Crushing Grapes at Serpent Ridge Winery

 It's taken me a few more weeks than I had hoped to get these photos up from my recent volunteer day with Serpent Ridge Winery in Westminster, Md. Life intervenes.

For more than a year now, I've been watching the winery's calls for volunteers to help crush, press, pick, or bottle, hoping to match up a day when I was free and they needed help. Invariably things didn't work out. Turns out, a lot of people like to volunteer at the winery and you only need so much help at a time. But finally, in mid-November I got my chance.

My friend, Maureen, and I joined six other volunteers for a morning of crushing cabernet sauvignon grapes that the winery had just received from another farm in Maryland.  After a morning of lifting, pouring, and cleaning, we were rewarded with a wonderful lunch and a discount on our wine purchase. It's a great experience to be involved in, and hopefully we'll get the chance to do other parts of the process next year.

Maureen weighs a box of grapes - they ranged from 14-30+ lbs

This is what the grapes look like before crushing...

The crusher before it's in place...

And after crushing....

Create a work line to pass along the grapes

They try to quickly pull junk out of the grapes before they get crushed

And, the bins get cleaned after their grapes are dumped...

This is the winery cat, Zork, named after the wine cap

Updates

I got a chance to get some updates on folks I have introduced in earlier posts, and I wanted to share them. I guess this is the first weave of the woven stories that I promised. It's a short update, but an update nonetheless.

I'd been away from the market for over a month for a variety of reasons, but the talk of all the stalls Sunday was no different than that in the office cubbie: stinkbugs. and the discussion no less animated. All of the local farmers have been hurt by this year's stinkbug invasion. Unlike many other bugs attack on the fruits of your labor, this one is rather insidious. The bugs poke a tiny hole into things like tomatoes to feed, as I understand it.  So the fruit looks fine on the vine. When you take it off, that open wound starts to rot quickly and you'll get some oozing sometimes. Organically the way they are dealing with these beasts is pick them off and squish them. Tom of Nevr-Dun finds their smell the smell of victory (with the number flying around, I'd call it a small victory), and at least one of his clients thinks the smell is "woodsy".  Most other people think they plain stink. If you did want to spray them, there doesn't appear to be much option there. I haven't looked into this in great depth, but Karen of Serpent Ridge Winery, who I introduced here, noted that they are still waiting guidance from the USDA on handling the bugs. For their part, luckily, they have seen a lot of bugs, but don't feel their crop has been impacted.

The market on Saturday yielded the first bag of lettuce for the Fall season (for me, at least). It's amazing how good a fresh salad can taste. While we have lots of variants on salad during the Summer with various fresh produce, lettuce hasn't been available locally since June. So, no salads for us since June. The challenge of eating this way tests our creativity and ability to work with what we have.  No cold turkey here, I've been slowly increasing our dependency on local produce and reducing our reliance on the supermarket over a couple of years. This Summer is probably the first three month period where not a single item, I think, was bought from the store. So, the first salad of the season, with our own cucumber, our friend's tomatoes, radishes and peppers from the market, and our own lemon-infused vinegar, was amazing.  But, I digress....

Everyone has definitely struggled with the stinkbugs, and the drought is no less a problem. The farmer's I talk to use have a wide range of irrigation philosophies. Some are using water from their city water supply, some rely only on rain barrels, and some rely on nature. The latter were hit badly this year.  Shawn and Josie (introduced here)  have been using their water supply to keep their acre plus of property for Truffula Seed Produce going. This does mean very creative water hauling, as the property is divided across a road and their is no water on the one side. They have access to an old, deep well and would like to get that going so that they can rely on the rain more. But that requires investment in a pump and various other things; funds that they don't have now. Still, they've done pretty well this year and are sticking in for another. This was their first year at the market, and they had rented one property to grow on. In the coming months, they are hoping to find a second property, an acre, so that they can expand their farm next year and provide a CSA, as well as the Westminster Market. As though they had nothing else to do, Shawn is starting a graduate program at Goddard College in Vermont. It's an interdisciplinary program in sustainable farming, looking at the practicalities of sustainable, local, organic farming practices on scale. He'll do most of his work here, while he's still working their land. Josie is busy too with a bunch of canning. I've done some this year, but she love canning, as she described in this post. Because of her background in photography, her posts always have these fabulous photos and layout. She also has a posts on the beans that I described, but again, her photos are fabulous.  Otherwise, their Fall crops are coming along. They had some issues with the first set of seeds not germinating fully, but now everything is coming along. So they'll be in the market until November.

