Locapour

Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

One Down, 49 To Go!

We here at Vino Verve are all about exploration – finding and celebrating the wines and wineries all around us.  To that end, I’ve been slowly making my way across the Northeast, and with my recent trip to Diamond Hill Vineyards, Vino Verve can now lay claim to having visited all the wineries in a single state.   I’ve sampled some great wines along the way, met some interesting people, and learned a lot about local wine culture, terroir and winemakers.

There are still many many wineries left to explore and experience, but I thought it worth taking a pause to celebrate a milestone 3 years in the making!

So join us as we raise a glass to the wineries of the “Ocean State”!

Langworthy Farm Winery, Westerly

Newport Vineyards, Middletown

Sakonnet Vineyards, Little Compton

Greenvale Vineyards, Portsmouth

Diamond Hill Vineyards, Cumberland

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Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

As I explore the vineyards and wineries of the Northeast, I’m finding I actually like fruit wines.  For years I, like so many of you, turned up my nose at fruit wines, thinking them too sweet, too thin, too whatever.   However, just as with grape wines, there are some very bad and some very good fruit wines out there.

On the afternoon I stopped by Diamond Hill (almost a month ago now…  apologies for the two week delay in getting this posted), there were three fruit wines available on the tasting menu.

Cranberry Apple First up was Diamond Hill’s most popular wine, the Cranberry Apple.  Made from New England grown fruit, including organically grown cranberries from Attleborough, Rhode Island.  A blend of 25% cranberry and 75% apple, the wine is delightfully sweet-tart.  The color is a delightful rosy-peach.  The nose has soft cranberry notes – not nearly as overpowering as I anticipated.  In the mouth the wine, as mentioned above, is charmingly sweet-tart with a lovely burst of cranberry on the tongue; the apple provides just enough sweetness to temper the tartness of the cranberry and keep the wine from being overpowering.  I really liked this wine and went home with two bottles.  It’s a great sipping wine, will pair well with poultry, and would make a bright, fun sangria as well.

Blueberry From the Cranberry Apple we moved on to the Blueberry.  Made with organically grown blueberries from Jonesport, Maine, the wine has strong notes of blueberry in both the nose and on the mouth, but is surprisingly light and clean.  Given the intensity of the blueberry, I half-expected the wine to be almost syrupy sweet, but it’s not.  There’s a very lightly bitter note at the end which balances the sweetness of the fruit and gives the wine a bit of character.   This is a very nice wine, although not as interesting as the Cranberry Apple to my mind.

Diamond Hill was sold out of their Blackberry and their Raspberry wines, so the last wine on the menu for the day was their Peach wine.  Diamond Hill crushes the whole fruit and the result is the sweetest of all their wines, one that I’d characterize as a dessert wine.  The nose is soft with notes of apricot as well as peach.  In the mouth, the wine is sweet, but not syrupy, with soft peach notes that linger on the palate, and a very light tartness on the palate.   Peach is not one of my favorite fruits or flavors, but this was one of the nicer peach wines I’ve sampled to date.

I left that day with six bottles under my arm, a list of wines to order for Gretchen and Kevin, and a Vino Verve milestone under my belt.  But more on that on Thursday…

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Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

On my quest to be prepared for the DrinkLocalWine.com conference I am moving on from the Augusta AVA on to Hermann. The town of Hermann was founded by the German Settlement Society of Philadelphia in the 1830′s after they sent school teacher George Bayer to purchase land where they could establish a German utopia. Bayer selected the area that is now known as Hermann because it reminded him of his childhood home in Germany. Unfortunately the land was not ideal for traditional farming or industry, but was perfect for viticulture. Lucky for us!

Check out the new Hermann AVA page!

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Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

Diamond Hill produces 10 wines, five grape and five fruit, of which seven were available for tasting on Saturday.   The tasting moves from dry to sweet, which at Diamond Hill means we started with the Pinot Noir.

As I mentioned before I was quite surprised to find that they were able to successfully cultivate Pinot Noir vines, and truthfully I wasn’t expecting much.  Not that I expected it to be bad, but…

Pinot Noir 2005 Vintage It’s nice to be proved wrong once in a while.  This is a delightful wine.  The color is a lovely medium-garnet.  The nose is soft with lightly floral notes of cherry blossom.  In the mouth, the wine is soft and lightly fruity with subtle notes of cherry.  It wasn’t the stronger cherry notes I so often find in the cabernet francs, marechal fochs and st. croix wines across the Northeast – here the notes were more delicate; cherry blossom rather than cherry.  The wine is aged in French oak for one year which provides a delicate spiciness with just a hint of heat on the finish.   A really nice wine, and a really nice surprise to find in vineyards so far away from the tempering influence of the Sound.   Kudos to the Berntsons and Diamond Hill for producing a lovely New England Pinot Noir!

