Invitation welcomes folks to old trail

I was surprised to see this note in the latest Woodhall Wine Cellars e-letter about the Mason-Dixon Wine Trail. A trail that includes four wineries in Pennsylvania and four in Maryland, the activities sort of died on the vine the past couple of years. And it didn't seem there would be much chance of reviving it. Now comes this invitiation to pay $1 for a passport and visit each of the wineries. Carl Helrich, of Allegro Vineyards in southcentral Pennsylvania, wrote me this morning saying that the wineries are trying to revive the trail. "We had a meeting a couple weeks ago in which everyone attended and we talked about events," he wrote in an e-mail. "The website will probably show updates soon, I would think."

Helrich said that Rose Fiore of Fiore Winery in Pylesville, Md., and and Lynne Basignani of Basignani Winery in Sparks, Md., are in charge of the effort.

Anyway, from Deb Morris at Woodhall:

"One of the great joys of wine is the number of different flavors and styles that one can experience at a winetasting. Multiply that by eight and you now understand why exploring the Mason-Dixon Wine Trail is so much fun. Four Maryland wineries (Woodhall Wine Cellars, Basignani Winery, Boordy Vineyards and Fiore Winery) and four Pennsylvania wineries (Adams County Winery, Allegro Vineyards, Naylor Wine Cellars and Seven Valleys Vineyard and Winery) comprise the Trail. Start at any one of the wineries by buying a Passport for $1, and when you have visited all eight you will receive a wine trail gift and a membership card which entitles you to a ten percent discount from the wineries of the Trail for a two year period. Along the way, buy four bottles of wine at any member winery and receive a winery tasting glass free.

"The Wine Trail sponsors special weekends throughout the year for passport holders and members. During the last weekend in April and the first weekend in May, all member wineries will be serving a food featuring a different herb and passport holders and members of the Trail will receive a plant of the same herb.

"Why not start your Trail exploration this weekend at Woodhall."

We add Wisdom to our links

Blog roll please.

Wanted to welcome Erica Streisfeld of http://www.wisdom4winos.com/, who has been producing copy for her blog on bargain wines since last year. Hey, that's when I started, too. And that's not all we have in common. Living around Harrisburg, she is part of the blogharrisburg.com community and, from what I can tell, a fan of some of the wines that I've bought at the local state stores.

Eric, welcome. Readers. Check out her site.

At Moon Dancer, it's all ahead full

After two months of laying low -- well, let's say it was quiet than normal -- activities at Moon Dancer Vineyards & Winery in Wrightsville, Pa., have started to pick up. Owner/winermaker Jim Miller said the other day by phone that after a two-month break the Friday nigth music has started again. That kicks off the normal weekends at what you could call the "perch on the Susquehanna," with music resuming Saturday and Sunday, both from 2 to 5 p.m. The various holiday festivals start Memorial Day weekend with a summer concert jazz party. Currently they're in the middle of Tour de Tanks, the monthlong passport event for the Uncork York wine trail. Miller said they welcomes about 150 people tothe winery both Saturday and Sunday of the first weekend. "We really had a nice crowd," he said. :It was every bit as good if not better than last year."

He said his 2006 Shiraz was recently released, and the supplies of some of those listed as sold out on his Web site has been refreshed. That's going for $23 a bottle.

Meanwhile, work should commence on a couple of projects this summer. Miller said he's hoping to finish off the room beneath the tasting room to accommodate private events. "We're getting a lot of interest in people doing private events here," he said. "We need additional space for that."

He'll also get rolling on a partnership in the Reading area, not far from the Body Zone! that one can see while driving along Route 222. They'll open a second winery there as part of a project, Miller said his priorioty this spring is to choose the vines to plant and then get them in the soil. At this point he's talking about Merlot, Malbec, Cabernet and perhaps Sauvignon Blanc. You'll read more about the development as time passes.

Mt. Felix Web site adds some bells, whistles

The Manor Home at Mt. Felix Estate, taken off the Web site.

Have written before about the benefits of having an updated Web site and how the qualify of the sites among wineries in this region ranges from unsatisfactory to exemplary. Some haven't changed their sites in the year that I've been posting; no doubt they are the same ones who get quiet on the other end of the line when I mention the word blog? No, sir, that has nothing to do with cranberries. Check with you next decade.

One that has taken a step forward is the Mt Felix Estate Vineyard & Winery in Havre de Grace, Md. There are 20 entry points, a mix of text and photos about the winery and the area that its situated in, overlooking the Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay. This is another one of those "savor the view" wineries in the region, a la Moon Dancer and Hauser Estate in Pennsylvania. There are also photos of the villa, snapshots of parts of its 9,000-plus square feet and 11 fireplaces. There are notes on the seven wines that Mary and Peter Ianniello currently make. Some wineries post their prices; Mt. Felix chooses not to. But it does offer a blog, an entity that more wineries are adding to their sites, and photos of the vineyard. All in all, a step ahead for what's really a winery in its infancy, less than a year old.

