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Chris Brundrett, co-founder of William Chris Vineyards, is a force to be reckoned with in the Texas wine scene. His winery, its growth, and his vision for Texas wines are as big as the state itself.
Check out our William Chris Vineyards at: http://www.WilliamChrisWines.com
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and donât forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
Our show today was recorded in the gorgeous Wine Club tasting room at William Chris Vineyards, along the 290 Wine Trail in Texas Hill Country. Chris Brundrett, co-founder of William Chris Vineyards, is ubiquitous in the Texas wine industry. From his personal and political push to ensure wine labeled as Texas contains 100% Texas fruit, to his efforts to promote elevated service and wine education amongst industry members, to his charitable and philanthropic efforts to aid communities in Texas. Chris seems to be everywhere at once. Heâs also done a great job presenting the many faces of MourvĂšdre that are grown in Texas, via his numerous single vineyard and cuvee bottlings of the varietal.
Heâs an affable man, who at the same time feels part evangelist, part farmer, part winemaker, and part CEO of one of Texasâ most recognizable wine brands. More importantly, he seems to be the kind of person you just want to be friends with, the kind of person who would be happy to help if you needed something, and the kind of person youâd be happy to lend a hand to if he asked. Heâs the picture of the budding Texas wine scene, and Iâm happy to share our conversation with you.
With that said, the Texas wine industry is bursting with wonderful, big personalities. From Sil over at Saint Tryphon, to Dr. Bob at Bending Branch. And from the picpoul blanc at Lost Draw, to the Roussanne at Kuhlman - fascinating, and wonderful wines await you at the most unlikely of locations and visits.
And as a final word, there is a lot of good food to be had in Hill Country. We loved Hill and Vine and Ottoâs in Fredericksburg, I even grabbed a great panini at a roadside gas station that echoed the quality of Oakville Grocery, but the best combo of food, a relaxed and comfortable environment, a predominantly and not pretentiously dominant Texas wine list, and my favorite overall Hill Country restaurant, was 259 Brantleyâs Bistro and Bar in downtown Boerne - spelled BOERNE. Boerne isnât a wine town, at least not yet, but this beautiful Hill Country, riverside village offered an array of wonderful regular menu options and original specials. If youâve visited and dined in the Finger Lakes, it was like a marriage between Ports, Kindred Fair, and Vonneyâs roadside biker bar. I enjoyed the wild hog schnitzel, the mussels were the best Iâve had outside of Belgium, and the service staff always donned a pleasant smile and ensured your glass was full. The mussels were especially good with the Muscat Pet Nat by Saint Tryphon, and may have been one of the best Pet Nats Iâve ever had. Life was good in this place.
This may be the end of this short series on Texas Hill Country, but it is not the end of my coverage of Texas wines. I love this place - the people, the spirit, the service, and the sense that the best is yet to come. As a cool climate winemaker, the alcohol levels in some of the wines do take a bit of getting used to. Iâve produced Cab Franc with alcohol levels ranging from 10.8 to 12.9, but generally simply seek balance and a representation of what the vintage represented. Then again, Texas not only has a longer growing season than the Finger Lakes, it has a lot more sun and a lot more heat. The balanced wines though, are really something - and when paired with local cuisine and a cool night by the Guadalupe River, are the stuff dreams are made of. Chris Brundrett is another man who knows something about dreams - he knows a little something about making dreams come true. So without further ado, hereâs the show.
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The Texas wine scene is growing by leaps and bounds, and Hill Country as a destination continues its growth at a record pace. In this episode, we change up our format to introduce you to some of the leaders of the Texas wine industry. Youâll meet the Executive Director of the Hill Country Wineries Association, Cliff Bingham of Bingham Vineyards, and Michael McClendon, a winemaker/owner at the custom crush facility, Sageâs Vintage.
Check out our guests and some other great links at:
* Texas Hill Country Wineries: https://texaswinetrail.com/
* Bingham Family Vineyards: https://binghamfamilyvineyards.com/
* Michael McClendon and Sageâs Vintage: https://www.sagesvintage.com/
* Texas Winemakers Docu-Series: https://www.youtube.com/c/TexasWinemakers
* Shelley Wilfongâs âThis is Texas Wineâ Podcast:
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and donât forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
My first taste of wine from Texas, was actually a little more than seven years ago. One of the things many people donât know, is the Finger Lakes international wine competition is largely a fundraiser for a place called Camp Good Days and Special Times, which serves as a retreat for children that are fighting cancer. An additional fundraising stream for Camp Good Days through the competition, is a large banquet that follows the end of the competition. A component of that banquet is a silent auction of many of the remaining wines. In 2015, I was invited by Scott and Ruth Osborne, owners of Fox Run Winery, to be their guest for the dinner. Scott, if you recall from our first show, the subject of our very first viticulture interview nearly a year ago, has been called the Robert Mondavi of the Finger Lakes.
The Finger Lakes International Wine Competition is one of the largest in the country, and entrants come from all over the world. Texas wines have done well in that competition, and one of the lots I had bid on was a case of Gold medal winning reds. Fortunately for me, many of them came from Texas producers. Within this box were several Texas producers, one of which I had heard of at the time, but many of which were still new names for me. The Pedernales Tempranillo was a wine I had some vague acquaintance within my mind, probably from reading about it in a magazine or seeing something online.
In the weeks after winning that auction in 2015, I tasted two of the Texas wines that were in that lot. I enjoyed them, and at the time, if I recall correctly, they were of the 2013 and 2014 vintage, and I remember thinking that these wines simply needed a bit more time. Periodically, throughout the years, I would enjoy a bottle or two, to see how they had come along and each time I was impressed. It was sometime around Thanksgiving in 2021, that I discovered a YouTube series called Texas winemakers. This 11 part series of shorts was impressively produced, and followed a handful of Texas producers from throughout the state as they tended their vineyards, made their wines, and discussed their philosophy and their tasting room experiences. The docu-series, produced in 2020-21, captures what was a very difficult period for the Texas wine industry. Inclement weather including freezes, a pandemic, and a difficult business environment throughout the entire country was a headwind. Despite the challenges, the community of Texas winemakers seemed optimistic, tight-knit, and focused on making Texas one of the premier wine states in this country. Between the high quality of production of the series, and the larger than life characters that were featured, there was a sense that there is a momentum and energy to Texas wine that reminded me of what I first felt in the Finger Lakes in 2009. It convinced me that I needed to visit. I also headed down to my own cellar after watching the series, where I pulled out a 2013 Hye Meadow Winery Malbec. Eight years in, that wine was tasting delicious.
My trip to North Carolina, was planned sometime between Christmas and New Yearâs of 2021, and before I knew it I was on a plane visiting the Yadkin Valley. I had a little bit more time when it came to planning for Texas, as I figured I would visit in the third week of January. I had contacted one of the winemakers from the Texas winemakers docu-series, Chris Brundrett of William Chris Vineyards. Within a day of telling him I was planning on visiting the region, he had responded that it was actually going to be an excellent time to visit if I wanted to meet many of the folks in the community. He told me that the Texas Hill Country Wine Symposium, an event that youâll find in many winemaking regions around the world where local producers come together to discuss their challenges, achievements, and generally just build their local winemaking community, was scheduled to take place the first three days of my planned visit. It seemed fortuitous, and got me really energized at the opportunity to meet many of the folks behind the wines I had seen, and by this point, read so much about. For anyone who has never been to a symposium like this, it is also one of the very best opportunities to taste a wide range of wines produced. These symposiums always offer opportunities to engage in deep dive tastings, generally with between four and six wines, while the winemaker is on stage discussing everything about the vineyards, and the vinification. In addition to that, there are almost always social hours, where you have the chance to share your own wine while tasting many of the wines the members of your community have made. Since most symposiums happen at a convention center with a hotel attached, the evening social tasting is usually a great time where people donât have to worry about driving home. Upon hearing about the symposium, and booking my ticket that day, I decided I would need to extend my trip by a few more days if I was going to enjoy the symposium, but also have a chance to see what the Texas Hill country was all about.
Before I go too far, I have to make sure that of a big shout out to Shelly Wilfong and her podcast This Is Texas Wine. With a catalog of nearly a year of shows, Shelley is meticulously documenting the Texas wine scene as it grows and develops, and does an amazing job exploring the lines and the businesses of producers in the state of Texas. I had the chance to meet her at the conference, and she is just as pleasant in person as she is on the show. Youâll learn a lot about Texas wine with every episode.
Texas is a huge state. And winemaking in Texas is not quite as simple as picking a region and understanding that the grapes that youâll be tasting in that region or from that region. 80% of the fruit grown for fine wine making in Texas is actually grown in the High Plains, up near Lubbock Texas. The High Plains is a vast flat area, but one whose elevation helps to promote a diurnal shift in temperatures, and to grow some exceptionally good fruit.
The High Plains is far enough inland so that hurricanes from the Gulf are no longer a worry, and the range of temperatures means there is an enormous variety of different grape varietals that can be grown. In the early days, the focus was on Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Cabernet Sauvignon, and in more recent times the focus has shifted to varietals that are more associated with southern France, Spain, and Portugal. That is not to say there arenât some growers that can grow Riesling - they can. And yet others, are able to grow Rhone varietals that reach a peak of ripeness similar to the Rhone. Here, it is about elevation, and planting varietals that match the site. Unlike state like New York and California, where you go to taste wine where the grapes are grown, Texas wine tourism isnât actually located around the core of its viticulture country. The states premier wine tourism destination is within the AVA known as the Texas Hill country. For those who think of Texas, and think of vast desert planes and tumbleweeds, this is a totally different concept of what Texas geography has to offer. Gentle Rolling hills, beautiful winding roads, lined with her insert the type of trees here, offer a rugged back country feel that reminded me iâm visiting Provence. My wife is from Toulouse, but much of her family is spread out throughout southern France. From the seaside village of La Teste de Buch, near Arcachon on the Atlantic, and clear through Provence, Iâve had the opportunity to see most of this South of France through the eyes of locals. Driving through Texas Hill country, brought was an otherworldly reminiscence of Provence.
The Texas Hill country itself is a vast AVA, with nearly 9,000,000 acres. It has a major advantage in that the Hill country starts as you exit Austin to the east and San Antonio to the south. It is a beautiful region, but has a Normas population centers just outside of its smaller towns. These populations create a massive pool of potential visitors for tasting rooms. In all, Texas Hill country has a population of nearly 28,000,000 people within about a 3 Hour Dr. of wine country. When you combine that fact, with the fiercely loyal nature of Texans to all things Texas, you have the potential for growth unlike almost any region Iâve ever visited.
With my cameras and my recording equipment in hand, I was prepared to tackle many more interviews than I was actually able to complete. I was in Texas in January, just as the omicron variant of Covid was spreading quickly throughout the country. During my last three days I felt like I was coming down with a little something, but thought that it could have just been allergies as the Hill Country cedars were in the midst of their pollination cycle. In any event, I opted to stay away from going to too many public places, and meeting with any more intervieweeâs. I had my at home test kits with me, and they continued to show I was testing negative. It wasnât until I returned home to the Finger Lakes region, that I eventually tested positive.
What that means is, there are a lot of personalities and winemakers I didnât have the opportunity to interview while I was visiting Hill Country. This series will be a little shorter than I had anticipated, but I have plans to make sure we hear from many of those outstanding folks in the future. Some of them will include Seth Urbanik of Wedding Oak Winery, Sam Jensen of Bingham Vineyards, Ron Yates of Spicewood and Ron Yates Winery, Regan Meador of South+Hold, the good folks at Turtle Creek, BĂ©nĂ©dicte Rhyne at Kuhlman Estates, and so, so many others. Wineries like Lost Draw, Hye Meadow, Grape Creek, Farmhouse, Becker, Crawson, Kerrville Hills, and Bending Branch, also have so much to offer - and I havenât even scratched the surface of wines in Texas you need to taste.
Our abbreviated Texas series will consist of two episodes and four interviews. In this first episode, we will be talking with January Wiese, Cliff Bingham, and Michael McClendon. There is a logic to this series of interviews. I wanted to spend this first episode exploring Texas Hill Country through the eyes of the executive Director of Hill Country Wineries, the member-funded marketing association in the Hill Country, headed up by January. Next, I wanted to talk with a grower, and a grower with a winery and tasting rooms throughout the entire state, including one in Fredericksburg in the heart of Hill Country. Cliff Bingham brings an amazing amount of insight to growing grapes in Texas. And finally I wanted to talk with a winemaker, and showcase the work of Michael McClendon. Michael is one of the cofounders of Sageâs Vintage, a custom crush facility that operates out of Nacogdoches in eastern Texas. Michael has built up an excellent reputation with growers throughout the state, and his custom crush operation helps new wineries get off the ground, and existing wineries maintain their current inventories. Working with fruit from all over the state, means Michael has a broad view of what is happening with Texas. Heâs a great winemaker too, as I tasted many of his wines and they were absolutely delicious. As I mentioned in the interview, he may have found the secret spot in winemaking, as you get to do what you love in making wine, but can maintain relatively low overhead and not have to deal with any of the additional stresses this industry can bring.
I really canât say enough positive things about my Hill Country experience. Although the state of Texas has a wonderful history in wine grape growing, I donât think it is unfair or uncharitable (even to the pioneers that have been at work here for decades) to describe Hill Country as a new region. That is not to take anything away from the pioneers like Dr. Becker, at Becker Vineyards, who many decades ago witnessed Robert Mondavi tasting in his tasting room. Mondavi was effusive as to the quality of the wines, and himself realized that the future of Texas wine was incredibly bright. In fact, I think that thee still hidden aspect of Hill Country, and Texas, for those outside of the state, is a blessing for Hill Country producers.
There is just so much energy, and so many new pockets of landscape and terroir to discover. I think that we may be on the cusp of entering one of the most exciting times for this region. That is not to say that there arenât some enormous headwinds off in the distance. I allude in my conversation with Cliff Bingham, to the major issues that are impacting vineyards in the High Plains due to the use of dicamba, an herbicide that is applied on genetically modified cotton to kill the weeds, but not the plant. They farm nearly 3 million acres of cotton in the High Plains, so you can only imagine what that impact may be.
Iâm hoping to do a deeper show in the future on the topic, as I think that it is an extremely important issue in the context of discussing how we should be properly farming in this country. Out of nearly 40 shows, Iâve probably talked about my emphasis on respecting, honoring, and building soil in nearly half of them. The health of our communities from volatilized particles, and how that may harm not just our plants but ourselves and our children, can not be ignored.
As a final note, time constraints have prevented me from having the chance to edit and produce the video versions for the last few shows. For the time being, we will continue to move forward with the audio podcast, and temporarily suspend the video version of the show. We will continue to film interviews, and hopefully, when time permits, complete the editing and release them on the channel.
And now, without further delay, hereâs the show.