Scarlet Run A 100% Merlot wine made from Northeast  grapes, usually brought in from New York, Scarlet Run is not a typical Merlot.  This is a very fruit forward wine with, surprisingly, very discernible notes of strawberry.  I first picked up the strawberry in the nose – not overpowering, but very noticeable.  In the mouth, that first sip is quite a surprise.  Used to denser Merlots with flavors ranging from earthy to darker fruits, I was almost taken aback by the brightness and fruitiness of this wine.  But don’t confuse that with not liking it – I found the wine quite charming and immediately noted it down as a wine that would be going home with me that afternoon.  It’s just not what one expects from a Merlot.

Aged in stainless steel, the wine has a lovely smooth, rich finish, with very light tannins.  Interestingly I didn’t find myself missing the oaking, which I often do in red wines.  With the Scarlet Run, I found I really appreciated the clean finish.  This will pair will a wide variety of foods, particularly beef or lamb.

Steve also pointed out the label, which features a red greyhound silhouette on a black background, and is quite different from Diamond Hill’s other labels.  4 or 5 years ago, the Berntsons adopted a greyhound and now support the Twin River Greyound Adoption society by donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of Scarlet Run.   If you do visit the winery, there’s a framed plaque in the room just off the tasting room which features a picture of the Berntson’s dog as well as the story of how they came to adopt her and associate Scarlet Run with greyhound adoption.

Pinot Noir Rosé This is a relatively recent addition to the Diamond Hill line-up.  In 2008, Allan Berntson, Diamond Hill’s winemaker, did a quick crush press of some of estate-grown Pinot Noir grape and produced the first vintage of the Rosé.   The result is a light semi-dry wine with lightly floral notes and a soft, clean finish.  I found the wine to be a bit light for my taste, but it will appeal to many.   The color is very interesting.  When first poured into the glass, it appeared to be a medium-gold color, however, when I held it up over the white counter, I started to see hints of pink, and found the color shifted back and forth between pink and gold depending on how you were holding the glass and how the wine was catching the light.  The nose has lovely floral notes, and in the mouth the wine is very lightly fruity – more fruit blossom than true fruit, I would say.  The wine is unoaked, and has a soft, clean finish with almost no tannins.

River Valley White A blend of Chardonnay and French Colombard, the River Valley White is a semi-dry table wine with lovely notes of buttery apricot.  The color falls in the medium-yellow range, slightly on the lighter side.  The nose is very soft with discreet notes of peach or peach blossom.   Like all of Diamond Hill’s other wines, with the exception of the Pinot Noir, the River Valley White is unoaked, and the result is a clean, crisp wine.  I picked up just a hint of cream along with notes of apricot and a light acid on the finish which balanced the fruit notes and kept the wine from coming across as overly sweet.   This wine will pair well with chicken or pork and would also be very nice on it’s own as an aperitif.

It was just about this point that two other visitors arrived for a tasting of the Pinot and the Merlot.  I used the distraction as an opportunity to take a quick break, looking around the tasting room and gift shop and giving my palate a brief rest before proceeding with the fruit wines.

Look for the Diamond Hill fruit wines on Tuesday, March 15th.

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Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

Winter 2011 has been a rough one here in the Northeast. Connecticut, where I live, received 2-3 times our normal snowfall; at one point most of it was piled up in my front yard. So when the weather forecast called for temperatures in the 50s on Saturday, I decided it was time to come out of hibernation and hit the wine trail again. I didn’t even care that the forecast also called for cloudy with the possibility of rain – the chance to get out of the house and hit the open road was too good to pass up.

So Saturday afternoon found me heading east to Cumberland, Rhode Island, just outside Providence, and the Diamond Hill Vineyards. Established in 1976 by Peter & Claire Berntson, Diamond Hill is now a second-generation winery run by the Berntson’s daughter, Chantelle, and son-in-law Stephen Rogers, and their son, Allan Berntson, who is also Diamond Hill’s winemaker.