Va La ready for sounds of 'play ball'

My 400th post. Thank you for all those who have returned my calls and given me your time during these past 11 months. I was reminded of that again today, placing a call to a Maryland winery that I'm sure would have found a minute to answer questions about its new red wine if had been Wine Spectator or Eric Asimov of the New York Times or, well, maybe even if they knew it was Gary Vaynerchuk. Congrats to all who have been talking wine and swilling the juice long, long before I came on the scene. As for a red wine called The Red Door, maybe I'll be surprised and get the call back tomorrow.


One person who has provided substantial help and support to this blog has been Anthony Vietri of Va La Vineyards, whose winemaking is surpassed only by his sense of humor. You've seen snippets of its in this blog before. Where is Va La? Well, according to his site, "Va La World Corporate Headquarters are located on RT 41 (Gap Newport Pike) in Historic Brandywine Valley, home to high sewer and school taxes, and right smackin the heart of the Mushroom Capital of the World. As the place to see and be seen, we invite you to come and experience the whole Avondale scene, the latest in farm fashions and celebrity watching, gossip, and culture from the world of Avondalia . . . "

In that world Vietri says he is content, "just living the life." For sure, the start of the baseball season can't come soon enough. But between now and then there's some pruning to do and several wines to release (the Zafferano, a cold-fermented 100 percent Pinot Grigio; and the Patina, a blend of red grapes that 98 percent of the American population probably has never heard of: Primitivo, Malvasia Nera, Charbono and Teroldego). Typical of most of Va La's vintages, between the small size of the vineyard and the amount of grapes they drop to improve the quality of the yield, what remains won't last long. In the case of the latter, the medium-bodied Patina has been aging in one barrel and will fill about 600 bottles. Anthony, the Philies would have gone through that amount by the end of the night that they clinched their title.

But there are more bottles to fill this month, some with the esteemed red called Mahogany and others with another red that the winery calls Cedar. Says the Web site: The intention of this wine was to createa Pietmontese-inspired, age-worthy red grown here in our region, to match to the flavors of wild game, local mushrooms,and other gifts of the forest. Four clones of nebbiolo and corvina veronese. Total production normally ranges from one to three barrels."

He also plans to bottle another mix of red grapes, all 2006 vintage, called Castana (which means chestnut in Italian), a blend of Barbera, Nebbiolo and Corvina that he says he's put together before, just not commercially. "I did that one back before we launched with our first vintage," he said. "I did a little experimenting with that one and it went over well, so we decided now and then that we'll mess with it when the year's right . . ."

It's a week to trade info at annual show

Amid the activities on the calendar this week for Buckingham Valley Vineyard’s Jerry Forest, and probably most of the other winery owners in the region, will be a couple of trips to the Valley Forge Convention Center for the annual Wineries Unlimited show. It’s a combo trade show and conference, running from Tuesday through Friday. Scroll down through this link from my associate Carlo DeVito of East Coast Wineries, who documented his observations of last year’s Wineries Unlimited in his blog.

Forest said he’ll take away a number of ideas from this well-known show, including the seminars “on everything you can imagine [about] winemaking and vineyard growing.” I wondered how often the topic of screw caps came up. A phenomenon that is becoming more evident during visits to the state store, I can’t think of a regional winery I’ve visited yet that has switched from the traditional cork. Forest said there’s a good reason for that.

“The reason people don’t switch to it immediately,” he said, “is because the machinery is expensive. If you want to go manual, one bottle at a time, it’s about 10 grand. If you want to go automated you are going to wind up spending 100 [grand], I think.

“We spent on our last line about $200,000. Our new line will do both corks, synthetic closures and screw caps on the same line. But, you know, very few people can afford that . . . so that’s the reason you’re not going to be seeing too many small wineries going with it. Sandcastle just bought a screw cap machine. It’s a single head, one bottle at a time, maybe do five, 10 bottles a minute. It’s not the sort of thing a decent [sized] winery is gonna slow down that much. So that’s the reason. In this business, as you know, we do what we have to do and we make up a story to go along with it. So you ask somebody they’ll say ‘screw caps are bad, cheap wine and all that.’ Well, ask them if they can afford it.”

What Forest and the winery can afford, actually, is a continuation of sales that have gotten 2009 off to a rollicking start. Business, he said, is up almost 10 percent for the first two months of the year. “We were striving to bring in more business the last day of February, and we did,” he said. “Ten percent is not a bad growth figure; even in a big economy it’s fantastic.”

Regarding what’s ahead at the winery, Forest noted they’ll release a spring wine in May. This coming weekend they’ll join their comrades along the Bucks County Wine Trail for an arts show. “We get all kinds of sculptures out on the front lawn and everyplace,” he said. “Everybody [on the trail] is going to have something going.”

Hit a winery this weekend? What did you think?

If any of you were on any of the eastern or central Pennsylvania wine trails this past weekend, either Tour de Tanks (Uncork York!) or Barrels on the Brandywine (Brandywine Valley Wine Trail) or March Madness (Lehigh Valley Wine Trail), and care to add you insight on a particular winery or wine you visited, comment here or send along your thoughts to editorp@comcast.net.