Vine and dandy - Westfair Communications

After DiGrazia Vineyards beat out 26 other wineries last month for top honors at the Northeast”™s largest agricultural fair, Dr. Paul Digrazia believes more connoisseurs will be beating a path to his Brookfield winery and others on the Connecticut Wine Trail.

After all, the experts are just wild about “Wild Blue” these days.
DiGrazia planted his vineyard in 1978 and began selling wine in 1984, seeking to prove that quality wines can be produced in Connecticut while also exploring vintages with superior antioxidant qualities, which research has shown to be beneficial in countering the effects of aging.

“When we first got started, the world said you can”™t make wine in Connecticut,” DiGrazia said.

That sentiment was squashed last week at the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield, Mass., where judges toasted DiGrazia”™s “Wild Blue” blueberry wine as best of 155 vintages entered in the competition, beating out more traditional white wines from Newport Vineyards in Rhode Island and Hazlitt 1852 Vineyards in New York”™s Finger Lakes region, among others.

DiGrazia was not the only local vineyard to grab gold at “The Big E” ”“ Shelton”™s Philip Jamison Jones Winery returned home with three medals, including gold for its Black Currant Bouquet dessert wine.

Winemaker Jamie Jones was inspired to pursue winemaking while a student at Cornell University”™s College of Agriculture and Food Science, which he attended to prepare himself to run the Jones Family Farm in Shelton.

At about the time David Hazlitt began Hazlitt 1852 Vineyards not far from where Jamie Jones went to college, family patriarch Philip Jones scratched out a farm in Shelton”™s White Hills ”“ the main difference being that the “whites” he produced were of the dairy variety.

At the time, the elder Jones likely did not realize that the farm”™s deep, well-drained soil and southwest exposure on Pumpkinseed Hill were ideal for hardy grapes prized today in upstate New York, such as Cayuga Whites and Vidal Blancs.

Jamie Jones saw it, and four years ago convinced his family to set aside an acre from its normal use growing Christmas trees, pumpkins and berries; since then, the vineyard has crept up to 5 acres.

Even as the oenophile in Jamie Jones craves the art of winemaking, the businessman values the diverse revenue stream it brings into the farm. In an expanded wine-tasting room in a one-time cow barn last week, visitors sipped Jones Winery”™s offerings even as a cashier packed a few of the 3,000 cases of wine the vineyard expects to sell this year.

Jones also notes the seasonal nature of most of the farm”™s mainstay Christmas trees, whose sales number 10,000 annually.

“Part of what intrigued me about the wine business was the shelf life,” Jones said. “If a tree is not sold by Dec. 25, it”™s on the compost heap.”

Jones said the winery might never have gotten off the ground without early guidance from DiGrazio. His one-time mentor counters that he offers ready advice for the hobbyist thinking about mounting his or her first trellis ”“ keep the day job.

“What I was told is that it would take 20 years to break even,” said DiGrazia. “What I learned is that in fact it takes 30 years to break even. There has to be a love.”

Jones gets the commitment, recounting the last time he and wife Christiana took a break to get away from it all last January.

“What do we do on vacation?” Jones said. “We got to Sonoma for a week.”

As pickers spread out across Pumpkinseed Hill last week to begin plucking the grape harvest that Jones will transform into future wines, DiGrazio is hard at work as well ”“ last week he set about bottling more than 100 bottles of port.

He thinks the vintages will win renown down the trail.

“I think we are onto something here,” DiGrazio said. “I think we are going to make one of the finest ports around.”