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I return to the Finger Lakes for an interview with Gene Pierce, the pioneering founder of Glenora Wine Cellars on Seneca Lake in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of New York. Geneâs experience in vineyards spans more than 50 years, and his leadership in the Finger Lakes wine industry spans more than four decades. Founding Glenora as the first winery on the west side of Seneca Lake, he blazed a trail for the region shortly after the passage of the 1976 Farm Winery Act.
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube.
Due to the extraordinary amount of time video editing has taken, I have put the YouTube portion of the show on hold for a little while. The podcast will continue, and we will continue to deliver great audio content. Stay tuned for more!
Check out Glenora Wine Cellars at:
https://www.glenora.com/
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and donât forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
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We conclude our Yadkin Valley, North Carolina wine series with Ethan Brown, a member of the next generation of Yadkin Valley winemakers, and winemaker at Shelton Vineyards - a pioneer in North Carolina fine wine.
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube.
Check out Shelton Vineyards at:
https://sheltonvineyards.com/
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and donât forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
In this interview, weâre speaking with Ethan Brown, winemaker at Shelton Vineyards in Dobson North Carolina. As pioneers of the Yadkin Valley AVA, Shelton Vineyards is the largest estate vinifera winery in the state of North Carolina, and one of the oldest in this young wine region.
Ethan carries a heavy responsibility for building on a tradition of winemaking excellence, and charting a new path with new product lines for Shelton. Ethan was kind enough to take me around the tasting room, the winemaking facility, and the impressive grounds of this vineyard. With the Blue Ridge mountains an ever present shadow on the horizon, the gentle rolling hills of Shelton inspire a sense of awe at the beauty of the place. The winery is built into a hillside, allowing much of the production and aging areas to be entirely underground. This impressive feature was compounded by exceedingly high ceilings, and a first rate design for the placement of everything from tanks to the bottling line.
This winery is in a transition, as the baton has been passed from the founders to their children. This, combined with Ethanâs youth and professionalism, have set the stage for a renaissance at Shelton Vineyards, which I have the sense is about to explode with life and an even further elevation of their reputation.
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We continue our Yadkin Valley, North Carolina wine series with Diana Jones, of the remarkable 35 acre estate vineyard, Jones von Drehle Vineyards and Winery.
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube.
Check out Jones Von Drehle at:
https://www.jonesvondrehle.com/
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and donât forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
In this interview, I share my conversation with Diana Jones, one of the proprietors of Jones Von Drehle, located in Thurmond, North Carolina. I have visited hundreds of vineyards throughout the world in my life, but there is magic in the air at Jones Von Drehle. Its isolated location, the serendipitous even fateful beginnings for this property and this vineyard, the working relationship between two sisters and their husbands in growing this winery, and their philosophy, of place, of authenticity, and of excellence, combine to make this one of the most memorable visits to a vineyard in my life. There is no pretension here, just slow and steady dedication to an ancient craft, one that requires hard work, but that promises a delightful reward. Diana and her husband Chuck discussed the history of the winery with me, tasted me through whatever I was interested in from their portfolio, and showed me around the winery. It was a taste of home as the tanks were all manufactured by Vance Fabricators, a metal engineering firm located in Geneva, New York, just down the road from the podcast studio. Their wine tanks adorn my own cellar, and their quality is second to none.
The property itself is dedicated to 30 acres of grapes, and weâll discuss the varietals in the interview. The banquet room is now complete where they will host wine dinners and special events, the commercial kitchen is small, but can handle everything a chef needs, and the new amphitheater is ready to entertain. Set in a location that abuts the vineyards, this location will feel like magic for both musicians and entertainers, and the guests visiting the winery. As we were speaking throughout my tasting, the song âItâs a Great Day to be Alive,â came on over head. The Travis Tritt classic always brings a smile to my face, and I could tell Chuck noticed it. Although not in the interview, Chuck shared a story with me that I wanted to relay. His father, who had been a small business owner, had told him years ago about a delivery driver he had, a hard worker, but a guy with an amazing voice and a pretty good guitar player too. Travis was a great worker, but eventually went on to other things. It was until after his father passed away, until Chuck and his brother were sharing old stories about their dad. As Chuck was recounting the story, his brother interrupted - you know that was Travis Tritt, right? Chuck was aghast, and excited. Heâs made it a priority to try and book Travis Tritt for an upcoming show, and quite frankly, listening to his songs, sipping on Jones Von Drehle, and enjoying a North Carolina evening, truly sounds like it would be a great day to be alive.
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As we explore North Carolina wine, this winemaking veteran crafts a dizzying array of beautiful wines in the Yadkin Valley.
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube.
Check out Childress Vineyards at:
https://childressvineyards.com
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and donât forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
Get full access to The Viti+Culture Podcast Newsletter at viticulturepodcast.substack.com/subscribe -
Travelogue Series: I start a multi-episode travelogue exposition in 2022, by visiting North Carolina and the Yadkin Valley. In this multi-part series on North Carolina, weâll explore the Yadkin Valley, meet with producers, and feature several interviews for the YouTube portion of the show with those producers. We will feature Finger Lakes producers in between, and ultimately also explore The Hill Country in Texas, and the wine-growing regions of Idaho.
* Please excuse errors in the text, this was dictated and gently edited.
North Carolina
When I moved to the Finger Lakes a decade ago, I was hungry to find as much information as possible about the region. I wanted to find books magazine articles, podcasts, and nearly anything that would shed light on the history of the region that I was moving to. At that time, there really werenât very many publications. At the very least, I couldnât seem to find a short history of how the finger Lakes and become one of the most discussed emerging regions in the United States. There was of course the wonderful book, Summer in a Glass, by Evan Dawson, in which he follows a number of different winemakers through the growing season 2009 in the Finger Lakes. In the absence of such a book, I set out to write one of my own, with much more of an eye towards content marketing for our new winery, and dug into all of the old journals, periodicals, and textbooks on American wine I could find. I published A Sense of Place in 2014, and have been able to use it as a great tool to help educate customers and even tasting room associates. I wasnât able to find anything quite like that on North Carolina, and realized a lot of the lessons I would learn would have to be done on the ground.
The Yadkin Valley is vast, covering more than 1,300,000 acres. With such a large span of land, I knew that there was going to have to be variation in the topography, and even the climate to a certain extent, within the AVA. I was a bit surprised flying from my layover in Atlanta into Greensboro, to see a dusting of snow covering the ground. For the cold climate winemaker, I just assumed that North Carolina would be significantly warmer than the finger Lakes I had left behind. I was surprised at the temperature spread on the ground that morning was only about 10°, with a balmy 31°F when I landed. Setting out from the airport, and passing through Winston Salem, more than anything else I just wanted to get a feel for the lay of the land. Whenever I arrive in a new place, in order to get my bearings in a sense for what the place looks and feels like, Iâd like to just go for a drive. It gives me a better understanding of where the towns are that get referenced in conversation, what some of the local historical landmarks are, and even where the politics of a place takes place. Knowing that I was in the Yadkin Valley, and heading west from Winston Salem towards Yadkin County, and the Yadkin River, I figured why not plug Yadkinville into my GPS.
I had broken up my trip into visiting the southern portion of the EVA for the first day and a half, and the northern portion of the AVA on the second and third days. Highway 218 seems to cut the AVA in half so it was a good working point to begin to discover some of the different wineries I had a particular interest in tasty.
To choose just a few wineries in an emerging wine region is an extraordinarily difficult job. In a sense itâs kind of a gamble, you rely on reputation, customer reviews, and references from people who are much more expertise in the region and then yourself, but so much of wine still comes down to personal taste, and aesthetics. What I had decided I wanted to do, in pursuing a slightly deeper understanding of the AVA, was to look at oneThat was an anchor in terms of the history of the region, to look at a winery that was relatively new, but small and focused on extraordinary quality, and to look at one of the biggest producers in the AVA with an extraordinary offering of a variety of different ones. I figured I would have a chance to taste several other wineries along the way and include them in this report.
Because in so many ways this was a last minute trip many of the people I reached out to likely hadnât even opened their inbox by the time I was heading out of town. It was the period just after New Yearâs, and often times itâs pretty slow start in the new year in the wine industry. I had however, gotten replies from Shelton, that winery that I referenced as a pioneer in the AVA, and really one of the reasons why there is a Yadkin Valley a View today. I had received word back from Childress, the the winery name and founded by Richard Childress, of NASCAR fame. North Carolina is NASCAR country, and Richard Childress has built one of the largest brands, in fact one of the few I had heard of before traveling to North Carolina, while making wine in New York. I also received word from Diana Jones, of Jones Von Drehle, one of the wineries at the northern end of the AVA, and one that had come extremely highly recommended. Some of the wineries on my shortlist included Ray Lyn, Raffaldino, Shadow Springs, and a handful of others. I guess from the perspective of somebody who is trying to discover a new wine region, one of my only frustrations was not having more direct links to members of winery staff where I could email or contact them directly. I realize this is a problem on my own website, and after experiencing this, something Iâll be change. Sometimes the ease of having an inbox that serves as a catch-all becomes a crutch for us small business owners, but as someone who is seeking some very specific answers to some very specific questions, it can make sense to ensure that those individuals with deeper questions can reach winemakers directly.
In any event, I arrived in Yadkinville, crossing the Yadkin River, and decided to head to town where I could pick up some bottled water and a couple snacks and see what the town offered. Yadkinville is a small town, there doesnât seem to be much of a culinary scene, and it really is just the county seat. Itâs where you go to get permits, and like we have your county planning board meetings. There wasnât much by way of a presence of wine in the town, but I did notice when I stopped in to the local grocery store, Food Lion, and realized this was a state that sells wine in grocery stores, and they had a small selection of some of the local producers, with Childress being one of them. The wines on offer were very basic, emphasizing the muscadine production of sweet wines from local producers, but there were a few dry reds and whites included on the shelf. Since Yadkinville marked in the center of the AVA, and it was getting to be towards the middle of the afternoon, I figured I would enter wineries into my GPS to see if any were open, and get back on the road. Leaving the main highway I drove beautiful winding roads and very gentle hills in what was largely agricultural countryside. I drove by a winery called Bradford Hills, which was a very small tasting room and an out-building, a small but well manicured vineyard, and it look like a fantastic place to visit on a beautiful summer day. It didnât look like it would be open until after my flight was departing on Friday, and I quickly realized that I likely would not have a chance to taste many of the wineries that I hadnât made contact with, during the middle of the week. This meant that a lot of the small producers, wineries about my own wineryâs size and smaller, would have to wait for another trip.
After taking some pictures I set back out onto the road, looking at my GPS and seeing what wineries I would be passing on my way to Lexington, where Childress is located and where my hotel room was booked. I noticed that RayLyn could be reached with a small detour. From my research it was a winery that I really wanted to taste at, and I noticed they were open, so I made my way. Even though it is winter, thereâs still more sun and warmth then we get in the finger Lakes. The grass was still green, though the trees were bare, and the bare trees opened up the countryside even more so that you could see the hills and buildings, that were off in the distance.
Making my way from Bradford Hill winery, the landscape became less dramatic, slightly flatter, but retaining the same intrinsic quality. Passing fields that had recently been ploughed, the deep tones of brick and garnet that marked the clay that is found all throughout this region, was everywhere. My GPS led me to RaeLyn Vineyards, and upon entering I was impressed. The site was easily accessible from many of the main highways, and from that perspective, it seems to be ideally situated to attract a steady flow of customers. One of the things Iâve learned as a producer, especially one in an emerging region, is how important it is to be able to attract customers in as convenient of a location as possible. When so much of your business depends on people knocking on that cellar door, you want that door to be easily accessible.
RayLyn was marked with a beautiful gate as an entrance, and a a gentle drive through the vineyards towards the tasting room in winery. I passed a small new planting of strawberries and several young rows of blueberries. I particularly like when wine wineries are able to integrate other forms of agriculture into their farms. Whether they are used for any sort of wine production, I think it encapsulates this idea of our responsibility to the soil and to the earth. It also reminds us of the other forms of agriculture that we can be excited about. Iâve begun integrating more produce at our winery, planting cucumbers and tomatoes, peppers and squash, and hope to grow this out in the future.
Approaching the parking lot at Ray Lynn, thereâs a very nice outdoor tent that they seem to be able to use for banquets or weddings, and likely overflow for the tasting room if the weather is inclement. At this point in the afternoon the temperature had risen to about 41°, but with that southern sun shining bright, the fresh air combined with the warmth felt wonderful on my skin. And it wasnât just me, there were a couple folks sitting out enjoying the day on some picnic tables outside the tasting room with a glass of wine. They were polite and smiled and gave me a small raise of the glass as I walked by. I entered the tasting room was read it immediately. People in North Carolina are friendly. I spoke with the tasting room staff, explained I was a winemaker and operated podcast, and had wanted to feature RayLyn on the shelf. This was one of the emails that had gotten lost in my expedited travel plan, and so without an appointment I took a gamble. It was a great choice. The tasting room staff was excited, informed me that her husband was from Watkins Glen, and eagerly brought up the names of some of my favorite producers in the Finger Lakes, folks that they have close personal relationships with. Being from Watkins Glen, of course the Stamp family at Lakewood, received some of the highest praise. She offered to taste me through the portfolio and I happily agreed, this would be my first taste of North Carolina wine In North Carolina.
This winery offers a full suite of different wines, emphasizing dry veneer for a red and white wines, they also offer a beautiful Charmat style rosĂ©, of course some of the sweet wines that have built this region made from the Muscadine grapes, and canned wine as well. We worked our way through the Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and the dry rosĂ©. Review my notes to include some of the specifics about each wine here. Fortunately, the tasting room also had available detailed notes on the chemistry of the wines, the harvest date, and the components that were in most of the blinds. Itâs interesting in the finger Lakes, our growing season doesnât really kick off until May, and that means that most varietals wonât begin harvest until September. Of course there are some hybrid grapes that are harvested much sooner, but those donât tend to be any of the bridals that I work with. With harvest starting in September, there have been vintages where we are harvesting all the way through early November, and that doesnât include wines that we are making as light harvest wines, where we can be harvesting all the way to Thanksgiving, or ice wines which may be picked in January or February of the next year. It seems to me, that much of harvest will begin in August here in North Carolina and be ramping up by the end of September. It also struck me that that works very well for those people who enjoy wine country visits in October, during the fall when the air begins to cool and the excitement of all the dressings of fall are in the air. As a wine maker in the finger Lakes, Columbus Day marks our busiest weekend of the year. It also marks one of those weekends where we are fully in mashed in all of the seller activities, and that means I rarely get a chance to spend time with customers during harvest. It would be great to have the opportunity to spend more time as a wine maker with customers just as harvest is wrapping up and tourism is peeking.
Though I love both red and white wines, my desert island wine will generally consist of a white. For me white wines offer a transparency into Vineyard practice and seller practice that edge out reds. Consequently I spend a lot more time thinking about white wine, I spend a whole lot more time making white wine in the finger Lakes, and I find that I drink or white wine. All of the whites offered at RayLyn were wonderful, some with a small component of Muscat Canelli, which added some wonderful aromatics.