Earlier in their lives the Berntson’s had lived for a few years in France and decided that one day they would own their own vineyards and winery. In 1976 they realized this dream when they planted their first vines, Pinot Noir, in Cumberland, Rhode Island. Yes, you read that correctly – Pinot Noir – a bold move considering the Northeast climate is not generally conducive to vinifera such as Pinot Noir, and the northern-Rhode Island location also precludes any climate-moderating benefits gained from proximity to the Sound.

But the Berntsons perservered. They replanted many of their vines in 1981, and keep them low to the ground to help the vines survive the cold New England winters. The vines have thrived, and today their estate-grown Pinot Noir wines are made from those 30-year old vines.

The Berntsons have also created a charming and welcoming tasting room. Set back from the main road, at the end of a winding dirt road, the tasting room is located in an old farmhouse. The front of the house faces a grassy field beyond which lie the vineyards. The porch runs the length of the house and the Berntsons have set up clusters of bistro tables and chairs. Despite the 50+ degrees on Saturday, the air was still a bit too raw for sitting outside, but I made a mental note to bring Cheryl, Deb and Jean back with me in the Spring – that porch will be a great place to enjoy a picnic lunch, a glass or bottle of wine, and a weekend afternoon.

Inside, the Berntsons have kept the original footprint and much of the charm of the original house. To the left as you enter is a small parlor set out with tables and chairs for guests who wish to linger indoors. To the right is lies the Tasting room. Both of the rooms have a welcoming, cozy feel to them. The ceilings and floors are wood, and the original moldings and fireplace appear to be intact. The decor has an eclectic, lived-in feel which adds to the warmth and coziness.

Tastings are served at the small bar in the back of the main room. This is not a winery that is set up for large crowds; at most you could get 4-5 comfortably at the bar, and that would be a tight fit. Stephen Rogers, my host that afternoon, mentioned that there were a few weekends last year when it was so crowded people were lined up outside the door waiting for tastings. Most weekends, however, the crowds do not get that bad. While no winery – or winemaker – would ever bemoan the extra business, the Berntsons and Rogers, like many local winemakers, get the most enjoyment out of sharing their wines, having the chance to chat with people and the time to enjoy the sense of community they are building. Truthfully, it’s what I enjoy most about my win(e)ding road adventures as well. On Saturday, in addition to meeting Steve, who was tending bar that afternoon, I also had a chance to meet his wife, Chantelle, as well as one of the winery’s original owners, Claire Berntson. It was clear that they all love what they do, and they love the chance to relax and chat with their guests – it made for a great afternoon.

Diamond Hill offers free tastings of all of their wines, and glasses of wine average $5/$6, although the Pinot Noir will be slightly more expensive. They produce 10 wine, five grape and five fruit wines, ranging from dry table wines to sweet dessert wines. 3 of the wines are currently sold out, but I had the opportunity of tasting the other 7, including Diamond Hill’s estate-grown, Pinot Noir. More to come on that on Thursday, but I can tell you it was lovely and definitely worth the $25 price tag / bottle. I brought a bottle home with me this trip, and will definitely be heading back for more later in the Spring.

Diamond Hill is open year-round, Thursday-Sunday noon-5pm.  In addition to their wines, Diamond Hill also specializes  in custom and personalized wine labels.  They will ship wines to many states, and if you aren’t able to stop by, you can order wines directly from their website.   While all their wines are good, I highly recommend the estate-grown Pinot Noir.

Diamond Hill Vineyards
3145 Diamond Hill Road
Cumberland, Rhode Island 02864
401-333-2751 or 1-800-752-2505
email: favorpro@favorlabel.com
website: http://www.favorlabel.com/wedding_favors/Winery.php

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Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

When I decide that I am updating part of the website, I prefer to go all out. And this holds true for our Better Know An AVA pages. As I roll one out with its new improvements I will post here on the main page with a vlog. Bear with me as I am learning how to put this together, though I think I managed to pull this off.

