BURKITTSVILLE, Md. (AP) - On the lower reaches of a picturesque wind-swept mountain slope on the edge of Burkittsville is a vineyard producing some of the finest wines on the East Coast.
The rows of grapevines on the west side of Burkittsville have the look of a vineyard in France or Sonoma County, California. But they are on South Mountain, along either side of Gapland Road, and form the backbone of the Boordy Vineyards winemaking operation.
This year, Boordy’s Albarino wine, a dry, Spanish-style white, was awarded the Governor’s Cup, awarded annually to the wine judged to be the finest in Maryland. This is the latest in a long line of state, regional and national awards for Boordy’s premium wines.
The vineyard that produces the wine is in a storied area of southwest Frederick County. One hundred yards uphill is the Appalachian Trail. A Civil War battle was once fought on the land.
Boordy Vineyards has been making wine in Baltimore County since 1942. The Deford family bought Boordy, located in the rolling hills of Long Green Valley north of Loch Raven, in 1965. There, they grow grapes on 18 acres.
Around 2000, the family decided to expand its operations and make more premium wines, which typically sell for $15 to $50 per bottle, said Phineas Deford, who followed his father, Rob, and grandfather into the winemaking business.
At the same time, Jerry Milne, who had started the Burkittsville vineyard in 1977 with his late wife Ann, wanted to get out of the winemaking business. But the 60-acre parcel of land almost didn’t become a vineyard to start with.
“I was going to be a real estate developer, and make a lot of money,” Milne said. He lives in Rockville. “I got there in the spring, and saw it for the first time,” he said. He learned that the land had been part of a Civil War battlefield. A portion of The Battle of South Mountain, which preceded the bloody Battle of Antietam, raged on and around Milne’s land.
“I couldn’t in good conscience develop a Civil War battlefield,” he said. “My wife Ann, who grew up on a vineyard in California, suggested we plant grapes.” Most of the grapes and wine they produced, they sold to other wineries. “The Defords always liked my grapes, because they were high quality,” Milne said. Kevin Atticks, executive director of the Maryland Wineries Association, said wines produced from the Milnes’ grapes often drew rave reviews and awards.
But by the late 1990s, the vineyard became too much for Jerry and his second wife, Wendy, to manage. They leased the land to the Defords. “It was so important for us to keep the vineyard going,” Milne said.
Stressed grapes
The Defords have a 50-year lease on the vineyards, which now cover 28 to 30 acres of the South Mountain property. They replaced the Milnes’ grapevines with all new rootstock. “A lot of the trees were diseased and damaged,” he said. But the family saw the possibility in the property. Heavily pruned grape trees are spaced 3 feet apart, with the rows 8 feet apart.
“Rocky, low-fertility soils are the number one element we look for,” Deford said on a tour of the South Mountain vineyard. “They say 90 percent of wine is made in the vineyard,” he added. Grapes develop the most flavor when the plants are stressed.
“On the East Coast, it’s all about managing your water,” he said. The flow of groundwater down the mountain means rainwater doesn’t soak the roots, causing the roots to work harder to get water, stressing the grapes.
The ideal summer weather for growing premium grapes is warm and dry, with intermittent thunderstorms. “Ideally, it would stop raining at the beginning of August until harvest,” he said. Harvest is typically the end of September through the month of October.
“This year was a pretty good year, with a wet June and a drought following,” he said. “Having this mountain ridge creates a rain shadow, like in Washington state (an area known for quality wines).”
The South Mountain slope also offers a slightly longer growing season than the fields in the Baltimore County vineyard. The higher elevation means that freezes, which tend to settle in valleys, occur later.
Maryland has been producing small batch wines for decades, Deford said. He is the current president of the Maryland Wineries Association. Maryland now has about 80 wineries, up from just 11 in 2000. A half-dozen are located in Frederick County.
“The perception is that East Coast wine is sweet and white, but there’s been a shift in focus on quality,” he said. “We can make great wine here, and it’s not all sweet. It’s not unlike the regions of Europe and California.” The mild Mid-Atlantic climate is ideal for growing grapes, although it does have a few challenges, especially humidity and pests. The vineyards are sprayed for mold, mildew, and this year, a Japanese beetle infestation. They are covered with a netting to prevent deer damage. On the plus side, frequent wind on the Burkittsville slope helps keep the humidity levels down, he said.
Soil profiles are also different on the South Mountain slopes. Farmland typically has horizontal soil profiles, but the sloping nature of the land means the soil profile is vertical. That helps the soil drain quickly, and well-drained soils are imperative for growing premium grapes. This goes back to the idea of stressing the plant to produce flavorful fruit.
The vineyard’s soil is not only poor, but rocky. To one side of the rows of grape trees is a large pile of rocks, some of which are 2 to 3 feet in diameter. Deford pointed to the pile, which he decided to keep to remind him of the challenges the vineyard has presented.
But those challenges promote deep root growth for the grapevines, which promotes better fruit. Once or twice a year, the vines are thinned, which also adds to the flavor the grapes produce.
Without that thinning, Deford said the vines could produce 5 tons of grapes per acre. But with it, about 2 1/2 tons of grapes per acre are produced. There are about 70,000 vines planted in the South Mountain vineyard, producing red and white wines, and even some dry rosé wine.
