Our Story

Many of the larger, older wineries in Napa like Christian Brothers made use of hillside caves. The cool, damp environment and smells of musty, underground fermentation appealed and were much in contrast to the dry, hot conditions of Napa valley and north bay, especially in the summer. I loved everything about the process, and later, when I reached legal age, I started loving the wine also. At one winery visit, I picked up a bottle of Gamay Beaujolais, a "seasonal" wine with a distinct fresh flavor. It was unlike anything I had tasted up to that point and the tasting room attendant explained how this type of wine is a traditional, "first of the season" wine with intentional little or no benefit of aging. I had assumed, of course, that the gold standard of wine quality was age, the "older" the better, a myth more in keeping with Hollywood aesthetics than anything to do with actual value or qualitative differences in the wine itself.  Years later, after returning from our Peace Corps service in The Gambia, we settled in at graduate school at the University of Massachusetts. Walking around our married student apartment complex one fall morning, around 1986, I encountered a large amount of small berry grapes on a vine, overloading a chain-link fence. After asking around, I secured permission to harvest and found myself with about 10 gallons of wild fox grapes. Fox grape (Vitis labrusca) is a native, wild growing grape common to New England and the northeast and mid-Atlantic. 

Perhaps it was our Peace Corps experience, which compelled us to make use of anything that nature provided, that drove the curiosity. In any event, a quick glance at our phone book (long before the internet) revealed a wine and beer making shop a short drive away in Northampton, MA. I quickly became a regular visitor and all the people who worked there were generous with their time and knowledge. I soon amassed the standard compliment of home winemaking tools and equipment; 5 gallon glass carboy, plastic pails for primary fermentation and air lock and a small booklet on making home wine from grapes and other fresh fruit. 

The recipe called for large amounts of sugar, which I followed and started my experiment in wine making. I can't claim success on this attempt, as too many of us learning wine making this way have found out for ourselves. I still have a bottle or two of that around, I believe. I gave one of them to my middle son on the occasion of his 30th birthday. We all sampled it and while it was more in the sherry end of the spectrum (and not vinegar), we decided the attempt was worthwhile. Making wine, you see, is about patience and investing in the future.

Back to Africa again and back home for more graduate degree work in 1991. Our family had grown to four and our first home purchase in South Amherst. Our house adjoined two farm fields, one on the side and one on the back. The timber breaks between farmland plots were loaded with wild concord grapes, and the urge to turn the abundance of this fruit into more wine moved me again. By this time, I had learned the lesson that the quality of the wine is directly related to the quality of the grapes you start with. I knew that the concord is, by nature, lacking in sufficient sugars to ferment, so I decided to take the advice of my friendly winemaking shop and contact a business in Springfield, MA. A local business had flats of fresh grapes ("lugs") shipped in from the west coast and I soon was driving home with 36 lbs of rapidly aging Muscato grapes. Our imminent departure to our next African overseas professional gig, this time in Namibia, had me quickly bottling the not-quite-ready-for-primetime blend. As would be expected, on our return 3 years later I found that a number of the bottles had pushed out their corks. Lesson learned. Patience. I still have several bottles of that vintage, which get used for cooking mostly.