Saturday was a beautiful day for wine tasting. Mid seventy’s, light breezes, mostly sunny. The crowd was the largest I’ve seen in 4 years. We hit almost all the wineries this year, with very little waiting. As I attend more and more wine festivals, I’m really thankful for the number of volunteers per winery that WitW has. On to the wines!

The Good: Fiore Winery was a treat. I spent some time talking with Michael Fiore, the winemaker. Much better than some random volunteer called in for the day. His ‘06 Cab Franc was one of the best of day. This is a grape you might not know much about, but it’s a Bordeaux grape that normally is <20% in your typical Cab Sav Bordeaux-style wine. It adds a peppery, spicy flavor with medium body when mixed. Maryland and Virginia must have great growing conditions for this grape, because our winemakers produce a lot of Cab Franc varietals. I also tasted his Gelata, a dessert wine. It’s easy to make a sugary sweet dessert wine that uncritical palates enjoy, but it’s pretty special to back off the sugar and let the fruit speak. Here, apricot and honey came through beautifully. He didn’t have his prosecco at the faire - so maybe a trip is in order.

Sugarloaf Mountain was another highlight. Another tasty ‘06 Cab Franc, but two I enjoyed the most were blends. The ‘06 Comos is their premier showcase wine. I found it highly drinkable, drier than most MD wines, with a smooth finish. The wine was pretty young, showing some less blended fruit flavorings, though they claim it’s ready to drink now. I think it’s designed to be aged a bit, but I’m not sure whether time will improve it. The wine I came home with (3 bottles) was the ‘06 Circe, a different blend of the typical Bordeaux varietals. This wine has the typical MD spicy side, with good fruit and a clean finish. This is a fun wine, meant to be drunk now, without the pretense of being great. A fantastic expression of what MD wine can be.

Elk Run was advertising their sparkling wine as Champagne on their tent. I was prepared to be completely unimpressed, considering that a) savvy buyers know that champagne refers to wine from Champagne region of France, b) almost no one in the us actually riddles their wine anymore, a critical part of méthode champenoise. The only people I knew that hand riddled their wine was Schramsburg in California. Well, make that two US winemakers. While still not forgiving them for calling their sparkling wine Champagne, they do in fact use méthode champenoise. The wine was very tasty and we even purchased a bottle for consumption on site. Lots of apple, tine bubbles, crisp finish. However, they face pretty stiff competition at their price point ($25/bottle), so shop carefully.

The Bad: Let me start by pointing out that, in the past, I have purchased wines from Loew Vineyards. This years offerings left something to be desired. The Seyval Blanc ($10/bottle) is listed as “Crisp; clean; apple and pear in the bouquet”. My notes say “dry & abrasive. not corked, but off-smelling. puckers the cheeks.” This is pretty typical of the base-line MD whites. Their Cab Sauv tasted of prunes and strawberries. Can’t saw I’ve tasted prunes in my wine before, and based upon this experience, I’d like to keep it that way. The finish was terrible and left me looking for water to rinse the taste out.

Other wineries were similar. A new bad one this year was Terrapin Station. They promote a fun, fresh image where wine isn’t snooty. Unfortunately for them, their wines are just badly made. It’s box wine (in 1.5L boxes!), and frankly their stuff is pretty much undrinkable. They must have really young vines, or a poor growing season, or something, because I think it was embarrassing to try to serve those wines at any price. I hope they do better next year.

The Ugly: Ok boys and girls, lets talk seriously for a moment here. I can respect Terrapin’s offerings, because they are trying (however unsuccessfully) to use the grape varietals and produce wines that express their flavors. So they are merely ‘bad’. It’s time to talk ugly. It seems that many MD wineries, instead of owning up to terrible grapes, feel the need to mix in strange flavors to hide terrible wine. I spent some time Saturday trying to find some redeeming qualities in the flavored offerings. I could not. Some lowlights: Boordy offers their JezzBerry, a concoction made from raspberries and strawberries. I had to choke this down as some perfectly lovely older ladies were telling me how much they Absolutely Loved! it and “don’t you agree dear?”. Almost as bad was the TangoPeach. This adds peaches and a whole bunch of residual sugar to hide the awfulness. Drinkable, but why would you?

But a special place must be reserved for Solomons Island. In years past I would have classified them as merely bad, similar to Terrapin. But this year they have elevated their game and earn an indelible black mark for their mist collection. A Green Apple Riesling could maybe be forgiven. But Exotic Fruits White Zinfandel? Isn’t white zin a pretty uncritical wine to begin with? Or maybe Black Raspberry Merlot? Didn’t try it, but I can’t imagine it’s good. The one I did try was the Blueberry Pinot Noir. I wish I had a video of my face as I tried this special treat. It was awful on every level. The nose was rotten blueberry, thick with bad fruit. That pretty much previewed the taste, which as far as I could tell was designed to abuse your taste buds so much that they cannot taste anything further. The finish, once I could taste again, was god awful. Unforgivable.

So there you have it. Wine in the Woods ‘08 was a success. I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I enjoyed writing about it.