MD's Woodhall announces fall wine dinners

The lovely and hospitable folks at Woodhall Wine Cellars in Parkton, Md., just off I-83 on the way south to Baltimore, have just announced plans for four fall wine dinners. They will be served on each of the first four Saturdays in November at Patricia Della Casual Fine Dining, located just out the front door of the tasting room. The "gourmet, five-course wine dinner" will cost $60 per person, not including tax and gratuity, using wines selected by the owners and winemaker (Chris Kent) of Woodhall.

Reservations are required. Seatings will be 6 and 8 p.m. each evening. Call 410.357.5078 to make your reservation.

Here's what the menu looks like:

Nov. 1 and 15

A panned seared scallop with a blood orange gastrique and
A filet mignon rosette with an agave nectar wasabi crème fraiche

Butternut Squash and roasted red pepper bisque

Baby spinach, red onion and dried apricot salad
with a maple tarragon dressing

Striped Bass with a white wine sauce featuring
limes, shallots and picholines

Blood orange sorbet

Nov. 8 and 22

A jumbo prawn with persimmon coulis and a lamb chop encrusted
With macadamia nuts served with a sweet pineapple BBQ sauce

Roasted tomato and basil soup

Mixed green, apple slices and candied pecans
with a maple tarragon dressing

Filet mignon filled with herb encrusted goat cheese served
with a balsamic reduction

Praline semifreddo

Squeezing out news across the region

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Wycombe Vineyard in Furlong, Pa., has announced that beginning Oct. 17 it will be open Friday, Saturday and Sunday from noon until 6 p.m.

The Brandywine Valley Wine Trail still has openings for its Vintners' Dinner Celebration on Saturday, Nov. 8, at Longwood Gardens, Pa. Joel Peterson, the winemaker and president of Ravenswood Winery, in California, will be the guest speaker. Dinner, wine pairing and dancing to the Brass Ensemble of the Kennett Symphony of Chester County is all included. The event will run from 6:30 p.m. to midnight. Admission is $135 per person. Black tie is optional. You can sign up by calling 866. 390.4367 or 610.444.3842 or fill out the online form.

Wine writer Dave McIntyre, one of the creators of the Regional Wine Week that ran through last week, said by e-mail today that "we averaged well over 100 hits each day last week . . . plus 150 yesterday after Robin Garr plugged Kentucky wines to his mailing list." To catch up on everything that was written during Regional Wine Week, visit www.drinklocalwine.com

Oct. 25 Harvest Dinner still has openings

Some seats remain for the Harvest Winemaker's Dinner Oct. 25 at Crossing Vineyards and Winery in Washington Crossing, Pa.

Vintner Tom Carroll Jr. will share with guests Crossing’s new focus on its red varietals during a five-course gourmet dinner and wine pairing beginning at 7:30 p.m. at the winery, 1853 Wrightstown Road. The meal will feature the winery’s latest award-winning reds, Cabernet Franc ’06 and Cabernet Sauvignon ’06.

Cost of the dinner is $89, plus tax and gratuity. Entrée substitutions may be arranged in advance. Seating is limited. Reservations may be made by calling 215.493.6500, ext. 19, or online at the winery's Web site. Directions to the winery also may be found there.

We just posted about Crossing and its five-year anniversary as part of last week's Regional Wine Week series. While it has earned plenty of attention for its whites - its 2005 Chardonnay won “Best of Class – Top Gold” in the 2006 Starwine International Wine Competition – producing world-class reds in Pennsylvania’s short growing season is more challenging, says Carroll, who, with his parents owns the winery. “It’s hard for East Coast wineries to be respected for their later-ripening varietals,” he said, but Crossing has embraced the challenge. And it has met with success, he said. The Cabernet Franc ’06 earned a Critic’s Gold in May at the Critics Challenge International Wine Competition in San Diego and the Cabernet Sauvignon ’06 won a Critic’s Silver in that competition, as well as bronze medals this year at the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition in Rochester, N. Y. and the Keystone Wine Competition in Mystic, Conn.

Crossing’s wines will be paired with each dinner course, beginning with cornmeal cake with fig and walnut sauce, paired with Blanc de Blancs (NV), followed by cream of butternut squash soup with roasted apples, paired with Vintner’s Select White (NV) and Blush (NV), then apple cider brined grilled pork chop served with golden raisin and sausage bread pudding and haricots verts, paired with Chardonnay ’07, Apple wine (NV) and the Cabernet Sauvignon ’06.