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Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

The Hudson Valley Wine Country organization is offering a Winter in Wine Country Passport.  Similar to their summer passport program, the Winter in Wine Country Passport is available for $30 and is good for a complimentary wine tasting at each of the 10 participating Hudson Valley wineries:

Benmarl Winery ~ Marlboro, NY
Brookview Station Winery ~ Casteton, NY
Brotherhood Winery ~ Washingtonville, NY   (Vino Verve Visited!)
Hudson-Chatham Winery ~ Ghent, NY
Millbrook Vineyards & Winery ~ Millbrook, NY
Palaia Vineyards & Winery ~ Highland Mills, NY (Vino Verve Visited!)
Robibero Family Vineyards ~ New Paltz, NY
Stoutridge Vineyard ~ Marlboro, NY
Tousey Winery ~ Germantown, NY
Whitecliff Vineyard & Winery ~ Gardiner, NY

You must purchase your passport tickets by January 31st (only 9 days left!) and the tickets are good from February 1st through March 31st.   As tastings run on average between $5 and $10 depending on the winery, the passport is a fantastic deal!

Purchase tickets online through eventbrite, and for more information about the Hudson Valley Wine Country organization, including a list of all Hudson Valley wineries and an interactive map that helps you plan your trip(s), visit HudsonValleyWineCountry.org.

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Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

My New Year’s Resolution should have been “don’t procrastinate on filing your Vino Verve posts!”   Although given that it’s not even the end of January and I’m already behind, at least I don’t now feel the guilt of having resoundingly failed at my resolution before the year truly got underway.

So, to catch us up ~ I kicked off the New Year on the Litchfield Winter Wine Trail; first stop Jerram Winery in New Hartford, Connecticut.  Having sampled the available whites, next up were the reds, which I was particularly looking forward to.  My first visit to Jerram was fairly early into my Connecticut Wine Trail adventures.  Jerram was one of the first wineries at which I tried a Marechal Foch wine (as opposed to encountering Marechal Foch as a blending grape), and the Highland Reserve, a Cabernet Franc/Marechal Foch blend was one of my favorites of that visit.  Not having been back in almost two years, I was looking forward to the new vintages.

Before either the Highland Reserve or the Marechal Foch, however, the first red presented was Sil Vous Plait, a 100% Cabernet Franc.  The nose has bright notes of cherry and that flinty, salt-tanginess of the Northeastern Reds.  Medium-bodied, the wine is slightly tart with cherry notes on the front and a lightly smoky finish.  The mouth-feel is soft, and there’s a slight bite towards the back of the tongue that makes the wine feel a bit young.  With Connecticut Cabernet Francs, I’ve found cellaring them for six to nine months and then letting them breathe a bit really mellows them and makes for a much richer wine.

Next up was the Highland Reserve, the Marechal Foch/Cabernet Franc blend.   The nose is softer and more subtle than the Sil Vous Plait, although the cherry notes are still the predominant note.  In the mouth the wine is lightly sweet and fruit forward with bright notes of cherry, which carry through from the front to the back of the tongue.  There are light notes of smoke and leather on the finish, enough to provide a nice balance but not so much that they overwhelm the wine.  Overall a lovely wine.

And last, and certainly not least, my favorite the Marechal Foch. The nose is earthy with notes of grass; a definite surprise after the more strongly cherry noses of the first two wines.  Medium-bodied, in the mouth the wine, like the Highland Reserve, is fruit-forward with notes of cherry, but there are earthy notes as well which keep the wine from the sweeter notes found in the Highland Reserve.  The tanginess and “bite” that is a characteristic of the Marechal Foch grape (or to be more precise the Marechal Foch wines I’ve encountered) is present but not distracting.  The wine is quite smooth and feels more robust and mature than other Marechal Foch wines I’ve tasted.

If anything could be considered Jerram’s “signature” wine, it would be the Marechal Foch.  These are the first vines Jim Jerram planted when he established the vineyards in 1982, and the first wine he produced in 1986.  Over the years he’s expanded to other grapes and wines, but the Marechal Foch maintains a place of prominence in the Jerram Winery lineup.

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Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

I managed to start the New Year as planned, spending New Year’s Day re-visiting a couple wineries that I hadn’t visited in almost a year.  The weather certainly helped; after a Boxing Day snowstorm dumped 12″ of snow on most of Connecticut, New Year’s Day dawned bright and sunny and hit the 50s by early afternoon.  The sun glistening off the snow in the hills was beautiful as I made my way over to my first stop of the day, Jerram Winery in New Hartford, Connecticut.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been to Jerram, despite my liking their wines enough to have brought home one of everything the last time I was there.  So I was looking forward to tasting the latest vintages of some of my favorites and seeing if they had any new wines on the menu.