Add a little bit of the history from the website of RaeLyn here. While tasting Rachel, one of the owners and daughter of the founder, and the ray of RaeLyn stop by to say hi. She made sure that I was enjoying my tasting, and trying to help me make contact with Steve, their winemaker. He had been in Asheville that day and wouldnât be arriving until later in the week. She gave me his email address and I hope to have him on in the future in a long distance long-form interview. From everything Iâve heard, heâs one of these towering pioneering figures in the Yadkin Valley and someone who is clearly taking their wines to great heights. The Reds were equally as compelling as the whites, and in someways perhaps even more so. You can get the sense when youâre at a winery, what is the family who makes these wines prefer to drink, and I did get that sense here. One of the bottlings, had what I assumed with some modern art on it, but upon looking closer and receiving the explanation understood That it was actually the Doppler radar of a hurricane. Yes one of my questions has been immediately answered, hurricanes can be a factor here in the Yadkin Valley, though they are nowhere near the factor that people who live closer to the coast have to deal with. Discuss this wine.
After a really wonderful visit at RaeLyn, I ordered a case of wine, had it shipped back to our winery in New York, and set off for Lexington. Again with no familiarity of any of these towns or cities, I chose Lexington because it is the closest town to Childress vineyards. Lexington is nestled in the far south eastern portion of the AVA and most of the city isnât included in the AVA itself. The town itself is it fairly nice downtown area, and it does feel like there is a small foodie movement emerging, with some local cafĂ©s and a Piedmont cheese shop. But in many ways it remains in agricultural and industrial, southern town that I can picture with time and investment has the potential to grow itself into a hub of Wine and food centrality.
Just outside the fenced in property for Childress Vineyards was the Holiday Inn and adjoining plaza. There werenât really any shops in the small but nice strip mall that is next to the Holiday Inn, but it is all designed in a very similar fashion to Childress itself. The hotel has one side that looks out at the vineyards which I imagine would be a wonderful way to wake up. I was booked on the highway facing side, but the room is quiet and clean and a nice place to eat my takeout Mexican dinner for the night.
So much of my philosophy is based on the specifics and the importance of place, and tied up with that philosophy is the notion that small is often better. Most of the time, most of the restaurant and dining options I observed, or chains that work cute in to specializing in any notion of local cuisine. Out here it wasnât even real common to find a lot of barbecue joints, which I half expected to see almost everywhere. Again maybe I wasnât looking in the right places, but I do have the sense that restaurant and food entrepreneurs will likely have a huge market to tap into if thatâs the direction they would like to go in partnering with this growing wine country.
My appointment with Mark Friszolowski was at nine the next morning, and so after getting a good nights sleep and waking up fairly early, I headed over to Childress Vineyards. I was said to meet him in the lobby and as a military man, who retired as a colonel and between his active and reserve duty spent 37 years in the army, I knew that on time was to be 10 minutes early. Driving into Childress which was literally just around the corner from the parking lot of the hotel in through the gates, you pass through a wonderfully manicured vineyard. The varietals are all identified by signs with the trademark Richard Childress logo, and varietals like Maulbeck and Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and multiple Ciano Iâll stand out. There were signs marking planned plantings of Chardonnay and Pinot noir, which Iâm particularly interested to see how they do with the North Carolina heat.
The tasting room and winery set a top of hill which can be seen from almost any point of the drive into the wineries grounds. It is a beautiful Modern take with an Italian 18. It is the sort of Tuscany inspired building but youâll find Americans like to build. It sets the tone for the romantic visions that we have of European, and especially Italian, winemaking culture. I know that there are some people who donât like this form of architecture, they donât like the sense that it calls out and emotive response that she would find somewhere else in the world but with modern building materials and aesthetics. Iâll be honest, I liked it. I think that they put a lot of effort into creating a beautiful building and grounds with a nice setting that makes you feel like that The winery youâre entering is making some special wines, they put in a lot of effort to set a tone and that tone carries through from the heat and painted murals on the wall of scenes of grape harvest, to the indoor fountain, to the seated tasting room with string lights and doors.
This is not the Olive Garden experience, this is something much nicer and with such warm staff, more personal too. The entire tasting room experience was wonderful, The seller tour, The tour of the grounds in the bonded warehouse, explanations on infrastructure projects, a peek inside the restaurant and banquet facility, were all greatly appreciated. Mark was a wonderful host, who poured some great wines. We focused on their vinifera wines,tasting Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, as well as Montepulciano, and some red blends. Markâs personal history, from his time helping out at Dry Creek Vineyards in California, managing operations at Pindar on Long Island, and ultimately moving to North Carolina to help found Childress. Mark is one of the first winemakers in the country to collaborate on creating the Meritage Alliance, and therefore creating Bordeaux based blends. The specific vintage of Meritage we tried, the 2015, is a well aged current release. It carried many of the things I love about older Bordeaux, the hints of cedar, the forest floor. It was it both times bolder than what youâll find in many offerings in the Finger Lakes, but leaner than what you would find in California. And struck a nice middle ground, and was a sort of sweet spot of bold but not overly dramatic red blends that I personally like, and that I think complement food quite well. Iâll be spending an entire feature in an episode with Mark on Childress, so for now weâre going to continue with our travelogue and look at the rest of us the experience here in the Yadkin Valley.
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In crafting the short travel log, I wanted to make sure that it wasnât strictly about wine. Most of the time when we travel, there are other things on our quotation mark to do quotation mark list. There are a couple of really interesting tourist activities here in the Yadkin Valley, but deal both with history, pop-culture, and the wonderful natural surroundings. Mark was so generous with his time, but I found myself leaving the winery later than I had expected. I certainly wasnât disappointed and I had made sure to leave a good window of time to spend at this landmark property. I figured I would spend the rest of the afternoon exploring some of those other offerings, and found my way to highway, and I headed up for the town of Mount Airy.
Mount Airy sits on the North Carolina Virginia border. It is like so many other hill and mountain towns in America, a quintessential snapshot of life in both modern and past American societies. Mountains and hills can I think we people to be a bit more hearty sometimes a bit tougher but always genuinely very nice. The town itself is built around its historic Main Street. And coming in to Mount airy do you understand what that history is all about. The name of the highway even changes and becomes the Andy Griffith Parkway, and that of course is named after the famous television show an actor that for seven seasons captured the aspirational qualities of American small-town life. With its classic whistling introduction, itâs sensitive skipping Stones and safety and security, of good old fashion morals and values and being raised in small-town life, Mount Airy was the inspiration for the Andy Griffith show fictional town of Mayberry. Mayberry is the corner stone upon which so much of the towns character now rests. You see signs for Aunt Beeâs cafĂ©, you see the Mayberry antique shops, the Mayberry museum, ice cream shops meant to look like they were preserved from the 1930s, and a sense of pride that their town was once the basis for this dreamscape of Americana. Some of that dreamscape feels a little rough around the edges now, who knows if it was then if thatâs what itâs always been, or if the changing times or loss of industrial base, of structural changes to our economy, and even the opioid epidemic that we face in this country, have added a touch of tarnish to the shine. In all, itâs a great place to be, a wonderful old historic town and Iâm happy I made a detour.
As you leave Mount Airy and head south on the highway back towards a more central location of the AVA you pass a geological wonder, an outcropping called Pine Mountain. It dominates the skyline and can be seen from many many miles away when youâre on top of hills. Driving past it, and without enough time to drive to the park and visit the mountain personally, I realize that this will be on the top of my list when I have a chance to return with my family and my children. I used to love walks through areas like this when I was a child and I canât wait for Andrew And Audrey to have that experience with me. I found out, it isnât the only fascinating geological wonder to explore, as thereâs also Stone Mountain, which figured prominently in my second visit on my third day on the ground in the Yadkin Valley.
For that evening I had made reservations in a small town called Elkin, or rather just outside of it, in the adjoining town of Jonesville. Jonesville is the classic sort of truckstop town, that offers some heavy industry, but largely consists of some gas stations, hotels, a Cracker Barrel, fast food restaurants, and a grocery store that serves the locals. It did have a Mexican restaurant, this one called Margaritas, which I took advantage of both nights of my stay in the Hampton Inn.
Arriving at the hotel, it was a little older, but the staff was exceptionally accommodative, the room was perfectly clean, and the setting itself was quiet. When you were on the road there are very few other things that you actually need. Warm cookies were waiting for us as we checked in, and I unloaded my bags and all of our equipment in my room before I set out for the town to see what was available.
Before I set my sights on dinner, I wanted to see Elkin itself. For my own personal aesthetic tastes, this portion of the AVA felt like it matched my desires more closely than the south eastern portion of the AVA. Elkin was quaint but beautiful. As the sun was coming down, the Yadkin River roared not too far away, the train tracks cross run adjacent to the main street, and the town itself seems well put together. Large murals adorn some of the older brick buildings, many featuring grapevines, and the town features a wonderfully restored old theater.
Elkin felt nicer than Mount Airy in someways, not to denigrate Mount Airy at all, but it struck me that Elkin is the sort of town that could deal with in Oakville grocers type of concept, some interesting fine dining that features many of the local wineries strongest efforts, and some other cultural activities. Again itâs the off-season and perhaps there is that sort of activity that is going on that Iâm simply not aware of, but I feel like the future for Elkin is bright. There arenât a lot of accommodations right around downtown, but with all of the hotel options in Jonesville, Elkin will be able to maximize the heads in beds that is so important for wine country tourism.
Interestingly Elkin and Jonesville, where you reach Jonesville by crossing the Yadkin River, are in different counties. Iâm not sure if any of the development has anything to do with that, but in my own experience, especially when youâre dealing with the county and town level, so many of the decisions on what can happen and how well a town or region grows, are based on the local politics and the bureaucratic decisions that are made. Iâd have to be there for a lot longer to know if any of this is in play.
I picked up some carnitas and pollo asado street tacos, and headed back to my room for another great night sleep. The next morning I had appointments with two different wineries, Shelton Vineyards, and Johns Von Drehle.
I woke up early the next morning, spent some time on my computer making sure that I had transferred all of my photos and videos, refreshing some of my notes from my previous dayâs visit, and set out for Shelton Vineyards. Any of my initial skepticismâs on the beauty of the countryside, how this wine region will grow and what its potential is, weâre set aside as I visited Shelton. Shelton is located in the town of Dobson.
The exit from the highway for Shelton Vineyards also leads you to Surrey Community College. Surrey Community College was constantly a subject of discussion with most of the people in the wine industry that I met. It is a community college with a vineyard and enology program, and one that was largely initiated and funded by the Shelton Brothers the founders a Shelton Vineyards. Similar to my emphasis in the finger Lakes on the finger Lakes community college Viticulture program, the Surrey community College program helps to introduce and train up the next generation of viticulture lists knickers. The college itself has a program and a 10 acre Vineyard where students can learn. Against that backdrop of both philanthropy and history, I was excited to have the chance to meet with Ethan Brown, winemaker in Shelton in Vineyards. Ethan had been there for four years, and in a way that completes the circle of the importance of programs like the one at Surrey community college, he attended the program many years ago. Ethan was a young organized dynamic guy, and he wasted no time in showing me around the winery tasting room, and providing a little bit of context for the history of the place.
Currently the largest vinifera vineyard in the state of North Carolina, Shelton farms 80 acres of grapes with plans to plant a lot more. Exceptionally manicured, with beautiful old fashion light posts lining the long driveway from the highway to the winery, Shelton truly transports you to a different world. The gentle rolling hills adorn with a backdrop of the mountains, which on clear warm days, I can imagine, inspires you to find your own piece of beautiful grass, and enjoy a glass and some cheese with someone you laugh. For those wine club members who want the best of views, you can climb up to the gazebo that rests surrounding vineyards and truly has the best features of the entire valley.
Built in 1999, Shelton Vineyards really isnât showing itâs age that much. It speaks to the efforts of the staff to ensure maintenance is done regularly and things are taken care of. The cellar itself is built into a hillside which means most of it is underground. The barrel rooms are probably 20 feet high but at least 2/3 of that being underground meaning temperature control from both cold and heat is a lot easier and done with much less energy. Producing around 25,000 cases a year, this is a Winery that has seen the baton passed from the founding Shelton brothers to the next generation. With that transition is an intention to grow their programs and initiate new ones. With the recent purchase of a break tank and a small hand bottling counter pressure system the winery seeking to do more charmat style sparklings. Ethan also talked about expanding cock and re-instituting their traditional methods Sparkling Wine program.
I tasted a Sauvignon Blanc, a dry rosĂ© based on Merlot, Petit Verdot, and a Petit Verdot/Cabernet Sauvignon blend.. All of the wines were exceptionally crafted, showing what I had begun to discern as something that speaks to the North Carolina fine wines that I tried. The whites and the reds are both fuller bodied than what we find in the Finger Lakes, they have generous acid ,but lower than what we have in truly cool climate winemaking; and the reds werenât overly extracted. They spoke of great fruit, they were well balanced, and their alcohols were generally about 13%. I also tasted a great Tannat. My wife and I have visited Madiran in southern France, Iâve had a lot of experience with the French version of the varietal. We visited a number of producers large and small in Madiran, and I love those wines, there just arenât that many American Tannatâs that I have fallen in love with. Of course the wines of Jenny McCloud of Chrysalis have been wonderful, and Iâve been lucky enough to cellar those for many years. This North Carolina Tannat, my first experience with a varietal in the terroir, makes sense for the region. There are some very strong Virginia Tannats that are growing, and with this particular vineyard in North Carolina, I renewed my love of the varietal. As with Childress, and the winery Iâll be talking about next, Jones Von Drehle, Shelton will have its own feature in the podcast, as I sat down with Ethan Brown to discuss his own experience, Shelton Vineyards, and where the region and the winery is going.
As Ethan and I wrapped up, and he was generous enough to spend several hours and taste a lot of wines with me, I headed off for my last visit of the day to Jones Von Drehle. The roads grew less crowded, the bends and winds and hills became more dramatic, and I started to wonder where in the heck was this place. I arrived early, about an hour or so, and took advantage of the opportunity to do just a little bit of driving and perhaps find something to eat. I typed in food nearby and the nearest place was the Stone Mountain General store. It wasnât too far from the Stone Mountain State Park entrance, and so I figured Iâd head over there and see what was available. The general store itself feels plucked from time. An old rustic wooden building, but offers inside a few knickknacks, necessities for campers such as para chord, fire starters, and offers a few small food items for the weary traveler camper. Simple offerings like a hamburger or cheeseburger, or a housemaid turkey or ham sandwich were available. The turkey sandwich tasted like home, although it was on white bread. Turkey, American cheese, lettuce, tomato: all for $2.95. It wasnât the most glamorous meal Iâve ever had in wine country, but it filled me up, tasted just fine, and was certainly marked as my cheapest option Iâve ever had on the road. I took advantage and drove around the park a bit, didnât have a chance to see Stone Mountain itself but just like Pine Mountain, this will be on my itinerary for the next visit, one I hope to take with the family.