Dessert will be pumpkin caramel tart, paired with Late Harvest Vidal Blanc ’06, followed by a cheese course of Buche de Chevre, Dorothea, Mountain Gorgonzola with multigrain crackers, paired with the Cabernet Franc ’06.

Abruzzo is 'main course' at Berwyn on Thursday

Still looking for something to do this Thursday night?

One choice is the next in the series of five-course wine dinners at Trattoria San Nicola Berwyn, 668 Lancaster Ave. This one will feature foods and wines from the Abruzzo region.

A call to the restaurant Monday afternoon found about 15 spots left to fill. Those who intend to register need to call 610.296.3141 and secure a spot by providing a credit card number. The restaurant accepts Visa and Mastercard only.

It’s a dinner series that has been ongoing for several years, each scheduled for a Thursday evening and pairing foods and wines from a region in Italy. The cost is $65 per person; tax and gratuity are not included. The ceiling usually is set at 90 guests.

The event will begin at 6:30 with Prosecco served at a welcome reception, with dinner to follow at 7. “Everyone really enjoys it,” a restaurant spokesperson said earlier. “Making new friends, finding out who your neighbors are. We usually get a lot returning guests and they will ask ‘Can we please sit with this other couple that we met last time?’”

The menu will include Goat Cheese Truffles with Roasted Peppers over a bed of arugula as a first course, followed by Penne Amatriciana and Pan Seared Halibut with Artichoke Hearts and Saffron Broth. A fourth course will feature Capreto Cacio e Uova: Lamb with Cheese and Egg Sauce. Room for dessert? How about Parrozzo, traditional Abruzzo almond cake served with homemade Toasted Almond Gelato?

And what might wow the crowds during the wine series has found itself back on the menu as a seasonal special and occasionally never comes off. “Sometimes that’s how things make their way onto our menu,” the spokesperson said.

Regional Wine Week, Day 7: Allegro Vineyards

A few snapshots of life at Allegro Vineyards, located in The Brogue, Pa.




This is the last of a series of stories on Pennsylvania wineries, covering an area from Gettysburg east to Philly and up to Allentown. It has been done in conjunction with Regional Wine Week, an idea that originally was going to feature stories on regional wines by a few wine writers around the country. Instead, it blossomed into a project that involves coverage of wines in 16 states and Canada and a spot on the Internet where you can read all the blogs and stories.

My goal has been to write about at least one winery on each the five Pennsylvania wine trails that I cover. Certainly, these six I wrote about are just a small percentage of the many that exist in eastern Pennsylvania and Maryland and the others that are in the process of opening their doors. You can go through my archives and read about 25 or 30 others.

A few that I’ve written about are located in and around where I live in central Pennsylvania. They aren’t so much part of a particular trail, but they are connected to a March event called Uncork York, where visitors pay a flat fee for a passport that gets them into all 11 wineries for a tasting during the month of March.

There’s no question that wine drinkers in York County and environs lean toward sweet. Just peruse the wine lists of Naylor Wine Cellars, Adams County Winery and Marburg Estate Winery to get a sense of what sells. Allegro Vineyards of The Brogue produces its own share of sweet, semi-sweet and spiced wines along with its share of dry offerings, anchored by its Bordeaux-blend Cadenza.

Like most of the wineries in these parts, you have to find them; generally few are off the exits of any major highways. Such is the case with Allegro, almost an hour’s drive north from Baltimore and 25 minutes or so south of York, requiring a few miles that will challenge your confidence if you’ve never been there before. But the trip is worth it.

The first vines, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, were planted in 1973. Musician brothers John and Tim Crouch put up the winery building in 1980 and the tasting room opened a year later. Carl Helrich and Kris Miller, husband and wife, took over in 2000 with the goal of continuing the winery’s reputation of making delicious European-styled table wines that are reasonably priced.

They grow six varieties of grapes on five acres and maintain what would be comparatively a rustic feel to some of the newer wineries. It’s also distinguished by the fact that it holds no events other than to participate in Uncork. Carl said earlier this year that he decided to stop the food and wine pairing dinners they had hosted for several summers and focus on wine-making.