“We’re talking about a certain price point,” he said. The added labor and smaller yield increase the price of the final product.
The vines on the west side of Gapland Road are dedicated to chardonnay and Albarino, the variety that won the Governor’s Cup. “It was the first time in a long time that a white has won the competition,” Deford said. He described the dry wine as fruit-friendly and aromatic.
Across the road grow cabernet franc, merlot and cabernet sauvignon grapes.
Mid-Atlantic winters can be hard on grapevines. Each year, some vines succumb to winter freezes, and must be replaced. It takes a few years for a new grapevine to produce grapes that can be used to make commercially viable wines.
Maryland wines
Maryland wine is coming into its own, led by the wineries of Western Maryland, according to Joseph Fiola, viticulture, small fruit and unit coordinator for the University of Maryland’s Western Maryland Research and Education Center in Keedysville. Fiola grows some grapes to make into wine at the center, but he spends much of his time helping Maryland wine growers perfect their crops and their products.
“That vineyard wins high awards every year,” Fiola said. “This whole region, southwest Frederick County, southern Washington County, has shown to be a good area to grow grapes. As soon as I got here, I saw the geology of the soil and climate and said what we have here may be a premium area to grow grapes.” The limestone soil, the cooler temperatures, the elevation, all contribute to the quality of the grapes grown in the region.
Atticks, from the Maryland Wineries Association, said with the right site selection and the right grapes, premium wines can be produced in Maryland. Such wines can be competitive with wines from all over this country. “I can’t underestimate the power of selecting the right wine and rootstock, combined with the soil,” he said. “We’ve known this all along, and we’ve just begun to apply it here.”
Fiola added that the region’s soil and climate has spawned the growth of Boordy, Catoctin Breeze Vineyard, Big Cork Vineyard and Red Heifer Winery in Washington County, among others. Demand for Maryland wine has continued to grow over the years, he said. Only 3 percent of wine sold in Maryland is Maryland wine. Most of the wineries, including Boordy, sell the bulk of their wines in tasting rooms at the vineyards, and by mail. Since 2000, Fiola said the state’s wine industry has grown by double digits each year.
The process
Once the grapes are harvested from South Mountain, early to mid-September for the white grapes, and early September to late October for the reds, they are loaded onto trucks and taken to Boordy’s Long Green Valley winemaking operation. In 2013, a 7,500 square-foot building was put up to house the vineyard’s growing business. After arrival, the grapes are stored at 50 degrees overnight, to allow them to cool.
The white grapes are loaded into a bin and rotated into a hopper. There, the stems and leaves are separated out, and the berries are crushed by rollers, then pumped into a press. “You want to get them processed and pressed quickly, to prevent oxidization and preserve the flavor,” Deford said. Ten tons of grapes are loaded into a bladder press, so much that some of the juice squeezes out the sides. Some of the juice isn’t pressed, but is known as free-run juice, which makes for the most flavorful wine.
The juice is pumped into tall, stainless steel tanks with gradually reduced pressure to prevent bitter flavors from getting into the juice. The free run juice is combined with the pressed juice in differing amounts, depending on the quality of the wine being made. More of the free run juice is used to make the chardonnay reserve.
The juice is cooled to 40 to 50 degrees to preserve freshness and prevent oxidization. Nitrogen gas is added to displace the oxygen to start the fermentation process. The juice is innoculated with yeast, and gradually warmed, and the fermentation begins. After two to 10 days, the clear juice is pumped out, and the remaining thick debris is used to fertilize the fields. The reserve chardonnay wine is pumped into oak barrels to age for six to seven months before being bottled. The remaining white wine is left in the tank for about three months before it is bottled.
The red grapes are also put into a hopper, but the process of making juice is different. The hopper, called a T-Rex, rotates the berries. Whole berries fall onto a sorting table, where twigs, leaves and other debris are removed. “It’s a long, labor intensive process,” Deford said. Once the berries are sorted, they are moved into a tank where they are gently crushed. The grapes at the bottom of the tank are moved into a satellite container and then reloaded back into the tank at the top. This process is repeated three times a day.
“We’re not pumping, which is used in volume production,” Deford said. “This is used for high-end wine.” Red wines are susceptible to bitterness, and this process prevents that bitter taste. The wine stays in these tanks, chilled to 30 to 40 degrees, for a week or two. Flavor from the skins and seeds infuses the juice, and adds the rich, red wine color. The juice ferments, and the tank is sealed. “This process is called extended maceration. After 10 to 20 days, the free run juice is removed and flowed into oak barrels for aging. The red wine is aged in the barrels, seven to eight months for lighter reds, and 14 to 18 months for more full-bodied wines.
“We leave them in the bottle for at least a year,” Deford said. Wine needs to adjust to its surroundings, and bottle shock will affect the flavor of a recently-bottled wine. White wines are much less susceptible to bottle shock, but still need a little time to adjust.
How long to keep a bottle of wine before drinking it depends on the wine and one’s taste. “Some people like young wines, some like aged wines,” he said. It also depends greatly on the variety. Visitors to the winery’s tasting room are advised on how best to age the wines they buy.
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Information from: The Frederick (Md.) News-Post, https://www.fredericknewspost.com
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