Heading back down the hill I arrived at my appointment just on time at Jones Von Drehle, and boy was I impressed. The Vineyard itself has two entrances, a service entrance and a guest entrance. I can tell it was an extremely quiet day but I wanted to have the standard customer experience, and so I entered the other guest entrance. Driving down the crusher run you are snaked through the vineyards, pass the retention ponds, as the tasting room and winery, and brand new amphitheater open up before you. It is an impressive and beautiful experience. The slope of the hills hug you to your right as you wind your way around the vineyards on one side nature on the other and approach your final destination. The hills jumped in different directions the vines bear open up the view to see row after row in this well-kept vineyard. The amphitheater itself is gorgeous. Recently finished itâs part of the philosophy of the owners to incorporate wine music in food into living a good life.
The tasting room is not extraordinarily elaborate in itâs design, but itâs well thought out and well appointed inside. The most impressive feature, is the immersive feeling you get when you walk in turn to your right and look out the windows in the back of what is the tasting room. The slopes feel even more dramatic here from the vineyards, and with the trees bare of their foliage you can peer through the trunks to see the steep incline of the Granache and the Malbec and other varietals. Well lit, and open, without any sense of clutter, the tasting room invite you to a horse shoe shaped bar in the middle were the tasting room attendant who was very nice and gracious, and the new to the wine industry expressed an amazing thirst for knowledge, that is extremely inviting.
Diana Jones was waiting for me, and informed me that her husband Chuck was on his way back from Charlotte where they had been delivering some wine. This 6000 case winery is centered around 30 acres of a estate vineyard. They do not have a distributor, and unfortunately donât ship to New York state right now, but when they get that license, I can assure you Iâll be ordering more wines. Everything was wonderful and unique. From their Grenache rosĂ©, to their Chardonnay - both stainless steel and barrel fermented, to the real interesting Petit Manseng, which carries a fairly heavy alcohol, but is it so well balanced on the pallet that it is neither distracting nor over the top. It is well balanced and full bodied, and a wine that they described as being extremely popular at restaurants who have received James Beardâs nominees and nods, as a âbuy the glassâ pour.
Tasting through their Grenache rosé, this dry rosé echoed Provence with its own North Carolina flair. It was a wonderful wine and one I decided I had to take one home. Their red offerings were equally as compelling. Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Sauvignon blend - all were well-crafted, clearly brilliantly grown, and offered everything I could hope for. Their winemaker, cut his teeth in California, spending decades in the industry until he finally decided he wanted to have a small farm himself and, with land prices in California being what they are, realized the East Coast offered his best opportunity to become a farmer himself. He took over the reins at Chùteau Morissette in Virginia, and this large production oriented winery did well for him for sometime.
As he sought to become more ingrained in a small production oriented facility, he had heard about the efforts of these two crazy couples from Atlanta Georgia with original roots in North Carolina, that had planted an estate vineyard in the middle of the hills just south of Stone Mountain. Itâs been a match made in heaven and with Danâs experience, and the attention to detail in Vineyard, the wines are truly top-notch.
The way the Vineyard is set up, many of the worst things that you deal with in the Yadkin Valley AVA, are ameliorated naturally. Water naturally runs down the clay hill slopes, with the help of some drain tile. The intense humidity and moisture that you deal with in North Carolina, is marginalized by the fact that the steep hills along with the fact that the mountains are in the distance, create an almost constant airflow which helps to dry the canopy and the fruit during crucial periods of the year. Additional measures such as the first cordon being 42 inches high instead of 36 inches from the ground help reduce ground moisture from impacting the fruit. The whole property is fenced to keep our critters. The wind also helps to protect the vines from early-season frosts, which often compromise buds, particularly the primary buds where the majority of the fruit is located, and get them through very treacherous periods where the temperatures will impact that yearâs harvest. And overall just the amount of effort that the team here puts into their vineyards, the philosophy that fine wine comes from extraordinary vineyards rings true.
We go even deeper into Jones Von Drehle in our long-form interview, which is slightly shorter than the long form interviews I do from the studio, but nonetheless will give you a much deeper picture of this winery itâs history and itâs increasingly prominent role in the North Carolina wine industry.
Returning to Elkin for the evening, I had wished I brought an extra bottle to enjoy that evening. Instead I did what we winemakers often do and grabbed some local beers, picked up another to go order of Mexican food from Margaritas, and spent some time recapping the visits with my wife, enjoying the shrimp chipotle that I filled into some fresh corn tortillas, and then headed to bed. The next morning I would be leaving the Yadkin Valley, and any initial apprehension that I had as to where this wine region was, was disappearing. When it came to food, Diana Jones had mentioned that Asheville and Raleigh were truly astounding foodie towns. With that as a basis, it wonât take long for some enterprising young chef or cook who wants to do their own project, to find their way to one of the small towns and make it work during the busy tourist seasons.
Yet again, I woke up early worked on my computer for a bit, and double checked my itinerary checking in to my Delta flight. I realized at this pace, I may not have time to taste at any other wineries, but I could at least take a peek at the landscapes in the settings that the region had to offer. I took a drive out to a winery that I had really wanted to visit, but in this trip just couldnât make it work. Raffaldini is widely regarded as not just an important landmark in North Carolina wines, but a house that is making some truly stellar North Carolina wines. From all my research, it is the sort of aspirational wine story that is bred in a man who worked hard and made a great deal of money in another field. Using those resources, he has poured them in to building a truly astounding estate. You can look at pictures on the Internet, you can watch videos on YouTube, but with some properties you donât understand just how special they are until you actually visit them. And so setting Raffaldini in my iPhone map, I headed in the direction of the winery.
Driving down the highway, North Carolina has done such an excellent job in featuring the different wineries throughout the state with these large highway adjacent signs, that I quickly realized this was a pocket of the AVA I shouldâve explored right away. Instead of one or two wineries indicated there were multiple. And not only were there multiple, they were all wineries that in my research into the region, come vaguely familiar with. Wineries like Laurel Gray, Shadow Springs, Raffaldini Vineyards, Piccione, and several others. That last winery was one that I heard mentioned multiple times when I was tasting in different tasting rooms and talking with local proprietors of every sort. If there is a small pocket of fine wines, with multiple wineries working towards the same goal, emerging in North Carolina, this may be the place.
There are of course a lot of people doing a lot of great work throughout the entire region. But one thing I have understood in my research of, particularly American wine, is that like the person who wants to start a gas station, the very best place you can locate a new gas station is across the street from an existing gas station. The logic may seem counterintuitive, but if people start to think of that intersection as a place to get gas, then that is where they will get gas. Likewise in wine, tourists often donât take the extraordinary measures of researching soil types, property histories, winemakers, and all of the other factors that lead to a specific winery making great wines. They look for the clusters where numerous proprietors are working on their own, sometimes in concert with their community, to pull the best fruit from their land and produce the best wines from their grapes. If there is an early nucleus that we can expect the North Carolina wine country in the Yadkin Valley to flourish from, my sense was, this might be it. With that said, I did not have an opportunity to taste any of these wines.
For those listening who are interested in exploring North Carolina wines, I would certainly say that visiting any of the wineries I have mentioned is a prerequisite. But I think that in my next visit, I will certainly start in this particular part of the AVA. I will likely visit Raffaldini, Piccione ,and many of the other surrounding wineries. I would not miss out on visiting either Shelton or on Jones Von Drehle Vineyards Winery or Childress. But I think that this particular corner of the AVA is fostering a sort of spirit that seems to be building upon itself. There are no restaurants nearby, there are no hotels within a 1 mile drive most of these places. For the entrepreneurs listening, I would expect that to change, because this seems to be where some of the energy for the AVA seems to be admitting from.
I guess as a closing retrospective, there is an immense amount of differentiation within the Yadkin Valley AVA. From topography, to culture, to wine styles produced by the different wineries. When I landed, and first began to explore the very core of this viticultural area, I will admit to feeling a little underwhelmed. That feeling began to dissipate upon visiting RayLyn, and after tasting at Childress I was excited. The entire focal point of the trip changed as a ventured outside of the south east quadrant and moved into areas that, admittedly, felt a little bit more familiar. Call it a personal bias, call it a personal preference.
My conclusion is this⊠The Yadkin Valley AVA is vast, it includes so many different specific tear wars, that itâs difficult to call it one region. From the wind and hills at Jones Von Drehle, to the gentle slopeâs just south west of the northern reaches of the AVA, to the flatter more populated areas in the south east corner of the viticultural area. What I can say is this, each producer I visited produced all level of quality that far surpassed any of my expectations. Too many regions I visit , Or rather have visited in my life, think of themselves as Napa in the 1970s. This is not Napa in the 1970s, because this is not America in the 1970s. This is North Carolina in 2022, and it is full of surprises, and beauty, and wines that will surprise at every turn. Is this a region worth visiting question? If you are an American who loves wine, this is a region you must visit. You will fall in love with many of these wines. I donât know what your personal preferences, I donât know if you like red or white, or lean or bold, or salty whites or tannic reds, but you will love it. You will find wines you love and you will want to taste these wines the rest of your life. In vino Veritas, and in North Carolina, there is indeed, great wine.
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Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and donât forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
You can watch the interview on our YouTube channel here:
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John Martini, together with his wife Ann, have farmed grapes in the Finger Lakes since 1973. Itâs been a long journey, and itâs time for the next generation to captain this ship.
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube.
John Martini, who along with his wife Ann, began planting grapes in the Finger Lakes in 1973 after a move to the region from New Jersey. John and Ann have managed to build a family run Finger Lakes wine brand on the West side of Seneca Lake with Anthony Road Wine Company, endured hard times and great times, and have crafted a legacy their four children and their spouses have a right to be proud of today. This interview comes as John has passed the torch to his children, and ensured the winery is in good hands for the next generation.
Check out Anthony Road Wine Company at:
https://anthonyroadwine.com/
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and donât forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
You can watch the interview on our YouTube channel here:
Get full access to The Viti+Culture Podcast Newsletter at viticulturepodcast.substack.com/subscribe -
We start our discussion on the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina with this great piece from Leisure Group Travel:
https://leisuregrouptravel.com/tasty-discoveries-await-travelers-in-yadkin-valley-wine-country/
Episode 0031:
Wine Reads â January 13, 2022
Winter was delayed here in the Finger Lakes, with a fairly wet but warm fall and early winter, by our standards at least, which lulled us into a sense of complacency. Yesterday, however, we had a high of 10° and weâre looking at a few days next week with lows in the negatives. Fortunately most of the vineyards look to be hilled up. In cold regions like this we have a practice called hilling up, where using our tractor, we take some of the dirt from under the vine and pull it up over the base of the vine in a mound. This is meant to protect the graft union, that portion of the vine where native roots stock is grafted onto vitis vinifera. This little bit of a dirt blanket, helps to protect the vine and that extremely susceptible and tender graft Union.
As I mentioned in our previous wine reads, for the first time in many, many years, Iâve planned some trips, some expeditions to far-flung wind regions throughout the United States. I return on Friday from the Yadkin Valley, in North Carolina. I had the opportunity to taste with some truly remarkable producers. Farmers growing grapes in North Carolina face additional growing pressures I donât really need to think about in the Finger Lakes, and are experimenting with varietals on a very wide scale. The sheer number of different vinifera varietals the folks are growing in North Carolina is impressive. A wide range of French grapes, Italian grapes, and even some Spanish grapes, are being successfully produced in this 1.4 million acre AVA. I have a full report that Iâm working on that will be up soon. Our look at North Carolina will start with a travelogue, both on our podcast and on our YouTube channel, which will examine the breadth in the variety that you will find in this particular corner of North Carolina. That report will be followed by several episodes of interviews with producers in the region. These producers are all very different, and all very unique. Each have their own special niche when it comes to the North Carolina wine industry.
Next week, Iâm off to Texas Hill Country, and will be attending the Texas Hill Country Wine Symposium. Iâm really looking forward to sharing my thoughts on this region.
As Iâve mentioned countless times, but Iâll do it again for our new listeners, my wife is from Toulouse, in southern France. We visit her family as often as we can, and every time we do we always take several days, more if we can, and visit many of the different wine regions throughout the South of France. Places like Limoux, Madiran, Bergerac, Gaillac, Fronton, and dozens of other small wine regions that donât necessarily appear on the radar of American wine drinkers. Iâve always loved an underdog story. I also love the authenticity that you find in small, particular places that are proud of their unique situation, and terroir. Likewise with American wine, Iâm attracted to these frontiers. From places like Hermann Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Idaho, and Pennsylvania, I simply love to explore what folks in our craft are doing in places that arenât always top of mind for the average American wine consumer or distributor.
With that said, this weekâs wine read is actually an older article, one I found when I wanted to provide a sort of and prologue to our upcoming episode on the Yadkin Valley. Itâs a look at the region through the eyes of a journalist, and though it outlines some wineries I didnât visit, and quite frankly some that werenât even on my radar for my visit, one of the things that I have found in the aftermath of my visit to North Carolina, is that there is far too much that has not been on my radar in this state. Itâs an interesting place, ideally situated to grow as a wine region, and one which I think will enter the larger conversation of American wine in the years to come. As American wine consumption becomes more mature, I think what we will begin to see is a bit of what we see when I visit Europe. People begin to learn the specific regions, the types of wines they produce throughout the continent, And select those wines for the appropriate food pairings. America is a great and large country, with so many different potential outcomes for the styles of wines people choose to make.
To exploit the very best of what we have to offer in this country, we must dig deeper. I dream and see a time when we look at America for all of its diverse viticultural contributions. The point is this, we need to embrace the idea of what different regions in this country are doing well. We need to support these growers so that they continue to explore and figure out what it is their land can provide us with that best suits their place. Jqn 13, 121
Todayâs Wine Reads is entitled âTASTY DISCOVERIES AWAIT TRAVELERS IN YADKIN VALLEY WINE COUNTRY.â It comes to us via Leisure Group Travel.com, and was written by Randy Mink, Senior Editor. The link is at the top of the show notes and right before the article below, so check out the article and support this publication.
https://leisuregrouptravel.com/tasty-discoveries-await-travelers-in-yadkin-valley-wine-country/
Tasty Discoveries Await Travelers in Yadkin Valley Wine Country
CLUSTERED AROUND MOUNT AIRY, DOBSON, ELKIN AND OTHER TOWNS IN NORTHWESTERN NORTH CAROLINA ARE MORE THAN 45 WINERIES, EACH WITH THEIR OWN STORY TO TELL.
From a patio overlooking vineyards and the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, I drank in the scenery while savoring my flight of four craft beers from the tap, beers so tasty that I couldnât decide which one I liked best.
Thatâs right, beer. Though my adult son and daughter chose to sample the wines of Round Peak Vineyards, I decided to go rogue and try beers brewed by sister company Skull Camp Brewing.