“The reason why I’m a winemaker is that I love great wine, and I think we can make great wine here,” he said by phone the other day. “I’ve tasted glimpses of great wine from this area, so I know it’s possible. We’ve just got to get a confluence of these parts to come together. We need to have the right vineyard site, the right root stock with the right variety with the right winemaker, the right vineyard manager with the right vintage. All come together and we can blow some minds with the wines we can make here.

“I remember talking to [viticulture extension educator for Penn State Cooperative Extension in Lancaster County] Mark Chien at one point and he made some offhand comment that the most interesting wines come from marginal climates. Whether or not that’s true or not, I don’t know. I think there’s a greater truth in that, and I think we’re definitely in a marginal climate for some of these varieties. If you taste California wines, well they taste like sunshine basically. The Pinot Noir tastes like Merlot, it tastes like Cabernet. There are subtle differences, and if you like big fruit bombs, that’s great. But here, you know, our palate is much greater, artistically speaking palate. We end up having a wine that one year will taste one way and one year will taste the other way, just because of the climate or what’s happening in the soil that year. That’s really much more of a naked kind of wine making.

“And . . . [on the East Coast] our lows are pretty low and our highs are pretty high, and I think we’re still trying to figure out how high our highs can get. It’s kind of like life, you know. If you have a life where everything is about the same, your highs aren’t very high. I have two kids, and there’s nothing like when one of the kids does something great. But like today [we had to] take one to the hospital to get stitches, so it’s pretty low then. But you can’t have one without the other, and the same thing goes for winemaking. If everything tastes the same all the time, is that really great tasting, and is that really what a great wine is? I think a great wine for us has got to be a great wine that’s just unique. It’s not going to be a fruit bomb, but it’s just going to blow your mind because of the complexity.”

Should you make out your way to this part of southern York County, try these two wines.

2005 Cadenza
Winemaker’s note: Our rare flagship red, true Bordeaux-style wine;aged two years in French oak barrels; bottled unfiltered and unfined

Carl Helrich: “I came to Allegro because of a desire to make great wine, and the potential to make a great wine in Pennsylvania. And John and Tim crouch had this wonderful history of Cadenzas here, which then was a Cabernet-based wine. . . . I love French Bordeauxs. I think they’re wonderful wines. We’re making our third Cadenza from the ’07 vintage. Our ’05 is out right now. The ’06 is in bottles, and we’ll release next year probably. And these are Merlot-based wines. I’m a firm believer that the future of our wine industry is in making a name for ourselves with variety. You look at Long Island is pushing their Merlots. Oregon has Pinot, Napa, of course has Cabernet and Chardonnay and stuff. Every region has its own variety. We’ve got to find ours. Some people say diversity is our strength, and it is in terms of keeping a lot of small wineries together. But if we’re going to be a viable wine industry with any kind of notoriety, which is the kind I want to be involved in . . . that’s why I’m here. I’m not here to make nice wine, you know, that I had a nice little life and made some nice wine. That’s not the point what I’m doing here. I want us to be on the map because I know we can do it. So these days, this is very premature, but at this point Merlot looks to be one of our grapes. Whether it’s THE grape or not, I don’t know, but that’s the one I’m thinking had the most promise for us on the red side.”

2005 Reserve Chardonnay
Winemaker’s notes: Rich, silky full-bodied Chardonnay; wild yeast-fermentedand barrel-aged in French oak for eleven months
Carl Helrich: “Here’s where I’m not best one [as far as what people are going to taste.] I’m a winemaker. I can’t control flavors and aromas. I don’t focus on them so much. I can tell you about things . . . but I’m looking more for balance. One of the keys for me in winemaking is balance. The flavors are purely secondary to what the wines feels like in your mouth and how you perceive it and if the wine is out of balance it doesn’t matter what the flavors are, you’re not going to like it. So, first I balance. We tend to harvest our Chard very late. Most times, in our good years that is, we’ll be picking it sometimes as late as the second week of October. We’ve got a field blend of seven clones, the original was planted in 1973, and there are a whole host of clones. Some are early ripeners, some later ripening. They have a whole host of flavors, they all contribute. We barrel ferment this wine in French oak barrels. And I’ve been using our native yeast population that we have here, too, which is kind of unique. I’m not sure if there’s anyone else in Pennsylvania using native yeasts for fermenting things, but we’re doing that with our Chardonnays.”

