At Crossing Vineyards, How Sweet It Is

Mentioned this workshop a week or so ago in a story about the fall activities planned at Crossing Vineyards and Winery in Washington Crossing, Pa. Here are a few more details on "How Sweet It Is," a class on wine and chocolate pairing.

Crossing Vineyards and Winery in Washington Crossing, Pa. is inviting wine lovers and chocolate connoisseurs to “make their lives a little sweeter,” by learning to pair the flavors of each for the ultimate taste experience.

Crossing will partner with Lindt Chocolatier of Princeton, N.J. Sept. 14 for a workshop at 2 p.m. at the winery, 1853 Wrightstown Road, which will include samples of the vineyard’s award-winning wines and the world-renowned Lindt & Sprüngli chocolates.

The course, led by Crossing Vineyards’ sommelier Eric Cavatore and chocolate and confectionary aficionado Stacey Glynn-Brady, Lindt’s store manager, will share tips on the finer points of producing chocolate and wine, what creates the variety of flavors in both, and how to enjoy the two together.

Lindt chocolate still is made from a “top-secret” recipe, devised in the 1800s by Swiss Master Chocolatier Rodolphe Lindt, who invented the first melting chocolate with the creation of the “conching” machine, according to Lindt history. The delicacies produced by parent company Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli AG also are influenced by the Sprüngli family, confectioners whose recipes date back to 1845

Cost of the course is $30 and includes wine and chocolate sampling and learning materials. Reservations may be made by calling 215.493.6500, ext. 19 or online at www.crossingvineyards.com.

Also planned at the winery:

Friday, Sept. 19, Wine Tasting For Singles, an evening of wine, cheese and music; Crossing Vineyards and Winery, 7 to 9 p.m.; $20. Contact the vineyard to sign up or for information.

Chaddsford owners write about the hailstorm

That note on the devastation of their vineyards that Lee Miller made reference to last Thursday was included in the Chaddsford Winery e-letter. You can read the full text from Lee and Eric Miller by clicking on this link. A couple of photos taken at the vineyards appear on this post, courtesy of the Millers. When you finish that, go back through the archives and read some of the past vintage reports. They go all the way back to 2001.

One bit of news that advances the story a bit is their thanks to Phil Roth and the Waltz family of Lancaster for their help in perhaps giving the winery a chance to produce a couple of Portfolio wines.

Chaddsford closes its Springfield Mall store

Saw this item in the Chaddford Winery e-letter that popped into my mailbox overnight:

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Good customers of the Chaddsford Wine Shop at Springfield Mall (dating back to the mid 90s!) may have noticed that the store closed in mid-August when our lease expired. With the limited number of “satellite locations” allowed us under PLCB regulations, it is inevitable that we will sometimes close older locations to move on to new opportunities. At this juncture, we wish to thank our loyal Springfield customers for your many years of support.... and hope you won’t find it too hard to visit us at the winery in future. We’ll look forward to seeing you here!"

My note: State regulations limit wineries to no more than five satellite stores (in addition to their winery stores), all of course with PLCB approval.

Woodhall challenge heads to Gertrudes

Among the number of items covered in the Woodhall Wine Cellars newsletter for September was this one on the Eat In Season challenge:

Next up, the Eat In Season challenge moves to Gertrudes at the BMA, located in the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Museum Drive, Baltimore, where Woodhall has Gunpowder Falls White and Gunpowder Falls Red on the wine list. A special Farmstead Dinner menu will be featured Sept. 16-21. The main ingredient of each course is sourced locally. Experience it – we will! For reservations, call 410.889.3399.

Hanna's path starting to look ominous

While the country's eyes today follow the path of Hurricane Gustav, another tropical system is beginning to catch the attention of grape growers throughout this entire region. Hanna was upgraded to a hurricane earlier today and seems bound for the East Coast, with its eventual destination being somewhere in the mid-Atlantic region. It's still five to six days and hundreds of miles from here, but just the fact that the National Weather Service is showing a projected track that takes it in this direction is worrisome for winery proprietors and winemakers who who are girding for the three to five weeks of harvesting that will start this week.