Touring North Carolinaâs Yadkin Valley wine region last fall, we came to learn that each of its 45-plus wineries has its own personality and quirks, its own style of winemaking and a unique story to tell. Most of the wineries are small and family-owned. All offer a relaxing experience enhanced by an easy-going Southern hospitality.
The Yadkin Valley of northwestern North Carolina extends from the Virginia state line to south of Winston-Salem, encompassing both the Blue Ridge foothills and the Piedmont. From its headwaters near the Blue Ridge Parkwayâs Thunder Hill Overlook, the Yadkin River flows more than 200 miles southeast into South Carolina, making it one of the longest rivers in North Carolina.
The valleyâs terrain and climate are similar to those of Franceâs Burgundy and Italyâs Piedmont wine regions. Wineries in the federally designated Yadkin Valley American Viticultural Area (AVA), not surprisingly, specialize in French- and Italian-style wines. The dry loam soil is ideal for growing European varietals such as Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Tannat and Riesling.
Yadkin Valleyâs wine industry took off in the 1990s and has really blossomed in the last 15 years. New wineries crop up all the time. Many of them occupy old farms that once raised grain, tobacco or cattle.
PAIRING WINES AND BEERS WITH A ROUND OF DISC GOLF
Round Peak Vineyards produces 10 French and Italian varietals, using only grapes grown on the 13-acre property, which is just outside of Mount Airy. It is the Yadkin Valleyâs northernmost winery.
Perhaps Round Peak is best known for its Nebbiolo, a red wine made from an Italian grape rich in tannins. Owner Ken Gulaian said, âThereâs only two of us that grow that grape in North Carolina because itâs a bit of a challenging grape to grow. Itâs probably the grape with the most tannins, which a lot of people know are antioxidants.â
Round Peak Vineyards Wine Tasting on Outdoor Patio
Round Peak Vineyards. Credit: VisitNC.com/Sam Dean
From our perch on the terrace attached to the tasting room, we had views of Round Peak and Skull Camp mountains. Meandering through the vines is an 18-hole disc golf course with baskets constructed of retired wine barrels and recycled bicycle wheels. People can rent discs or bring their own.
At sunset we had a chance to walk around the vineyards before retiring to our four-bedroom house, one of two vacation rentals at Round Peak (available through Airbnb and VRBO). Amenities include a fully equipped kitchen, screened-in back porch, two baths and multiple televisions. The walls are adorned in wine-themed decor.
Both homes (âcabins,â as theyâre called) sleep up to eight, an arrangement that works well for families or guys/girls getaways. While the homes certainly would not accommodate a motorcoach tour, Round Peak welcomes bus groups for tastings and tours.
Earlier in the day, we had spent time in Mount Airy, which plays up its claim as the hometown of actor Andy Griffith. Star attraction is the Andy Griffith Museum, and shops on Main Street deal in souvenirs related to âThe Andy Griffith Show,â the classic 1960s TV sit-com about a sheriff in the sleepy Southern town of Mayberry. Squad Car Tours takes tourists around Mount Airy in restored vintage Ford Galaxies, the kind Andy and his fumbling deputy, Barney Fife, drove in the show.
A SHADE OF GRAY
Haze Gray Vineyards, on a former corn and tobacco farm near Dobson, pays tribute to Americaâs military. The tasting room, which opened in December 2019, is painted haze gray, the color of U.S. Navy ships, and the mountains visible from the property have a grayish haze. (The phrase âhaze gray and underwayâ is a reference to Navy surface ships that are actively deployed.)
Haze Gray owners Deane and Becky Muhlenberg planted the vineyard in 2015 and opened the winery three years later. Thereâs also a cabin to rent.
Whatâs the military connection all about? Deane spent 30 years as a flight officer in the Navy, and his familyâs record of military service dates back to the American Revolution. Becky grew up in an Army family, and their son currently serves in the U.S. Air Force. Deaneâs flight helmet, from his days as a Navy pilot, is mounted above the tasting bar. Hanging from the ceiling is a prop from the kind of early de Havilland biplane his grandfather flew. Framed photos of the Muhlenbergsâ relatives in uniform adorn the tasting roomâs wall of honor, and visiting veterans are encouraged to share their own. Daughter Ashley, an artist, has conducted wine-and-paint nights in the room.
Haze Gray
Haze Gray Vineyardsâ Deane Muhlenberg serves guests in the tasting room. Credit: Sam Dean
In 2020 the winery received an award from the U.S. Department of Labor for recruiting and hiring veterans. The employees enroll in the viticulture and enology program at Surry Community College in Dobson, the seat of Surry County, which lies in the heart of Yadkin Valley wine country. (The Surry County Wine Trail counts 20 wineries.)
Haze Gray wines are primarily French-style, with the one exception the Italian-style Pinot Grigio. The Chambourcin, Pinot Grigio and Boot Camp Red (a combination of Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot and Chambourcin grapes) have won state and national awards. In addition, the Muhlenbergs make a dry and semisweet Traminette, a Merlot, Chardonnay, Petit Verdot and Rose. They grow nine varieties of grapes in the nine-acre vineyard. Cattle also are raised on the 85-acre farm.
MORE YADKIN VALLEY VINEYARDS
Driving around the Dobson area, we made a brief stop at Shelton Vineyards, the largest family-owned estate winery in the state and winner of more than 450 awards. An impressive entrance drive, a spacious retail shop and the Harvest Grill restaurant lend the estate an upscale feel. Tours follow the winemaking process from growing grapes to bottling wine in the state-of-the-art gravity-flow facility, ending with a tasting of five of Sheltonâs 14 wines. (Note: The coronavirus pandemic has halted tours temporarily.)
It was brothers Charlie and Ed Shelton of Shelton Vineyards who in the early 2000s undertook the lengthy process of getting government designation of Yadkin Valley as North Carolinaâs first AVA. That set the stage for growth in the valley, particularly in Surry County.
Shelton Vineyards
Shelton Vineyardsâ retail shop. Credit: Randy Mink
Next on our agenda on that gorgeous fall day was Grassy Creek Vineyard & Winery, north of Elkin. It occupies 225 acres once known as Klondike Farm, a dairy operation that produced the self-proclaimed âbest chocolate milk in the world.â The cavernous red barn that housed horse stables in the 1920s is now a tasting room with a cozy fireplace and an artistic cow-motif decor, while the winery is in the dairy barn where Golden Guernseys resided. The dairy-inspired theme carries over to Grassy Creekâs semisweet wines under the brand Klondike Farm. They are served from glass bottles that resemble old-fashioned milk bottles and bear the image of a cowâs head and the tag âGuernsey Table Wine.â
The farmâs history also includes its use as a corporate retreat and event center when owned by Chatham Manufacturing Company, once a major player in North Carolinaâs textile industry and the largest maker of blankets in the world. Four of the propertyâs original 1920s cabins, just steps from the tasting room, provide overnight accommodations. Several partners in the Grassy Creek venture come from a background in textiles.
Grassy Creek
Wine tasting with chocolates in the Red Barn at Grassy Creek Vineyard & Winery. Credit: Randy Mink
Group tours at Grassy Creek can include a wine tasting with crackers, salami and North Carolina cheeses. With our wine we enjoyed raspberry and sea salt caramel chocolates from the Yadkin Valley General Store in Elkin.
It was a perfect day to be outdoors, so we embarked on the two-mile hiking trail that runs from the winery to Carter Falls. Strewn with leaves and pine needles, the path, managed by the Elkin Valley Trails Association, took us through forests and farmlands on our way to the waterfall on Big Elkin Creek.
EXPLORING THE PILOT MOUNTAIN AREA
To get in more of the regionâs natural beauty while it was still daylight, we then drove to Pilot Mountain State Park, whose main peak towers more than 2,000 feet over the Yadkin River Valley. At the top, people can take a short trail to an observation area that looks across to the landmark crag, or they can opt for a fully-accessible viewing platform adjacent to the parking area. From the gleaming new visitor center, shuttle service to the upper portion of the park is available on weekends and prime visitor days. Both Pilot Mountain Vineyards & Winery (which opened a new tasting room last August) and JOLO Winery & Vineyards offer fine views of Pilot Mountain.
JOLO Vineyards
JOLO Winery & Vineyards with Pilot Mountain on the horizon. Credit: Sam Dean
The fictional town of Mount Pilot on âThe Andy Griffith Showâ is a shout-out to real-life Pilot Mountain (pop. 1,500) at the edge of the park. A new downtown tea shop, Yadkin Valley Tea Trade, offers high-quality loose-leaf and herbal teas in a relaxing setting. Teas can be purchased ready to drink or as tea bags to prepare at home. The teahouse also sells jams and baked goods, plus tea accessories, honey, candles and handcrafted gifts.
EATING IN ELKIN
For dinner in downtown Elkin, we feasted on Southern dishes with an artisan touch at Southern on Main. It was hard to choose because everything was so tempting. Dinner entrees include blackened catfish with cheddar grits, shrimp & grits, fried chicken breast in sweet tea brine and creamy pepper gravy, and pan-grilled pork medallions with port cherry sauce, braised red cabbage and mashed sweet potatoes. For starters, the menu lists small plates like fried green tomatoes, black-eyed pea cake and red-neck salad (fries topped with barbecue pulled pork and cheddar).
Southern on Main is on the Surry Sonker Trail, a collection of five Surry County eateries that serve a dessert called sonker, the regional version of fruit cobbler. Besides the excellent blueberry sonker, we shared the decadent bread pudding.
Skull Camp Brewery & Smokehouse 4167 - CREDIT Andy Jay
Skull Camp Brewery & Smokehouse. Credit: Andy Jay
Down the street from Southern on Main, craft beer fans flock to Skull Camp Brewingâs Taproom & Smokehouse, which occupies the renovated Basin Creek General Store building. Popular brews include Knuckle Dragger Double IPA and Basin Creek Blonde. Skull Camp wines are available as well. House-smoked meats like pulled pork, pulled chicken, beef brisket and burgers highlight the food menu. The restaurant/brewery is a stop on the Surry Sonker Trail.
From premium beverages to lip-smacking eats, Yadkin Valley wine country caters to the discriminating palate and does it with heaping helpings of Southern hospitality.
For more information on the Yadkin Valley, visit www.yadkinvalleync.com.
As I wrap up my report on my exciting adventure to North Carolina, please join me next week as we interview John Martini of Anthony Road Wine Cellars. John has been farming grapes in the Finger Lakes since 1973. Together with his indispensable wife and all-around wonderful person, Ann Martini, they have built an amazing family enterprise. This episode is special, as we highlight a phase in Johnâs life, as he is in the midst of passing the baton of daily operations in management to his three children, who are now all involved in this family wine business. The future for Anthony Road is extremely bright, and John and Ann have been great stewards in their quest to leave it that way.
Get full access to The Viti+Culture Podcast Newsletter at viticulturepodcast.substack.com/subscribe -
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube.
Tom Wark, executive director of the National Association of Wine Retailers, a public relations professional specializing in the wine space with Wark Communications, and publisher of the widely read Fermentation Blog, joins me on this podcast.
Check out Tom Wark at:
The Fermentation Blog at: https://fermentationwineblog.com/
The National Association of Wine Retailers https://nawr.org/
Wark Communications https://warkcommunications.com/
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and donât forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
You can watch the interview on our YouTube channel here:
Get full access to The Viti+Culture Podcast Newsletter at viticulturepodcast.substack.com/subscribe -
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube, and visit my winery in the Finger Lakes at Missick Cellars.
Episode 0029:
Wine Reads â January 1, 2022
Hi, this is Chris Missick, and welcome to Viti+Culture, and our segment Wine Reads, where we take a look at some of the most interesting, compelling, and even controversial stories and articles in wine. On the heels of this holiday break, I have decided to take a few spur of the moment trips, one to the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina, and the other to the Texas Hill Country in mid-January. Iâve heard so many great things about both regions, and the Hill Country in particular, and figure it will be a nice break from the upstate winter weâll be fully enmeshed in. With that in mind, my Google News Alert with the keyword Finger Lakes popped up with this message about Fredericksburg, widely considered the heart of the Texas Hill Country AVA. Itâs an AP wire story, so I donât have an author to directly credit, but you can find the article by googling the title, Fredericksburg pleases the palate in a Texas-size way.
So here we go:
âCalifornia has Napa and Sonoma; New York has the Finger Lakes and Texas has Fredericksburg,â said Jesse Barter, owner of Hill & Vine Restaurant as he poured a ruby-hued Tempranillo into my glass.
It does indeed. The Hill Country west of Austin and north of San Antonio includes Texas-sized acreage devoted to wine production, making it the second largest AVA (American Viticultural Area) in the U.S.
The Central Texas Hill Country is one of two major wine-producing regions in the state â the other being the Llano Estacado (Staked Plains) in Texas' northwestern corner.
Here in the Hill Country, some 100 wineries dot the landscape along Highway 290, known as the Wine Road, from Fredericksburg to Austin. Fifty of those are in Fredericksburg itself, with 50 more in the permitting process.
More about the wines later, but back to Barter and Hill & Vine. When I was there for dinner the restaurant had been open for three weeks, and if you were lucky enough to snag a reservation at all, the waiting time for a table was often two hours or longer.
The buzzy crowd sipping cocktails while they waited didnât seem to mind. Yes, the food is that good. Most everything has a Texas twist â the hummus, for example, contains black-eyed peas. The taco is stuffed with snapper from the Texas Gulf Coast, while the onion rings use onions from the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas.
I ordered the watermelon and green tomato salad with mint and basil leaves, spiced local pecans and herbed goat cheese with a citrus vinaigrette dressing, and thought it the tastiest salad I have ever had.
That was followed by the smoked Santa Maria Tri-Tip with smoked chili butter, sea salt, roasted butternut squash and Brussels sprouts with a chili salsa. Dessert was Croissant Bread Pudding with bourbon anglaise sauce. You get why people are willing to wait two hours for a table.
Now, back to that award-winning Tempranillo. You just know that this being Texas, they wouldnât be satisfied with a mere medal of excellence, and they didnât have to be. Hill & Vineâs vintage won a saddle (yes, a saddle) at a wine competition during the Houston Rodeo and Livestock Show, and pardner, that beats a medal any day.
Hill & Vine is just the latest addition to a remarkably robust dining scene for a town of 12,000 people. Alas, I didnât make it to the Granite House or Vaudeville Bistro, two lauded dining spots, but I did do dinner one night at Ottoâs German Bistro.
The German influence is strong in the Hill Country as German settlers were the only ones able to forge a tenuous co-existence with the native Comanche Indians who ran off others attempting to put down roots. Today, youâll see examples of German culture everywhere.
The menu at Ottoâs transcends schnitzels and sauerbraten to include dishes such as Steelhead Trout and Deep Sea Prawn with green pea puree, sugar snap peas, snow pea shoots and tomato oil, and veal loin with broccolini, mushrooms, sweet potato puree and almonds.
I did go German and ordered the Wurst Platte (smoked paprika gruyere sausage, German potato salad, house made sauerkraut and house made spicy mustard.) I was glad I did.