It was pretty quiet when I arrived; owner and winemaker Jim Jerram was at the Tasting Bar engaged in a lively conversation with a gentleman who, it appears, has recently bought a place – or is considering buying a place in New Hartford.   The interior is bright and cheery – just as I remembered it – and both the ambience and the company welcomed me warmly.

There are 11 wines on Jerram’s current wine list, six of which are available for tasting, three whites and three reds.  First up was the

White Frost, a 100% Chardonnay lightly oaked.  This is a very dry Chardonnay, and those who dislike the fruity, buttery, sweeter Chardonnays should really like this wine.  In some respects it reminded me more of a Sauvignon Blanc than a Chardonnay – crisp, with light notes of lemon and a nice bite of acid on the finish.

After the Chardonnay, I had my choice of Seyval Blanc.  Jerram produces two Seyval Blancs each year, one sweeter and one drier.  I opted for the drier, but in hindsight I realized not only had I sampled the dry Seyval before but had a bottle at home.  I would have done better to choose the sweeter Seyval Blanc BC for the contrast.  Live and learn… and an excuse to return soon.  Despite the oversight I very much enjoyed the Seyval Blanc.  Crisp with light notes of lemon and grapefruit, particularly on the finish, this is my favorite of the Jerram whites.

When I returned home, I looked back over my notes from my first visit to Jerram Winery - almost two years ago.  I had no idea it had been that long!  Turns out the Seyval Blanc BC is one of Jerram’s newest wines, having bottled the first vintage not long before my visit.  Man, I definitely should have opted for the BC!

The whites concluded with the sweetest of Jerram’s whites, the Aurora, a Villard Blanc/Aurore blend.  This is a really nice wine, and one of Jerram’s most popular.  The wine has a soft, sweet nose with notes of apricot and honey both of which blend nicely in the mouth.  Semi-dry, the Aurora is fruit forward with lovely notes of apricot immediately apparent.  The honey is more subtle and really comes through with subsequent sips, providing the wine with a nice depth and complexity over time.

Not on the tasting menu that day, but a wine which I recently enjoyed at home is Jerram’s Gentle Shepherd, a blend of Cayuga, Chardonnay and Aurore grapes.  This was the bottle I opened two weeks ago to launch my vacation – and the holidays.  Nice point/counterpoint to the holidays.

Having finished the whites, it’s time to clear the palate and rinse the glass before proceeding to the reds…

Jerram Winery
535 Town Hill Road
New Hartford, CT 06047
860-379-8749

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Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

For the second year in a row, Litchfield area wineries have joined together to sponsor the Litchfield Hills Winter Wine Trail.  Hosted by six local wineries, the Winter Wine Trail kicked off on January 1st and runs through the end of February.   Pick up a Wine Trail Card at any of the six wineries, get it signed at each winery, and drop it off at the last winery you visit to be entered in the drawing.

This year’s Grand Prize is a package of 2 free wine tastings at each participating winery.  Second Place Prize is an overnight stay at a historic New England Inn, the Toll Gate Hill Inn in the heart of Litchfield County wine country, and Third Place Prize is dinner at a Litchfield County restaurant.

The 2011 Winter Wine Trail wineries include:

DiGrazia Vineyards, 131 Tower Road, Brookfield, CT
Haight-Brown Vineyard, 29 Chestnut Hill Road, Litchfield, CT
Hopkins Vineyard, 25 Hopkins Road, New Preston, CT
Jerram Winery, 535 Town Hill Road Rt. 219, New Hartford, CT
Miranda Vineyard, 42 Ives Road, Goshen, CT
Sunset Meadow Vineyards, 599 Old Middle Street Rt. 63, Goshen, CT
You can find a list of our posts about each winery on the Connecticut page under “Win(e)ding Roads”

If you’re new to win(e)ding roads adventures, winter wine trails are one of the best ways to start.  With the exception, perhaps, of the Valentine’s Day weekend, the wineries are much quieter in the winter, the setting more relaxed.  You’re in little danger of being overwhelmed by the crowds one can often find on busy summer weekends.  And because these are local farm wineries, the winemakers themselves are often on hand and more than willing to kick back and chat about their wines, winemaking, and pretty much anything else you want to discuss.   All six participating wineries also have very welcoming and comfortable Tasting Rooms where you can sit, often by a fire, with a glass (or bottle) of wine after you finish your tasting.

Hopefully I’ll see you on the trail one weekend soon.

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