A Visit to Coastal Vineyards in South Dartmouth, MA

We recently took a drive to South Dartmouth, MA to visit David Nielson, owner of Coastal Vineyards. We met David in the H&W Booth at the Eastern Winery Exposition when we were visiting with Hans and inquiring about the Lipco tunnel sprayer. David mentioned that he had one and that we were welcome to come and see it. The day we chose began with flurries of snow so we bundled up and began our drive. It takes about 2 hours to reach South Darthmouth.
When we arrived, we found David pruning his vines and the sun had broken through the clouds. Trust me though, it was still cold. David was pruning his vines with a few helpers, his neighbors who come over to lend a hand and who were obviously enjoying the outdoor activity, chatting as they worked their way own a row!
David makes about 500 cases of wine a year and this is about how we will begin so it was interesting to see what kinds of winery equipment he needed and used. He had several 160 gallon stainless steel tanks. This is the amount of juice that comes out of 1 ton of grapes. We went to look at his Lipco sprayer is a one tunnel, three point hitch style sprayer. His tank held 100 gallons.

Next, we went to see his tractor barn to look at his Lipco sprayer. David's Lipco is a one tunnel, three point hitch style sprayer. His tank holds 100 gallons. David has 8 acres of land currently under vines. He is also adding more vines this spring and has already cleared the land in preparation for planting. We ended our visit with David by looking at his case storage area. We've tried to do this calculation before by estimating the three dimensions that a case will take and how many cases can be piled on top of each other, etc, but it is good to see the area that the case goods will take.
Thank you David for your time. We really appreciated the fact that you interrupted your pruning to give us a tour!

2011 Norman Hardie Chardonnay

In October 2012, we went to Prince Edward County (not Prince Edward Island) located in Lake Ontario. If you imagine Lake Ontario as a gaping mouth, Prince Edward County (PEC) is like the thing that hangs down in the back of your throat (the uvula), tethered to mainland Ontario by an extension of land. One of the places that we visted was Norman Hardie. It was October and we ran into Norman himself with his little son. This was the last weekend that they were serving their outdoor pizza and people had gathered to taste Norman Hardie's wines and enjoy perhaps one more weekend of outdoor life. We went to Norman's tasting room and tried his Pinot noir and his Chardonnay. We purchased 2 bottles each of the Pinot noir and Chardonnay. Tonight, we had the 2011 County Chardonnay. On his website, Norman Hardie says that the 2011 growing season was cool and the county Chardonnay began fermentation in stainless steel and then transferred to barrel for 9 months of aging. When we poured the wine, it was a bit lemony yellow and we thought, "Oh, oh, a bit of oxidation" but that was not the case. Our second reaction was that it tasted rather sweet, but then upon swirling and having it with our meal, we remarked that it was a delicious, aspirational wine, that is "We need to make wine like this!" We really have a soft spot for wines from PEC. They really must love what they are doing because they bury their vines in the winter! Why do they go through all this troube? I think it is because they have discovered that their land comprised of limestone, infuses their Chardonnay with great minerality and flavor.

Dormant Bud

On March 11, we went to the vineyard to check on the status of our vines. The vineyard was no longer snow covered, but there were some patches of snow in the northwest corner of the vineyard where it was obviously much colder than other areas of the field. Surprisingly, it was a warm day but the field was still saturated with the melted snow and made walking the field a mucky business.

We were able to get a few photos of the dormant vines including this little dormant bud. We did not bring our clippers with us on that day but on Saturday, March 22, we took our clippers to see if we could discern the status of our vines. We began with clipping some of the sacrificial canes and we could see that although some of the canes were brown throughout, many of the canes had green interiors! We still have to do a bud count to test for winter injury but we have decided to cut our canes back down to two buds for this year's growth. I'll be taking closeups of the buds and will post them on this blog. Can't wait for early bud swell!

The Wine Brothers at the Wine Store

This week we attended the monthly tasting hosted by James Morrison at The Wine Store in Westerly, RI. This evening, James had invited Sally Donahue from The Wine Brothers, to showcase some of the wines in their portfolio. The Wine Brothers specialize in "honest wines made by honest people".
The first wine that we tasted was from Westport Rivers, a winery specializing in sparkling wine. We've visited Westport Rivers before so we were familiar with their offerings. Sally gave a short history of the family and how and when they got into the business. We next tasted a 2011 Rioja from Dominio de Heredia. With each tasting Sally explained the location of the small winery and any viticultural practices they were practicing. These smaller wineries were involved in using sustainable, organic or even biodynamic farming practices in their vineyards. Among the wines we tasted was one from the Langhe which had juice from the nebbiolo, dolcetto and barbera grapes. The wine was very approachable. We also tried one from the Rhone valley made with mainly mouvedre with grenache, and syrah. It is nice to be able to taste the wines of these smaller producers in a friendly setting! Thanks James and Sally!