The menu changes weekly, and Ottoâs gets most of its ingredients from local, organic or sustainable farms, ranches and fisheries.
Thereâs no dearth of breakfast and lunch options either. Try Caliche Cafe for the former â the Salmon Eggs Benny are to die for. Clear River Ice Cream & Bakery makes a good lunch stop â you donât have to eat one of their 47 flavors of ice cream for lunch, but you can if you want to.
Finally, donât miss Das Peach Haus. This multipurpose facility tempts those in search of shopping, sipping, dining and learning.
The general store sells everything from jams and jellies to chipotle and BBQ sauces. Shoppers can sample their peach cobbler or peach cider while browsing.
I had dinner there beside a small lake and under a canopy of pine trees more reminiscent of East Texas than the Hill Country, and those wishing for a full dining experience can reserve a table. They recently opened a distillery where you can sample their gin and whiskey, and if youâre interested in cooking classes, they are happy to oblige. About the only thing you canât do is pick the peaches.
Donât fret. At Jenschke Orchards, you can pick all the plump peaches you want from the 3,000 trees in their orchards. You will have to think of a creative way of getting them home as the Orchard doesnât ship outside of Texas.
As strange as it may seem to those who equate the American wine scene with California and Oregon, Texas is one of the countryâs leading wine producers, and Fredericksburg ranks right behind Napa as a destination for lovers of the grape.
As for that grape, because of its hot climate, Texas excels in Mediterranean varietals â those found in sultry, steamy southern Spain and Italy.
During a lunch and tasting at Signor Vineyards, I tasted some of these under the expert tutelage of winery host Andre Boada, whose wine pedigree comes courtesy of his Spanish father and French mother. My favorite of the wines Boada poured was an Albareno white, originating in the Galicia Region of Spain, but utilizing Texas grapes.
Signor is one of the Hill Countryâs most beautiful wineries. Open only three years, it has become such a popular stop they are adding 40 casitas in the vineyards for overnight guests. Even if you donât stay overnight, you can sign up for one of Boadaâs food and wine classes (Friday and Sunday, $50).
Two other wineries I highly recommend are Pedernales Cellars and Narrow Path Winery and Vineyards.
At Pedernales, the vineyards overlook the scenic Pedernales River, and their white wines come mainly from its sister winery in the High Plains around Lubbock. Narrow Path has a tasting room in Fredericksburg, but make your way to nearby Stonewall to sip in style in their main tasting room overlooking the vineyard.
If you want to combine wine tasting and shopping, do head for Fredericksburgâs picturesque main street. At Becker Vineyards, sip a Viognier from their vineyard 12 miles outside of town where, in addition to grapes, five acres are given over to lavender fields.
To get your alcoholic intake in a different form, drop by Chocolat, specializing in liquor and wine-infused chocolates. The shop offers some 400 different European-style chocolates rotated throughout the year, with about half on display at any given time. Chocoholics will think they have died and gone to chocolate heaven.
When it comes to quality wine, watch out Napa, Sonoma and Finger Lakes â Fredericksburg is gaining on you.
I was fortunate enough to get some great recommendations from the fellows over at the podcast Cork Talk, which focuses on North Carolina wine. I also reached out on a whim to Chris Brundrett of William Chris Winery in the Hill Country. I had learned about him and William Chris winery from the wonderfully produced Texas Winemakers, a docuseries currently available on YouTube that features an amazing array of different Texas winemakers and viticulturalists. He informed me that the Texas Hill Country Wine Symposium had been planned for the week I was visiting, and so I promptly purchased a ticket, and plan on tasting and meeting with a number of great producers in the AVA. Iâll be bringing my equipment with me, and plan on reporting on the regions while Iâm there.
Iâm excited to report on my findings, and in the meantime, if there is a destination, or a winery that you recommend, drop me a line at [email protected]. In our next episode, this Thursday, weâre sitting down with Tom Wark, a pro in the wine public relations space, and the author of one of the most influential wine blogs - The Fermentation Blog. Tom is insightful, opinionated, extremely intelligent, and willing to tackle the tough issues in the wine and culture space. I think youâre going to love this show. Thanks, and see you soon.
Get full access to The Viti+Culture Podcast Newsletter at viticulturepodcast.substack.com/subscribe -
Please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube.
Today we are exploring how one person found his way into the wine industry, and the steps he's taking to learn winemaking. Matt Butts is currently working in the cellar after years of working in tasting rooms, and a career in welding before that. In this show, we highlight one path towards becoming a winemaker, and the steps Matt has taken to achieve his dreams.
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and donât forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
You can watch the interview on our YouTube channel here:
Get full access to The Viti+Culture Podcast Newsletter at viticulturepodcast.substack.com/subscribe -
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube, and visit my winery in the Finger Lakes at Missick Cellars.
Episode 0027:
Wine Reads â December 2, 2021
https://wineindustryadvisor.com/2021/09/02/winemaking-hybrid-grapes
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, this is Chris Missick, and welcome to Viti+Culture, and our segment Wine Reads, where we take a look at some of the most interesting, compelling, and even controversial stories and articles in wine. With harvest behind us and winemaking ongoing in the cellar, I had bookmarked a story from September, that I thought would shed a fascinating light on an entire category of winegrapes that many grape growers on the West Coast of the U.S., and certainly in many of wine growing regions around the world, have very little experience with, than is hybrid grapes. Although I personally farm vitis vinifera, Riesling, Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc, I work with growers and make wines from a wide variety of hybrid grapes here in the Finger Lakes. From Seyval Blanc, Vidal Blanc, and Cayuga, as white varietals, to Marechal Foch, De Chaunac, Marquette, Baco Noir, Chambourcin as red varietals.
Some receive their own bottling, most are components in delicious, but cost effective blends, and all are worthy of more attention and some discussion. Iâve enjoyed some wonderful hybrid wines from Switzerland, and tasted some remarkable hybrid wines from places like Missouri, Michigan, and Tennessee. These varietals make winemaking possible, where vinifera otherwise wouldnât survive or thrive. They also lend a new light on sustainability efforts, requiring less sprays, and less concern over certain aspects of canopy management or cold damage.
Coming to us from the Wine Industry Network ADVISOR, Kathleen Willcox discusses these varietals in a piece entitled The Future of Winemaking is Hybrid, and details why âU.S. winemakers are seeking out non-vitis vinifera grapes.â Links to the article are in the shownotes, and I encourage you to check out the article. According to her bio, Kathleen Willcox writes about wine, food and culture from her home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. She is keenly interested in sustainability issues, and the business of making ethical drinks and food. Her work appears regularly in Wine Searcher, Wine Enthusiast, Liquor.com and many other publications. Kathleen also co-authored a book called Hudson Valley Wine: A History of Taste & Terroir, which was published in 2017. You can follow her at @kathleenwillcox. So here we go:
The Future of Winemaking Is Hybrid
https://wineindustryadvisor.com/2021/09/02/winemaking-hybrid-grapes
By Kathleen Willcox - September 2, 2021
Why US winemakers are seeking out non-vitis vinifera grapes
âKathleen Willcox
There will always be a place for conventionally produced vitis vinifera. But, in truth, more and more influential producers and consumers are looking for something with a little more soul, and a lot more edge.
Hybridsâespecially in the challenging grape-growing zone of the East Coastâhave become ascendant for several reasons.
First, more consumers are seeking out unconventional, organically grown wines. IWSR predicts that by 2023, about 976 million bottles of organic wine will be consumed, up 34 percent from 720 million in 2018.
Younger wine lovers are especially keen to find wines produced from sustainably grown grapes, according to Silicon Valley Bankâs most recent Wine Industry Trends and Report, which stated âsustainability, health and environmental issues,â in tandem with concerns over âsocial justice, equity and diversity,â are driving the purchasing decisions of Millennials and members of Gen Z.
Unfortunately growing classic vitis vinifera in certain East Coast regions is nigh impossible without nuking them with chemicals.
But growing hybrids pretty much anywhere is arguably easier. And more eco-friendly.
Thankfully, the pioneering work of scientists and early adopters of non-vinifera grapes have helped yield a new generation of growers, producers and consumers who embrace them.
The Hybrid Science
Programs at Cornell University and University of Minnesota have created thousands of new varieties of grapes designed to combat diseases and weather challenges. Grapes that emerge from these programs are typically crosses between so-called European vinifera, and others native to North America and Asia, like riparia, labrusca and rotondifolia.
Cornell has been working on developing hybrid grapes for more than 100 years.
âGenetic sequencing technology has come a long way, and in the past 10 years we have been able to use sequencing to quickly determine cold hardiness and disease resistance,â says Bruce Reisch, a professor who specializes in grapevine breeding. He joined Cornell in 1980, and since then, has released 10 new wine grapes and four seedless table grapes. He explains that they are not genetically modifying the grapes, merely determining which ones will flourish in challenging conditions, and pursuing the more promising hybrids.
For wineries like Shelburne Vineyard in the Champlain Valley, where winters are harsh, springs rainy, and summers humid, the work of scientists like Reisch is nothing less than essential.
âShelburne has been planting hybrids since 1998, and while they pioneered hybrid grape growing in Vermont, we have all been thrilled to see how much the market has grown and developed,â says winemaker Ethan Joseph, who joined Shelburne in 2008. âWeâve learned how important site selection, careful vineyard management, and low intervention winemaking are. We treat our hybrids with as much care and thought as other growers treat their vitis vinifera, and that has allowed the terroir and the best qualities of these grapes to shine through.â
Josephâs ultimate goal is to eliminate the use of chemicals, a feat he says would be âimpossibleâ if they grew all vitis vinifera. Heâs most excited about Marquette (a Pinot Noir hybrid with notes of cherry, pepper and summer berries), Louise Swenson (a white hybrid with acidity, and floral notes), and La Crescent (a white wine hybrid with notes of apricot, citrus, and peach).
In 2017, Shelburne went out on a limb and pushed aggressively into the natural wine and hybrid space with Iapetus. âThat line has skyrocketed,â Joseph notes. âNow it comprises about 40 percent of our 5,000-case annual count.â
Convincing the Consumer
Colleen Hardy, co-owner of Living Roots Wine Co. in the Finger Lakes and Adelaide, concurs. She launched Living Roots in 2016, in partnership with her South Australian winemaking husband Sebastian as a kind of cross-global viticultural experiment.
âWe wanted to use grapes in both regions that are, first and foremost, climate appropriate,â Sebastian Hardy says. âIn the Finger Lakes, that means Riesling, Pinot Gris, and GewĂŒrztraminer, but also Aromella, Arendell, Rougeon, Regent and Petit Pearl.â The couple, who sells 85 percent of their production from their tasting room, doesnât have trouble hand-selling their hybrid and hybrid-vitis vinifera blended wines. âOnce we talk visitors through it.â
Colleen Hardy says that finding high-quality hybrids is dependent on the grower. âWe offer to pay more if they grow it with the same care that we expect with vinifera, and hold off on spraying,â she says
âIn the Hudson Valley, especially if you want to grow organically, hybrids are necessary,â says Todd Cavallo, who founded Wild Arc Farm in Pine Bush, N.Y. with his wife Crystal. âWe lost our entire crop of Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir in 2018. We replanted some of the Pinot Noir, but the rest we planted to hybrids.â
Wild Arcâs one-acre estate vineyard is primarily experimental though; they source most of their grapes.
âWe are working with other like-minded producers who want organically grown hybrid grapes,â Cavallo explains. âA lot of [hybrids] have been grown for bulk wines, but we are promising growers that if they change their farming practices, weâll pay more.â
By working cooperatively, Cavallo and others hope that they can simultaneously increase the value of hybrid fruit, and change market perception.
Philadelphia-based Alexandra Cherniavsky, a sommelier and consultant who finds distribution for wineries at restaurants, has seen the market for hybrid wines change firsthand. But she believes thereâs still a long way to go before restaurants are ready to open their lists to hybrids.
âOnce people try wines made from hybrid grapes, theyâre a lot more open,â she says. âThey sell well in tasting rooms, where the winemaking team can explain their history and provide context.â
But if theyâre going to take off, they need to appear on more restaurant lists. âWineries should approach local restaurants armed with the educational materials and context they provide at the tasting room. If they know how to explain them to diners, theyâll be a lot more liable to put them on the list,â Cherniavsky says.
Not Just for Challenging Climates
The East Coast is hardly the only place hybrids are found. At Bells Up Winery in Newberg, Oregon, winemaker Dave Specter says that their Seyval Blanc is farmed with fewer chemicals than his vitis vinifera. And, the wines have achieved âcult status,â selling out every year.
âWe are the only planting of Seyval Blanc in Willamette Valley, and only the second in Oregon. Itâs not only a part of our plan to diversify our vineyards and enable us to react to climate change, but also part of our larger push to appeal to younger, more adventurous consumers,â he says.
A parallel movement, PIWI, is happening in Europe, although as Reisch explains, itâs slightly different.
âMost of Europe does not have the harsh winters that we do here,â he says. âThe hybrid programs there are inherently very different, because their grapes are being crossed with the goal of resisting different disease and weather pressures.â
Some regions have yet to open the door to hybrids; theyâre banned in France in wines with appellation names, but for a certain type of American winemakerâand consumerâthat kind of prohibition only makes them more enchanting.
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As a producer, I have experience many of these anecdotes firsthand. Year after year, our bold red blend of hybrid grapes, our crisp dry Seyval Blanc, our Charmat produced blend of hybrid whites, and our balanced but sweet Moscato made from Valvin Muscat, a grape developed by Bruce Reisch, are among our bestsellers. In our immediate region, our Seyval Blanc sees perennially brisk sales at off-premise retail locations. I craft these wines with the same dedication as every other wine, and consumers love them. They still do not receive the recognition they should from major wine publications, but they keep our customers happy, and that keeps us in business.
Even I admit to stressing our production of vinifera varietals, from sparkling to still, and from white to red. It is afterall, what we personally grow. But I commend the three growers I work with in the Finger Lakes, that year after year, with drastically less inputs and nearly regardless of weather, grow and deliver clean and delicious fruit. When I left California to make wine in the Finger Lakes, people questioned why I made the transition. A major component for me was the sense of adventure, and feeling of it being a frontier. Frontiers introduce us to new things, they force us to think differently, and find new ways of addressing challenges. For a century, the Finger Lakes and much of the East coast has done that through developing grape varietals that suit the climate. Today, itâs done with those considerations in mind as well as with a thought towards preservation and conservation. Saving a pass through the vineyard with the tractor means one less spray, or more, and that means less compaction of the soil, and better soil health. Every little thing we do adds up, and just like that, a century of lessons from the frontier may impact the world of wine in the century to come.
If youâre a wine writer, feel free to forward me an article for consideration at [email protected]. Iâm happy to look it over, and maybe even discuss it with you on the show.