Serpent Ridge is now at the new wine season. They are picking their reds this Saturday and received shipment of the juice from the grapes they can't grow themselves over the last few weeks. Later in the month is pressing. I hope to be present for that and bring back tales of that adventure.

Serpent Ridge Winery

Two thoughts immediately come to mind as I turn into the driveway at Serpent Ridge Wintery: "Wow, this place is beautiful" and "there's a winery here?!". A cedar family home sits near the entrance and its design seems in complete harmony with the surrounding forest. The drive wraps up and behind, and soon it opens out to a small parking lot at the bottom of a slope lined with grape vines. Whooda-thunk??

Greg and Karen Lambrecht opened their winery a few years ago with the aim of producing small quantities of high quality, European style wine. Maryland has had wineries forever, but in the last fifteen years, there has been a surge both in the number of wineries and the quality of their product. There are even several wine trails in the state that lead consumers through scenic countryside to vintner's tasting rooms (visit www.marylandwine.com for details). Serpent Ridge is one of a handful of wineries in Carroll County, and it is just south of Westminster.

I first ran into Karen last year, as we both were purchasing cheese from the farmer's market. She was wearing a Serpent Ridge t-shirt, and I just had to ask: is that a local winery? Shortly afterwards, I was pulling up the wooded drive.

The couple aim to grow most of their own grapes, or buy what they need from local growers. They aren't quite able to do that yet and, due to lack of availability nearby, do purchase some grapes from out-of-state. They have just added more vines, white Albarino grapes, to their vineyard this year. In three years, these will produce a full harvest, but for now they have to purchase them elsewhere. In the meantime, on their own property in Westminster, they grow Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.  These are supplemented with grapes grown near Annapolis, though ideally, they would to use a Carroll County grower. And, for their Seyval Blanc, they purchase grapes from a producer in Damascus, Maryland.

Serpent Ridge is designed as a small wine producer. As you talk to the couple, it becomes clear that they aren't attempting to create a mass market product, but something that represents their passion for wine. They have found, by talking to experts, that the land and climate they live in best suits Bordeaux-style wines. Karen told me about the various classes and groups they are involved in, constantly learning and trying to find the right position for their business. Part of that means patronizing local businesses and thinking about how their decisions influence the community around them. This is not just about the grapes they buy. As an example, they now have their wine glasses made by Baltimore Glass. I imagine this is not the cheapest source for glass. This is a decision that reflects choices that people will make to support a larger community.

I asked Karen about their use of chemical sprays. They do spray for disease. With the high heat and humidity in Maryland, she told me that fungus is particularly problematic. But they don't spray on a schedule as the manufacturers suggest. They try to use the least amount of sprays possible. This makes good business sense too, of course. Many farmers who do spray have told me they no longer follow recommended schedules. Spraying is expensive, if nothing else. They don't have much of a problem with pests, and only use insecticides when they threaten the fruit, not just the leaves. So, they've made the choice to use limited chemicals because the environment and business considerations, they believe, don't support organic grape growing.

Given the dry spell we've had this summer, I also asked about watering. It turns out this isn't too much of a problem because the grape vines have deep tap roots. So they don't water the vines. Only in the major drought several years ago did they need to irrigate. They did so by bringing in tankers of pool water to the top of ridge and using gravity to feed water down the hillside.

Their harvest is done by volunteer crew, rather than day laborers. In return for some hard work picking grapes, volunteers receive a meal and wine. And, an experience to tell about.

I really like this winery: the owners, the setting, and the wine. As I have time to check out other area wineries, I'll write about them too. You can check out Serpent Ridge online at www.serpentridge.com, find their wines at some area liquor stores, or buy and taste at the winery.