March and ordered; the wine had been bottled and was ready to pick up. But purchasers were warned to wait one to three months before diving in.
So in the midst of a conversation with Anthony Vietri of Va La Vineyards, last week, I steered him toward that subject. Probably more suited for a podcast, I’ll just roll out his response in a straight out quote and let you read it:
“It’s essentially something that happens in the process of moving the wines several times before you get to the bottle,” he began. “You’ve got this wine that has for one, two, or three years essentially lived a very quiet life in the cellar ever since fermentation. Every now and then you roused it . . . moved it to another tank or barrel, and that’s called racking. And then it . . . went to sleep again, depending on the winemaker, for two months, maybe a year, and nobody bothered with it. Occasionally somebody poked their head in there and topped up, or they added SO2 to keep it from oxidizing, but essentially the wine itself is not being moved very often. And then before bottling and in the preparations for bottling, there is a whole bunch of movement and, in some cases, the wine moves more during that week before bottling than it had since it was fermented. And in doing that it takes in copious amounts of oxygen or copious amount of nitrogen or CO2 depending on how you are gassing it.
“You’re adding SO2 to protect it from oxidizing. You might be adding touch-up acidity because perhaps the acid level has risen to a point where you feel that the PH is too high and you feel that perhaps you need to bring it down a little to keep it stable, and maybe you’ve added different things to cold stabilize it. All of these things tend to stupefy the wine for a short period of time.
“And let’s say you didn’t even do that.. let’s say you are an old-timer and -- I learned this way myself -- and you took it out of the barrel through a . . .siphon and into a bottle. Just that movement of going from that inert state, which is a state without oxygen, to filling the bottle, that simple little movement is a huge movement that we make on that small amount of wine that is in that bottle that suddenly now has been all completely moved and exposed to oxygen. It’s not a detriment to the wine because we’re careful as winemakers to not make it detrimental. But shock is a very good term. It basically stupefies the wine so what it will do is deaden the aromas and the flavors and so what happens is, you’re getting a much more subdued version than you’re going to get once the wine stabilizes in the bottle and goes back to its stasis and that has to do with the barometric pressure in the bottle and outside, and that has has to do with the SO2 that is in the wine stabilizing. It has to do with whether or not it’s been filtered or unfiltered. A lot of different elements go into that.
“That’s why though you can’t say that Bob’s wine will be ready in one month, my wine will be ready in 2 months, her wine will be ready in three months. There are so many factors involved that you can have a guess as to how long bottle shock will last, but no way of knowing for sure. So a simple way of saying it is, if you warn people [to wait] one to three months [before opening their wine that has just been bottled], that’s usually a good little window. Sometimes it’s less and sometimes it’s more, but normally 90 percent of the time the wine will fall within that window.”
Keep it in a quiet, dark spot, away from the direct sun. Preferably on its side, allowing the cork to remain wet. “There are a lot of studies going on right now about the amount of oxygen literally passing through the cork during resting,” he added, “even when it’s on its side by the way. What we’re finding is that there is definitely breathing going on; the wine definitely is breathing the atmosphere around it, so the atmosphere in your cellar is actually part of what is going in to your finished wine. . . . I just read a study talking about this, I believe it’s from Australia or New Zealand."
He stopped for a second, then added, "It’s really an amazing beverage in just every way. So the idea is that if you get a brand new wine it’s best, if they say if it’s just been bottled, to put it aside for a little bit. Find out when they bottled it and just subtract from there. If you wait three months, you’re probably fine. But the bigger the wine the more it needs to wait, generally speaking. So if you have a light picnic white, it probably doesn’t need to wait as long as a Cab from Napa.”