It's been a fine growing season to date; not perfect, perhaps a bit cooler than last year. But it has remained fairly dry throughout the region and a continuation of that pattern for another few weeks would have capped another better than average vintage.

In some cases you can spot the vintages that fell short by the harvests waylaid by a tropical system that had long since blown itself out but remained laden with rain. One recent year that won't be forgotten anytime soon was 2003, when Henri and Isabel dumped torrents of rain across the region in early and mid September. In general, that harvest was a disaster.

I sent a note earlier this afternoon to several wineries asking how much attention they were giving Hanna. So far, I heard from Brad Knapp at Pinnacle Ridge Winery in Kutstown, Pa. I'll post his comment, and any others that follow tonight and tomorrow.

Knapp
"I'm checking projected paths of both hurricans about 4-5 times daily trying to figure out where their going to head. Hannah looks like it has a reasonable probability of hitting us towards the begining to middle of next week. We may try and grab some of our fruit for sparkling wine prior to the rain hitting.

"Heavy rains at this point in the season obviously dilute the fruit but cause splitting and rots and mildews. We really would like for these storms to miss us. As of right now the harvest looks fantastic for us. We're dry and hot and the fruit is beautiful."

Anthony Vietri, Va La Vineyards, Avondale, Pa.
"I'll keep an eye on it to be sure, but tend to see fall tropical systems and three day rain events as just par for the course in these parts. We don't really have anything ready enough to strip off before the weekend, so not much for me to think about."

Rob Deford, Boordy Vineyards, Hydes, Md.
"We watch the weather very closely this time of year, but do not pull the harvest trigger unless there is an absolute threat like a hurricane or severe hail, which might destroy the crop. Heavy rains can dilute the sugars and acids, so we would need to wait for the fruit to recover before picking."

Carl Helrich, Allegro Vineyards, The Brogue, Pa.
"I am paying close attention to it. I have a couple hybrid varieties close to being ready to pick, and may need to back them off till after the water works its way back out of them. Most vinifera are still a ways off, although our Pinot is at 19 Brix already. I am watching the tendency this year is going to have for spawning more hurricanes than normal. Keeping my fingers crossed and saying the standard prayers. We're on a dynamite year so far, and if we can just get these hurricanes to miss us this next month, we have a year to rival 2007 and 1995 and 1991. The grapes right now have really advanced flavorand sugar levels while still retaining acid. Amazing stuff. We'll just hope for the best and plan accordingly."

Chris Carroll, Crossing Vineyards and Winery, Washington Crossing, Pa.
"We always have our eyes riveted on the weather forecasts at this time of the year. The effects are so unpredictable. The rain is one thing. Winds are another.
"We will be starting to check the sugar levels of the whites this week and will be weighing risk vs ripeness. We will also be in close contact with our growers and making these same decisions.
"Winemakers have a tendency to push the risk part a bit more, always hoping for better grape quality. Growers only are more likely to pull the fruit short of optimal ripeness in order not to jeopardize their crops.
"The storm names may be different each year, but the balancing act is the same."

At Buckingham Valley, it's all hands on deck

Catching up to winery proprietors is about to get a whole lot more difficult. Harvest season will begin, in general, next weekend and continue until around the middle of October. It’s not quite that they’re setting up cots in the vineyards, but some days it might feel like that.

Jerry Forest and his family at Buckingham Valley Vineyards in Buckingham, Pa., have been going through this ritual longer than just about anyone in the region. They planted five acres in 1966. A few years later, the winery was in operation. Today, they have 12 varieties of grapes planted over 20 acres of the 40-acre farm. So, go ahead, figure out how many bunches of grapes they’ve taken off the vine since their dream became a reality.