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Today we are speaking with Phil Plummer of Montezuma Winery, as well as Idol Ridge and Fossenvue Wineries in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Phil's work with these wineries and brands is broad in scope, but some of his small lot projects had come to my attention for their purity, clarity, and deliciousness. Our broad and wide ranging conversation visits deep dives on winemaking, art, music, and social commentary. Phil understands much more than winemaking, but he certainly is mastering the art.
Check out Montezuma Winery at: https://www.montezumawinery.com/
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and donât forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
You can watch the interview on our YouTube channel here:
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If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube.
Episode 0025:
Wine Reads â November 24, 2021
Although I can not say Thanksgiving is uniquely American, as our Canadian neighbors celebrate Thanksgiving at least a month or so before those of us in the United States, the holiday does possess a uniquely American mystique, with art, music, movies, cartoons, and other cultural motifs proliferating our celebration of this day throughout the world. Considering some of our largest listenership comes from folks outside the U.S., itâs pretty clear that there are hundreds of people listening who wonât be sitting down at a table tomorrow to eat turkey, say a prayer of thanks for the blessings in their lives, and dig in to a large meal and hopefully, lots of really cool wines. Additionally, although I understand it can be really helpful, I kind of get tired of all those lists with the âGreat Thanksgiving Pairingsâ in the title. So, in light of our own Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., and the fact that every culture has some holiday they celebrate that generally involves the ritual of gifting a bottle of wine, I thought Iâd share this thought provoking piece from Mike Veseth, over at the WineEconomist blog, at WineEconomist.com. I share my own thoughts after reading the piece, but his article, dated November 23, 2021, and titled âAn Economic Theory of Thanksgiving Wine,â combines economics, wine, and the spirit that really captures the multidisciplinary approach we take here.
For todayâs special Thanksgiving Wine Reads, hereâs Mikeâs post:
https://wineeconomist.com/2021/11/23/thanksgiving-wine/
Thursday is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States and many of us will gather with family and friends for the holiday feast. If you have been invited to share Thanksgiving with others (and if you are interested enough in wine to be reading this column), then you must confront a perennial problem: what wine should you bring?
Deadweight Loss?
Why is the choice of a gift wine an economic problem? Well, it isnât much of a problem if you plan to drink it all yourself. Then you should just buy what you like â but donât expect to be invited back next year!
Since the point will be to share the wine with other guests, the choice is more difficult because just as you canât be sure exactly what dishes will be served, you cannot be certain what wines the other guests will like the best.
There is a pretty good chance that you will experience what economists call a âdeadweight lossâ which is more or less where the benefit that the guests derive from your wine is less than what theyâd have gained from a simple cash transfer. The story (which is possibly true) is told about the time Malcolm Forbes threw himself an extravagant birthday party where the guests were served some of the rarest, most expensive wines on the planet. Forbes went from guest to guest pouring the eveningâs show-stopper wine. Finally he came to Warren Buffet. Wine? said Forbes with a smile. No thanks, Buffet replied. Iâll take the cash!
Warren Buffet understood the concept of deadweight loss and wanted nothing to do with it!
The Problem of Other Peopleâs Money
The problem is asymmetric information. You know your own preferences and budget situation pretty well and so you have a fairly good idea of what you are giving up when you buy an expensive bottle of wine as a gift. But you donât know the preferences of the other guests very well or whether they would prefer your wine or a simple cash payment to be spent on something else. You canât be sure that their gain is greater than your loss.
This leads (I hope you are following along) to the conclusion that you are most efficient when you spend your own money on yourself because you can fairly well calculate both the gain and the opportunity cost. You are less efficient (in terms of deadweight loss) when spend your money on others. You are even less efficient when you spend other peopleâs money on yourself. And you are hopelessly inefficient when you spend others peopleâs money on other people.
What do you think?
So it would seem like the most efficient thing to do would be to decline that dinner invitation and stay home with your wine. How sad! No wonder economics is called the âdismal science.â
Itâs Not About the Wine
But hereâs the notion that saves the day. Thanksgiving is not really about the wine (or the turkey or the green bean casserole), it is about the sharing. Thanksgiving is more public or communal good than private good. And so, if you do it well, the particular elements of Thanksgiving including the wine will play a secondary role to the general warmth of the shared experience.
I used to get frustrated when wine wasnât the centerpiece of gatherings, some of which were actually organized to celebrate the wine. But then I got over it. Wine is doing its job when it makes everything else better. Donât you agree?
This fact changes a bit how you might approach your choice of a Thanksgiving wine to share. Cost is nearly irrelevant. Picking a wine that draws undue attention to you (and your fine taste or great wealth) almost defeats the purpose. A modest wine that makes everyone smile â maybe something with bubbles? â will serve very well. And then you can concentrate on what Thanksgiving is really about.
That said, no one will complain if you bring a nice Port, Madeira, or Sauternes to savor at the end of the meal.
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If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube. Sorry for the misfire - harvest got me out of practice!
Episode 0024:
Wine Reads â November 18, 2021
Welcome back to Viti+Culture, and welcome to season 2. Itâs been a few weeks since our last podcast, but here we are, rested and ready to deliver some great content. Harvest is finally over, a few fermentations remain bubbling away, the cellar is cleaned, our equipment is winterized, and we are moving into our next phase of cellar work - stabalizing and bottling sparkling wine, preparing to bottle our early release wines like our Cabernet Franc Rose, our White Merlot, and some of our Chenin Blanc, and finally disgorging some of our sparkling wines, such as our 2017 and 2019 Chardonnay based Blanc de Blanc, and Chenin Blanc. Iâll keep you updated as to what winemakers are experiencing in the cellar as we move forward with season, and key you in to some of the winemaking decisions we have along the way.
We are also launching a new segment - Wine Reads - where we choose an article from the world of written content on wine, read it on the show, and share our thoughts and opinions on the topic. If youâre a wine writer, feel free to forward me an article for consideration at [email protected]. Iâm happy to look it over, and maybe even discuss it with you on the show. We will continue to produce and publish our long-form interviews on YouTube, but some of the shorter content will be podcast and Substack only, so make sure youâve clicked subscribe in your favorite podcast platform, and sign up to our Substack newsletter.
For our first Wine Read, I figured Iâd actually reflect on the 2021 vintage by reading the letter Iâm preparing to send out to our Missick Cellars Wine Club. Iâm excited to be shipping out the first Finger Lakes produced Sparkling Chenin Blanc with that shipment, as well as some other really cool small lot wines, but I also generally engage with our members by sharing some of my deepest thoughts, and letting them know what is going on in the cellar. Hereâs a sneak preview of the vintage, an audio taste of our wine club, and a survey of what the final tally of the 2021 vintage felt like.
Remember, if you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube. It really helps with the ratings and in introducing new folks to the show. Be sure to tune in next week, where I speak with Phil Plummer, winemaker at Montezuma, Idol Ridge, and Fossenvue wineries. Phil embraces the ethos of our show, those of the philosopher-maker, and intertwines culture, art, history, and music in some subtle, and not so subtle ways, into each of his wines.
So, here we go, our 2021 Missick Cellars Wine Club Newsletter:
Dear Wine Club Member,
When I was deployed as a soldier in the Army with Operation Iraqi Freedom, every few months we were able to take an R&R day, and head down to the large U.S. base in Kuwait on the coast of the Persian Gulf called Camp Doha. Camp Doha had a PX (post exchange) that was both sized and filled with the inventory of a Super Walmart. It was where we could stock up on nearly everything we needed, or wanted, to get us through the long weeks back at our small desert outposts.
Camp Doha also had a Starbucks and a Burger King, all of which brought a sense of normalcy, but also a little bit of cognitive dissonance. I remember browsing those location oriented Starbucks mugs while waiting in line that list the city you are in, and looking at the one with Kuwait City and the skyline depicted. I wish I would have bought one as a memento. The pearl of Camp Doha in those days however, was a place called the Marble Palace. It was a short bus ride from camp, and had a large recreational pool adjacent to the Gulf, there were therapeutic masseuses, and in many ways, offered everything you could find at a luxury resort. It was, for a day, potentially overnight if you had some other business to attend to, a respite from the dusty tents we slept in, the day to day monotony of my job as a Signal Corps non-commissioned officer, guard tower shifts in 110 degree temperatures, and hours spent sitting under the skud bunkers scattered all throughout my home camp with a battle buddy, talking about home.
Harvest certainly does not carry the emotional intensity or gravity of deployment, I would not sell our servicemembers short by drawing a straight line between the experience of deployment and the intensity of the harvest or the crush pad. There are analogies though, and in many ways, the pace of harvest rarely allows for the periods of pause and contemplation that a deployment permits. Nonetheless, as harvest approaches, the mind prepares for what you know will be extremely long days, endless physicality, isolation from family and friends (outside the wine industry), discomfort, and exhaustion. Similarly, it provides a purpose, a mission, with goals that must be accomplished, in specific periods of time with little room for error. The elements of weather, of available resources, the risk of physical danger around powerful equipment if youâre careless or thoughtless, and the knowledge that there is an end date, all provide a very similar psychological framework to that the soldier experiences. You have set out on a path, the end goal is known, there will be surprises and challenges, but at the end of this period, victory is in sight.
I recalled my time at the Marble Palace, a place I hadnât thought about in years, after returning home for the first time in what felt like weeks (though it had only been a few days), to spend an entire day and night with my family. It was mid-October, about half-way through crush, and having the chance to push Andrew and Audrey on the swing-set in the backyard, sharing dinner at the table with the family, and having my wife Laure massage my shoulders that night made home feel like the R&R I had been craving. I particularly enjoy pairing our wines with meals during harvest. It puts a perspective on the hard work we are presently enmeshed in, and opening the time capsules of vintages past during dinner with the family, ties moments of our past to moments of the present, even as we all sacrifice and work for the future that is gurgling away through its fermentation in the cellar.
Perhaps the moments from my deployment were fresh with me this year after what we witnessed in Afghanistan in August, and during which I spent countless hours speaking with other veterans and checking in on friends that I knew had spent years of their life in that country. Perhaps it was because we were shorter on cellar staff this year than in yearsâ past, placing extra burdens and extra work on myself and my assistant. Maybe it was simply because I see my children growing so fast and am realizing how quickly time goes with every year we gather around the table to watch them blow out that additional candle on the cake. And finally, it may have been because this was such a difficult harvest, where extra vineyard work coupled with crucial picking decisions dictated the quality of the wine that was made, and with our first year of a significant harvest from our estate vineyard, I felt an enormous amount of pressure to deliver the best possible effort to everyone who enjoys our wine.
2021 was our most difficult vintage since 2018. As with 2018, moisture was the catalyst for a lot of stress on vineyard crews this vintage. The heavy rainfall, high temperatures, and high dewpoints which kept vineyard canopies and clusters too wet for too long in 2018, had analogs for all of us who farm grapes in the Finger Lakes this year. Granted, temperatures were not as high as three years ago, and dewpoints were not as deleterious, the rain proved a difficulty that we had to navigate around. There were indeed some much needed breaks, three or four days here, maybe a week there, but from August through the end of October, the rain fell, and we needed to be cognizant of when it was falling.
Though 2021 wasnât our largest harvest, between our own wines and some custom crush projects, we processed nearly 70 tons of fruit, with about 6 tons coming from our own vineyard. We managed an incredibly clean harvest of Chenin Blanc, Riesling and Cabernet Franc, with multiple passes in the Riesling in order to produce some different styles of estate wines, from sparkling to still. Our vineyard, planted in 2019, is in what is called its third leaf, in other words, its third growing season. The third leaf is generally when you can expect to get your first real crop, with an expansion of yield occurring in the following vintages. Of course, yield is not the most important aspect. The vineyard must be balanced, producing enough fruit to match the energy output of the vine, but not so much that you stress the vine or dilute the concentration of flavors that a vineyard can deliver.
In addition, we worked with our traditional growing partners at Gibson Vineyard and Morris Vineyard, to bring in varietals like Seyval Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, Riesling, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Valvin Muscat, and some other hybrids that will go into our Foreword series.
Although we have a significant amount of wine still fermenting, I must share with you that I am more proud of this vintage than nearly any in the last 10 years. There are vintages that naturally make great wines. The weather is perfect from April to November, harvest happens on your schedule and not based on the risk of rain, and every piece of equipment cooperates fully with no downtime or repairs required. I think of vintages like 2012, 2016, and 2020, where a winemaker can only get in the way of making good wine. Nature gave us great, clean and ripe fruit, and we need only fulfill its promise. Vintages like 2021 require inordinate amounts of attention to detail, a willingness to sacrifice bad fruit in the vineyard in order to make good wine in the cellar, a dedication and time commitment unparalleled in many other fields, and a drive that overlooks exhaustion, lack of sleep, and sore muscles. Those ingredients have added up to what amounts to be the proof of work, required in challenging wine regions like the Finger Lakes, and years like 2021, that deliver high quality, deliciousness, and inspiration even under trying circumstances. These are the vintages that prove the mettle of the winemaker.
2021 will be a vintage that I believe will deliver some of our best sparkling wines. On their way in the years to come will be a small lot of estate Chenin Blanc, Cab Franc Rose, Chardonnay based Blanc de Blanc, Estate Riesling, and Gewurztraminer. Our sparkling wine program has continued to grow and witness strong sales, and we are responding by increasing production with the focused goal of being known as one of the great sparkling wine producers in the region and the U.S.
In other areas of âwinery life,â our brand change continues moving ahead. New signage should be up by the spring, and new labels showing up on shelves in Upstate New York retailers. Our new labels shipped in October, and we began labelling wines as quickly as we could. Our new labels speak to our place, with the shoreline of Seneca Lake outside our cellar presenting the background frame for where we are, our new logo, as discussed in our previous letters playing a prominent role, and each wine now suggesting a specific food and wine pairing. Of course, these are only my opinions, but I welcome you to try them out and send me your suggestions as well!
I generally try to make our Fall Wine Club shipment focused on wines that I think will pair well for Thanksgiving, and so with that backdrop, each of these wines will be on our Thanksgiving table, paired perfectly with all of the classic accoutrements of my favorite holiday.
2020 Sparkling Chenin Blanc
Iâve mentioned in the past that we have been pioneering Chenin Blanc in the Finger Lakes since 2015, when we engaged in our first contract planting of the varietal at the Gibson Vineyard. The logic was pretty simple⊠I love Loire Valley wines. The Loire, being a cool climate growing region in France, famously grows Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc. One of the most premiere subregions in the Loire Valley, is Vouvray. What is wonderful about Vouvray wines, is that so many different wine styles can emerge from them. From dry crisp whites, to sparkling, to wonderfully rich and sweet styles, Chenin Blanc from Vouvray exhibits an amazing amount of versatility. Knowing that the Finger Lakes can have such variable vintages, with there being a necessity to alter the styles of wine depending upon what the year gives us, combined with the fact that Cabernet Franc is, in my opinion, our premiere red varietal, planting Chenin Blanc just made sense to me. We garnered our first harvest in 2017, making only a few dozen cases. We have continued exploring the varietal, planting our estate block, and making a wide range of Chenin Blanc wines. This spring, I hope to release our 2020 barrel fermented dry Chenin Blanc, alongside our 2021 estate Chenin Blanc which was fermented in stainless steel and finished with a touch of sweetness. In the meantime, Iâm extremely excited to share this first, Wine Club disgorgement of our 2020 Chenin Blanc.