Wycombe cancels Sunday picking

The public harvest scheduled for tomorrow at Wycombe Vineyards in Furlong, Pa., has been cancelled. They were out picking this morning in absolutely spectacular weather.

Actually, you couldn't ask for a better stretch of days for ripening across the region. Sunny, mild afternoond and cool nights. Despite some rough patches at times this summer, this wrap-up to the growing season can't help but give some extra bounce to this vintage.

Regional Wine Week, Day 6: Crossing Vineyards

Raising a glass to celebrate five years in business are Crossing Vineyards and Winery owners, from left: Christine Carroll; Tom Carroll Jr., the winery’s vintner; and Tom Carroll Sr.


They’ll be cutting sheet cake in a couple of hours at Crossing Vineyards & Winery, about an hour’s drive out of downtown Philly. It will be a cake with a modest numbers of candles – five – at a winery that already has developed a rich legacy among Bucks County wineries.

It’s one of eight wineries on the trail, one with all of them closer in proximity than any other area in the state outside of Erie. A few date back into the 1960s, Buckingham Valley comes to mind, and slowly others have staked their claim. One of those is Crossing, and it’s as much distinguished itself by what it offers educationally as the wine it puts on the shelves.

Christine Carroll noted that reaching this milepost is a big hurdle if you believe in the idea that the first five years of any business is the "acid test." She and husband Tom Sr. were off on the road again yesterday, the start of another busy weekend that will include the festivities at the winery and, oh yeah, all the work that accompanies harvest time. What has set Crossing Vineyards apart, she said, “is from the very, very beginning, before we planted Vine 1 in the ground, we had a one word mission statement and that was quality. . . . our goal was always to create as fine an East Coast winery as we could. We were well-capitalized, we purchased the finest equipment available. Every decision we have made, from Day 1, has been on quality, and those were difficult at time because some were expensive decisions.”

One of those priorities has been to embrace a “green” initiative; to that end they recently installed the first phase of a state-of-the-art solar energy system that ultimately will use solar power to supply 100 percent of the vineyard’s energy needs.

At the root of the business, of course, is the wide variety of wine; 20 at this count, an equal mix of red, white and specialty. Christine noted that their line “leans toward dry vinifera. We do have some sweets. You now, many people who are not experienced wine drinkers come to drink wine and their palate [is more geared toward sweet wines than dry vinifera]. We don’t want to lose those people. Our feeling is that we are going to come out to meet you. Maybe we can teach you about wine or maybe your palate will always enjoy sweet wines. Or maybe it won’t. Really, we just try to empower people. It’s why we charge for tastings, because we educate them as they taste. We want to meet them where they are and we want to open them up to a whole wonderful world of [wine and everything that accompanies it.]”

If you get a chance to stop, try these two wines:

2006 Cabernet Franc

Winemarker’s notes: This dry, full-bodied Cabernet Franc has a deep, garnet color and jammy, cherry-berry taste. Barrel aging adds to the complexity of the finish and brings out luscious, lingering accents of blackberry, bell pepper and toasty oak.
Christine Carroll: “We do what we call bench trials. Bring in six different blends, then all try them and make notes. And when we did the bench trial on this one, we all picked the same thing. We knew we had something special. We submitted it to the Critics Challenge in San Diego. Judging was the end of May. We won a gold medal for that wine. [See Challenge notes here]. To us, a gold medal in a California competition is significant.” Not generally released yet, she said they plan to release it very shortly.

2006 Late Harvest Vidal Blanc

Winemaker’s notes: This elegant dessert wine is rich and sweet with hints of honey, candied orange zests and apricots and a long, luxurious finish.
Christine Carroll: “This is maybe the finest wine we’ve ever made. . . . We let the whole block hang through November and into December. It was a warm December; it was warmer in December 2006 than it was Easter 2006. Once we saw the extended forecast we decided to pull the plug [and let the grapes hang]. Turned out unbelievably wonderful.
We won an award in the Finger Lakes for it, won awards [for it] all over the place. It’s a wonderful wine, the best one we currently have for sale.”