“Sure, its exciting,” he said a few days ago, responding to a question about the harvest. “It’s a lot of fun. And well, it’s damn hard work physically, but it’s just so rewarding that we enjoy it.”

The length of the season, he said, depends on a variety of factors, including “the year, the grapes the whole bit. It can be very variable. Nut what happens is, we have 150, 200 tons of grapes out there. And when they come ripe, when the PH and the acid and the color and the sugar are all in balance, we run out and pick ‘em. So we have to be ready almost any day for that five-week period. And in our case we also buy a lot of grapes from other vineyards, so a guy will show up here on a Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening with 10 tons of grapes and we’ve got to be ready to process them. Most of the other vineyards pick with volunteer labor, bicycle clubs and Boy Scouts and whatever they can find. In our case, we machine harvest. . . . We’re able to pick four to six tons an hour with one person picking, and that’s usually my son Jon, and we bring them in from the vineyard within minutes; sometime within five minutes of being picked the grapes are being processed because the vineyards are all around our house. We don’t take any machine-picked fruit from anywhere other than our place.”

Their harvest push really starts in July and August, as they bottle much of last year’s harvest to make room for this year. “That’s what we’re doing right now. We just bottled 2500 gallons of wine yesterday and today because we have to empty the tanks and make room for the new harvest. So everything we picked last year and even the year before, some of the reds, are now being put in bottles over the next couple of days or weeks. We have about 80,000 gallons in stainless storage tanks and by next week mot of them will be emptied, cleaned and readied for the new harvest.”

Forest noted that during the first decade or two of operation “we used to have 30 or 40 pickers out there, and they would pick all days long and we would gather up the grapes in the afternoon and we’d press way into the night.” Advancements in the process, and he said they’re using their sixth generation of a wine press, have considerably shortened the day. “Now we pick from 8 a.m. until 10 or 11, we press from noon to 3, and then we clean up and have dinner and we’re all done,” he said. “It’s totally different, a much more relaxed way of harvesting.”

Getting through harvest doesn’t necessarily mean that the work ends for Jerry, wife Kathy, and sons Jon, Kevin and Chris. Jerry said they’re spending time moving the wine from tank to tank, then making the Nouveau (a young, semi-dry red) and Nouvelle (a young, semi-dry white) that are bottled right before Thanksgiving and continue to be sold through what’s always a busy holiday season. “So January first or January second, we take a deep breath and we lay back a little,” Jerry said. “We traditionally over many years used to close in January and February, but we can’t do that anymore because [our clientele nowadays] expect us to be here. So now we’re open 12 months a year. We take off Mondays only. We go out to lunch on Monday.”

Nissley hit the mark with its finale

We like to sit far from the stage and just people watch. Two of these pictures show a long view of the wooded vista at around 6:30, an hour before the concert. The 30th anniversary Seyval Blanc, generally one we'll pass over in favor of the Vidal Blanc, went perfect with the snacks that we brought along. And we also opened a bottled of the Vidal, which never disappoints for two drinkers who much prefer their wine dry. Finally, a look at the stage once the sun fled the scene.

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The concert that wasn't originally scheduled did all right for itself. Nissley Vineyards & Winery has originally planned just eight concerts as part of the 26th annual Music in the Vineyards series, but what owner Judy Nissley called popular demand prompted her to added a ninth event last night.

The weather, humid and cloudy all day, broke as if on cue, clearing and cooling by the time the band Flashback With Donna Mark made its Nissley debut ay 7:30. Not sure what others thought, but I'd bring them back in a heartbeat and the large crowd dancing on stage and out on the grounds would seem to support that view. They played a mix of music before the break, then stuck with the '70s for the second part of their show.

It was a small crowd compared to, say, last week. But Nissley, who hadn't planned the normal amount of advertising for this one, had said she would be happy with a more intimate group, the smaller numbers allowing for more room to dance. And that's pretty much how it unfolded. Now, it's on to harvest.