We began producing sparkling Chenin Blanc in 2019, but that wine remains in tirage, resting on its lees in bottle, with an anticipated disgorgement in 2023. Only 50 cases were made in 2019, and with its level of acidity, it will need time to grow into its full potential. 2020, being a beautiful and ripe vintage, also managed to deliver to us some exhilarating and fresh sparkling wine bases. Our 2020 Sparkling Chenin is technically an early disgorgement. Most of the 100+ cases will be disgorged at a later date, but with the profile of this wine showing such elegance, I wanted to disgorge a special lot for our wine club members to enjoy this holiday season.
Just prior to harvest, we disgorged 30 cases, removing the spent yeast sediment and finishing the wine with a small dosage of a few grams of residual sugar. This sparkling wine is still dry, but accentuates the wonderful fruit that comes from Chenin Blanc from the Gibson Vineyard. Rather than topping the bottle with a Champagne cork, we opted to use a stainless steel crown cap. Most of the time, when I use cork on sparkling wine, I will let the wine sit in the cellar for up to 6 months before release. It can take quite a bit of time to allow the cork to cease its propensity to expand. Trying to open a sparkling wine that has just been corked is nearly impossible, and can be dangerous if it is tried with a corkscrew due to the pressure inside. Opening with a bottle opener isnât as exhilarating as popping a cork, but I assure you, it has no impact on the quality. It also means, you wonât have a problem opening it on Thanksgiving, should you want to share it with family and friends.
Produced in the classic traditional method, the base wine was picked slightly early, fermented to dryness, and chaptalized with 24 grams per liter of sugar prior to bottling with a yeast culture. The wine then went through its bottle fermentation and aged for around a year on the lees in the bottle prior to disgorgement.
This is the first sparkling Chenin Blanc ever produced and released in the Finger Lakes, and we managed such a small disgorgement in order to ensure that our Wine Club members received the first chance at tasting the âunicornâ wine. It has actually been one of the fun benefits of having the only two plantings of Chenin Blanc in the Finger Lakes, since ever demi sec, barrel fermented, sparkling, and dessert Chenin will inevitably be the first ones ever produced and released. My hunch is, given some time and the opportunity to taste what these wines can do, weâll start seeing more and more plantings of the varietal in the region. When that happens, youâll be able to say you joined us in this journey before anyone else.
2019 Morris Vineyard Riesling
As you may know, my philosophy on Riesling is to treat it with utmost care, producing dozens of small lots from which I can later blend our mainline Dry Riesling and Riesling. I do that because I see these two wines as the canvas upon which I paint my view of that vintage through this varietal. Fermenting in small lots, in different mediums with different yeast cultures, provides the color palette from which we can paint these pictures. It is from these small lots that some exciting single vineyard, or specifically designated wines come from. Our 2019 Morris Vineyard Riesling is no exception.
An incredibly small lot of 22.5 cases, this bottling represents a single barrel of Riesling which exhibited such immense appeal to me, that I wanted to be able to share it with our wine club. Fermented in a ten year old barrel that delivered little to no oak flavor influence, this wine was uninoculated. In other words, no commercial yeast culture was added to this wine, rather, only ambient yeasts converted the sugars in this wine to alcohol. The Australians have a term for these wines - ferrell ferments. Ferrell, referring to the fact that the fermentations are wild, are characterized by their lack of intervention from the winemaker. Interestingly, it also means that there likely wasnât a single yeast culture that fermented the wine, but rather, numerous different cultures that rose and fell in dominance depending on the conditions of the wine, i.e., the alcohol, nutrient load, etc., at any given time. It was our job to merely produce fresh clean wines with as light of a hand as possible. Consequently, after fermentation, the wine was allowed to rest on its lees (spent yeast) until March of 2020, when it received a small dose of sulfur to prevent oxidation. It was removed from the barrel in June of 2020, and bottled in July. We allowed the wine to cellar in a temperature controlled room until this shipment and its release.
In ten years, we have likely released more than 50 Rieslings. Some vintages have seen as many as 8 different bottlings of the varietal. Of all these different wines, this specific bottling is likely my favorite bottling of still Riesling to date. Although dry, it provides generous fruit and balanced, but bright, acidity. It is a perfect food pairing wine, and will be an excellent accompaniment for Thanksgiving Dinner.
2018 Cabernet Franc
Of all the wines I produce, if there is one that my wife will most frequently ask me to grab for dinner from the winery, it will be one of my Cabernet Francs. She loves them, and she also loves the variability they provide vintage after vintage. Our 2017 Cabernet Franc, with a bright and sunny fall, but coming from a slightly larger crop, was refreshing and light with prominent notes of cherry and raspberry. It has been the kind of wine enjoyed with a meal, and just as often, with some chocolate and television, relaxing after we have put the kids to bed. Our 2018 is a much deeper wine, with slightly more pronounced tannin, richer color, and complement of herbs to match the fruit. Itâs richer texture can carry fattier meats, and pairs just as well with game. It has become the new favorite around our house, and it is wine I am thrilled to be releasing shortly. As with the other wines in this shipment, Wine Club members are getting the first tastes of these exciting new releases.
When it comes to producing red wines, I do engage in some slightly different cellar practices than many of my other colleagues in the Finger Lakes. I have mentioned many times before, but saignee is a French word for âthe bleed.â This practice involves removing portions of juice from a red wine fermentation before the fermentation has begun. The goal of this technique is to naturally increase the skin to juice ratio of the red wine fermentation, thereby increasing the availability of anthocyanins and tannins. Anthocyanins are the red color molecule that gives red wine its color, and so by increasing the availability of this molecule in the fermentation, I am able to produce deeper color red wines. Additionally, increasing the tannin naturally provides more bonding points for the color, and adds structure to the wine. All of this is in the backdrop of understanding that berry size tends to be much larger in the Finger Lakes, due to the amount of rainfall we receive. Saignee provides the winemaker with a natural tool to make deeper, more structured red wines, while also making some pretty delicious rose from that initial âbleed.â Finally, there is an impact on the acidity of the wine. Grape skins contain potassium, and potassium can help precipitate tartaric acid during the fermentation, naturally lowering the level of acid and increasing the pH of the wine.
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Andreas HuÌtwohl is instrumental to Weingut Von Winning, a producer of renown Grosses Gewachs (Great Growth) wines in the Pfalz, centering on Riesling, Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay. Andreas and I delve into the traditional winemaking practices that have garnered Von Winning acclaim, and we chart his course from studying Biology, to pursuing winemaking. Andreas is an energetic, insightful leader in the German wine industry, and his perspectives offer an exciting new take on the future of high end German wine.
Check out Von Winning with Skurnik Wines and Spirits at: https://www.skurnik.com/producer/von-winning/ https://www.von-winning.de/en/weingut/
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Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
You can watch the interview on our YouTube channel here:
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Today, we are speaking with Katerina Axelsson, who while working towards her Bachelor in Science in Chemistry from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, paid her way through college by working in a large regional wine chemistry lab. Her hard work ethic and obsession with unlocking the secrets of sensory science and consumer preference, led her down the path towards tech start-up, entrepreneur, and CEO. Today, she leads Tastry, touted as being the worldâs first artificial intelligence driven sensory sciences company, with a tag line that Tastry taught a computer to taste. From my research, thereâs a chance that Tastry is about to revolutionize the global wine industry with a variety of models to connect boutique wineries with as yet unknown customer bases, those seeking AI based blending solutions, and an overall deeper understanding of exactly what is in our wines.
Check out Tastry wines at:
https://www.tastry.com/
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and donât forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
You can watch the interview on our YouTube channel here:
Get full access to The Viti+Culture Podcast Newsletter at viticulturepodcast.substack.com/subscribe -
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube.
Episode 0021:
Finger Lakes Viticulture â September 2, 2021
I want to start by thanking each one of you that has downloaded the show, shared it with friends, subscribed, ranked, and commented via your favorite podcast platforms. As of this week, our show ranked 79th in the US on Apple Podcasts in the food and wine category. Weâve also built a strong audience in both New Zealand and Norway, where in each of those countries, we ranked in the top 10 on these charts as well. Thanks for the support, as we continue to climb charts, build listenerships, and grow this community. In six months, weâve accomplished alot, and I promise, there is so much more to come!
Thanks also for joining us for our bi-weekly âin the vineyard update.â With the calendar now showing September, things are about to get extremely busy as harvest is nearly here in the Finger Lakes for my winery, Missick Cellars. I had planned to end Season 1 of Viticulture in August, and take a few months off to focus on the winemaking tasks at hand. With some great shows edited and ready to be delivered to you, we will keep on pushing through into October with interviews with winemakers, technologists and philosophers. As of now, Iâm not planning on producing any âIn the Vineyardâ updates for YouTube throughout harvest, but we will drop some special audio only updates, so stay tuned. For Season 2, we will continue with our long form interviews, we will feature some podcasts via a sub-series called âIn the Cellar,â and will be adding a new Substack feature called âLong Reads.â In this segment, planned as a separate release of the podcast, weâll go through some long form written content on broad subjects ranging from wine, viticulture, and makers generally, reading passages and providing commentary.
As weâve mentioned many times, growing degree days donât tell the whole story of a vintage, but they do give us a window into the nature of a vintage. So far this year, as of August 30, we are at 2261. So far, over the last decade only four vintages have shown more accumulated growing degree days. 2012, 2016, 2018 and 2020 were all slightly warmer, with 2016 marking 2,310 GDD, 2018 marking 2,363, and 2020, with 2,307. In contrast to our current positioning at 2,261 GDD, throughout the previous decade, the other 6 vintages ranged between a low of 2059 GDD and and a high 2180 GDD.
The challenge in the vineyard remains moisture. Moisture with this heat can create a situation with compromised fruit in the vineyard, and that compromised fruit usually means sour rot.
Sour rot is unmistakable and nasty. Essentially, as berries move past rapid cell division and begin accumulating sugar post veraison, once sugar content in the berry exceeds 8%, the potential for sour rot exists if the skins become compromised. As long as the juice and sugar are enclosed in the skin of the berry, this problem will not raise its head. In general, the skins become compromised from a number of different variables. From birds and insects feeding on berries and breaking skins, to mechanical or growth cracks. Mechanical cracks happen when operating machinery in the vineyard and some implement injures the berries, and growth cracks most often happen after heavy rains, which cause the grapes to swell beyond their capacity to hold the water, and cause ruptures in the skin. Finally, skins can become compromised by powdery mildew as well.
Once the skin has been damaged, the stage is set for sour rot. Most sour rot is caused by acetic acid which essentially turns the sweetening juice inside the grape into vinegar. Itâs spread by the drosophila fly, which is a tiny fly that swarms cluster and acts as a vector for the spread of the acetic acid.
Sour rot is not something that is a major problem in every vintage in the Finger Lakes, but it is a persistent issue we deal with. Some years are drastically worse than others. Iâve referenced 2018, which was a vintage with a perfect confluence of circumstances to promote sour rot. In 2020, the vintage was nearly perfect with no real pressure on the grapes from sour rot.
Although 2021 is nowhere near as bad as 2018, it certainly has not been a relatively easy vintage like 2020. The pressure we are dealing with is above average, and that will impact picking decisions and therefore wine styles. It was also mean a variable harvest across varietals and sites.
For a peek behind the curtain of the mind of a winemaker, I am noticing increasing pressure from sour rot in our Riesling, but not in our Chenin Blanc or our Cabernet Franc. Consequently, I will target an earlier harvest than usual for our Riesling. Without high sugar ripeness, and with higher titratable acidity and low pH, this is not the optimum picking for producing weighty dry riesling. It can however, make delightful low alcohol and Kabinet style Rieslings. To understand what I mean by Kabinet, with a K, we need to take a look at the German classifications for Riesling based on what we call the must weight.
Iâm going to really simplify this and the German classification system, but must weight is the average sugar reading for a particular lot of picked fruit. In the United States, we use a measurement for sugar ripeness known as brix, where the higher the brix, the higher the sugar. As a general rule, the German classification rates wine types from lowest brix at harvest to highest brix at harvest as Kabinet, Spatlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, and Trockenbeerenauslese. Wines, at least in the first three classifications, can be produced from dry to off dry, and even some sweetness. Picking at a Kabinet level usually requires a minimum brix of 17. We can make a very simple calculation for potential alcohol based on brix, by multiplying the brix by .545. In other words, at 17 brix, a wine that is fermented to dryness has a potential alcohol of around 9%. In order to find a sugar acid balance, these wines will often be left with some residual sugar, and finished with a potential alcohol of around 8%. At these levels, these grapes may not produce the most complex wines, but they can make delicious, low alcohol, very enjoyable wines. Additionally, due to the low alcohol, high acid, and bit of residual sugar, these wines can have very long lives.
When grapes are becoming compromised, and the decision is made to pick early, all is not lost. We can still make delicious, approachable and enjoyable wines. Of course, the other component of that is to make sure youâre picking only the cleanest fruit. In circumstances like this, we will continue dropping bad fruit, and ensure that our hands are not even touching sour rot clusters when it comes time to harvest our fruit.
As a veteran, the news of the last few weeks have been difficult to watch. Iâve made time to reach out to many fellow veterans, friends who served selfelssly in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The images on our televisions and in our news feeds brings back a lot of memories for many vets, and Iâd like to encourage you to check in on those you may know that have served. Lend a listening ear, be a friend. Many need that right now.
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube. It really helps with the ratings and in introducing new folks to the show. Be sure to tune in next week, where I speak with Katarina Axelsson, co-founder and CEO at Tastry, touted as being the worldâs first artificial intelligence driven sensory sciences company, with a tagline that Tastry taught a computer to taste. Katarinaâs story is inspiring, and weaves wine and technology in a way that represents the cutting edge of the wine industry.
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If you enjoy the content, please rate us 5 stars!
Todd Eichas, who after 30 years working in industry as an electrician and training manager, partnered with his wife Dani for their second act as vintners and operators of a Seneca Lake bed and breakfast. New Vines, the name of the winery and the bed and breakfast, produces my favorite Gruner Veltliner in the Finger Lakes, and their inn has garnered endless praise from guests who have stayed with them. New Vines provides an amazing agri-tourism experience, in a comfortable intimate setting.
Check out New Vines wines at:
https://www.newvines.com/
Visit our website at www.VitiCulturePodcast.com, and donât forget to share with your friends via all major social media platforms @VitiCULTUREPod
Visit Bellangelo Winery and Missick Cellars at www.Bellangelo.com and www.MissickCellars.com.
You can watch the interview on our YouTube channel here:
Get full access to The Viti+Culture Podcast Newsletter at viticulturepodcast.substack.com/subscribe - Näytä enemmän
