Vintage Maine
April 17, 2005
Page 2 of 2 -- Down the coast in the small town of Winterport on the Penobscot River, Mike Anderson and his family are examples of the second generation of vintners making a go of it in Maine. Anderson, 55, started Winterport Winery in 2000, after a career as a housebuilder and, he says, an accountant trapped in ''Dilbert land."
Thirty years ago, Anderson started fiddling around with a wine-making kit his wife, Joan, had given him as a gift.
''The first batch wasn't bad enough to dissuade me from making more," he says with a grin. ''And people who drank the later bottles told me that it was really good stuff." In the mid-1990s, Anderson connected with Harry Peavey, a retiree in Winterport with a knack for making good fruit wines. ''He started me on the fruit wines," Anderson recalls, ''and we had some great blueberry and apple wines. It was fun to do."
Fun doesn't always translate into profit, however. Yet the Andersons decided to try their luck after buying an old building in Winterport with a partner.
''We remortgaged the house, cashed in my 401(k), used our savings, and borrowed from family and friends," says Anderson. In summer 2001, Winterport Winery opened with 240 cases of blueberry and other fruit wines. In 2004, Anderson produced and sold almost 2,000 cases of wine.
''Our job is to educate people that fruit wines are not like the Boone's Farm wine of old," he says. ''My blueberry is just like a big hearty California merlot, with a hint of oak."
The American public seems to be slowly coming around to fruit wines, says Carolyn Horan, associate editor of the New England Wine Gazette, though such wines will never constitute much of the national market. She thinks small wineries are taking off throughout New England because ''New Englanders have a great interest, still, in products made in small amounts by small businesses."
Jonathan Bailey, a former national wine distributor and restaurant buyer now living in Tenants Harbor, Maine, agrees.
''Look, regional wines are not going to garner cover-page stories in the major wine press," he says. ''They are good, occasionally very good. You stumble on a regional wine and are charmed."
West of Portland, near Sebago Lake, lies Blacksmiths, one of Maine's newest wineries. The winery and tasting room, in an old blacksmith's home, barn, and shop in South Casco, is the brainchild of Steve Linne, 48, and David Ulrich, 47. The two left careers as wine brokers and moved to Maine from Chicago to start their own winery. Unlike Bartlett and Winterport, Blacksmiths produces wine from grapes and from fruit.
''We expected that fruit wines would be a small sideline but it's not," says Linne, the wine maker. ''People really like our blueberry wine."
Linne finds himself constantly challenged by the technical demands of wine making. Because Blacksmiths Winery uses fresh fruit for its wines, filtration is always an issue.
''We only use wild Maine blueberries," he says, ''not the cultivated high bush. Maine blueberries have lots of tiny seeds. For our blueberry wine, we have to filter it four to six times, not the two times for grape wine." Blacksmiths uses as many as 40,000 pounds of blueberries to make one year's vintage.
''We started the whole thing with old dairy tanks," Linne recalls, shaking his head at the memory. In the production room now stand four enormous stainless steel tanks and dozens of French oak casks. To meet demand from the public, restaurants, and small wine merchants in Maine and Massachusetts, Blacksmiths recently added a new bottling room. A custom-made $120,000 Italian bottling machine that can move 20 to 30 bottles a minute replaced the old manual bottler whose capacity was six to eight bottles. In 2004, Blacksmiths Winery sold 4,000 cases; the company goal is 6,000 cases a year.
Bartlett and his fellow wine makers mourn the homogenization of wines in today's global marketplace.
''All the wines are starting to taste the same," he laments. ''Everyone is going for the same common denominator because it's easier to market."
Still, in Maine, where individuality remains a hallmark, small wineries are making wines of regional, if not exactly national, distinction.
''When you go someplace, you want to eat and drink what's local," says Bartlett, who was embarking on a trip to New Zealand. ''It's more fun and interesting and it certainly adds to the experience."
Melissa Waterman is a freelance writer in Maine.
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