Winery visit - Adam's Vineyards

Over the weekend I made my way down to Raleigh, NC to visit my girlfriend and used the opportunity to visit a North Carolina winery.  Just about 40 minutes outside of the city there is this little family owned winery, called Adam's Vineyard.  The vineyard is right off the highway with the first thing seen the family home on the right and the warehouse where all the wine making process occurs on the left. Centered below, you can see the field where the grapes grow and you can get a sense for how small this place is.

The Adams family house

Where it all happens

Vines

Not the fanciest place

The blue building happened to be where the wine making and business is done.  Unfortunately, by the time we got there the tours had already been completed for the day but one of the winemakers, Quincy, the founder of the vineyard's son, was sitting around along with his Mother.  They were very down to earth, very friendly - basically the definition of southern hospitality without any of the snootiness normally associated with vineyards.  The son had graduated from NC State a few years ago, spoke with a strong country draw, and wore just a normal t-shirt with running shoes.  He looked like the stereotypical farmer and his produce just happened to be grapes.  Very personable and obviously proud of the product he and his family made, I got to talking with him about their vineyard, how they made their wine, and what the special challenges of making wine in Raleigh are. 

Muscadine Heritage Wine Trail

The first thing we talked about was the grape they use.  They do not use vitis vinifera because the climate is too hot and humid for the vine to be successful.  Quincy emphasized that it is mainly the temperature as to why vinifera wouldn't grow and said that the native species, the Muscadine grape, is the only type of grape that grows in that climate.  The map to the right shows the "Muscadine Heritage Wine Trail" and is a map of 4 vineyards all within 40 miles of each other, including Adams, that grow the Muscadine grape.  If you visit all four within 6 months you actually get a t-shit that says you completed the wine trail and would be easy to do if I lived in the Raleigh area.  All four of these vineyards are small and family owned and its almost like they make up their own, very spread out neighborhood.  It was neat to see all those little vineyards working with each other in their wine making endeavors.

Health benefits, including high levels of reservatrol

More health benefits and Quincy's business card

But back to the grape itself, the most important thing to remember is how to pronounce it.  I made the mistake of saying "Mus - ca - DEEN" which is apparently how northerners frequently pronounce the grape.  Instead of saying "DEEN" at the end you have to say "DINE".  After some good-natured ribbing from my girlfriend and the vintner I will not make that mistake again.  However you say it, the grape is marketed as "Nature's Healthiest Grape" because it has high levels of antioxidants, namely reservatrol.  The two pamphlets on the right describe some of the health benefits but Quincy went on and on about the reservatrol.  According to him, it is because of the reservatrol in the grapes that his father decided to start the vineyard in the first place.  He said that red grapes like the Merlot grape have 1% reservatrol in them and that is considered healthy but the Muscadine grape produces wines with 43% reservatrol. That is a shocking number that does seem to indicate the grape is pretty healthy.  Apparently Dr. Oz from TV ranked the healthiest fruits in the world and the blueberry, often times pointed to as a super fruit, came in at eighth.  The Muscadine grape? Second.  So it seems there is something to the health benefits of this grape.

Where the Muscadine came from

As I said earlier, this grape is native to North Carolina and thus does particularly well in the North Carolina climate.  When I asked more about the climate, I referenced that wine making is fairly new to our country, especially the east coast, but Quincy corrected me.  He said that successful wine making has been going on in North Carolina for centuries, just not with the vinifera.  "The Mother Vine" is the oldest cultivated vine in America and is the vine from which all the Muscadine vines harvested come from.  Located on Roanoke Island, the vine itself looks quite impressive judging by this post card he gave me.  The cool thing is all his vines come straight from this plant, reinforcing the lesson from class that wine vines are cloned from one another instead of allowed to reproduce on their own.  This grape thrives in hot summer weather and grows naturally all the way down to Florida.  Whereas the vinfera can be temperamental at times, the Muscadine is very hearty.  Last summer was very hot and very dry in Raleigh and the vines in their vineyard still pumped out 6 tons of grapes per acre.  That is a typical yield whether its a good season or a bad season as last year was.  Its just a very consistent grape which is any wine maker's dream.  6 tons may seem like a high number but when I asked if that amount of harvest effects the quality of the grape he said it did not.  Minimal pruning is needed because the vine can produce large amounts of grapes and keep the quality the same.  Something that is different about the vines this year is that, because of the abnormally warm winter, all the vines are already blossoming.  This doesn't normally happen this early and probably signifies an earlier harvest than what is normal.  August is the typical time the grapes are harvested but this early bloom is keeping the Adams winery on alert that they may have to harvest earlier this year.

Eventually, we got to talking about how the grape is made into wine.  Despite its thick skins and high levels of reservatrol, the grape produces a light and fruity wine so too much oak covers up much of the grape's flavor.  Because of this, Adams uses stainless steel vats to ferment the wine in.  They make a wide array of wines, both red and white, sweet, semi-sweet, and dry.  Talking about wine finally, Quincy recommended us to start the tasting portion of our visit while we talked about the wine making process.

Adams wines available for tastings

At this point of the year they were out of many of their wines, especially the dry ones, but they still had 10 different types to choose from.  Out of those 10, we got to pick the eight we wanted to taste.  I enjoy a dry wine so I picked both dry options while trying to eliminate some of the sweet options while my girlfriend picked as many sweet options as she could.  Here is a picture of her in between tastings.

Because she is much better looking than me...

 As for the wines themselves, I started with their Ellis Red Reserve which is a dry wine.  Quincy claimed it has no residual sugar but it still tasted very sweet to me.  Light in color for a red, the wine smelled very different from wines I'm used to drinking.  He wasn't kidding when he said the Muscadine produces a fruity wine.  The wine itself almost tasted like a Capri-Sun with a kick.  I couldn't tell if the wine tasted a little hot at 12% alcohol by volume or if it had a tart, grapefruit like flavor.  In the picture below you can get a sense of how light in color the wine was.  It looks like a rose but is actually classified as a red.  I told Quincy I thought it tasted sweet and he gave me a surprised look and told me to watch out for the sweet wines, then.

Ellis Red Reserve

Scarlet Oak

 The next wine I tried was the only one of the bunch that was oaked.  I asked how they oaked it and Quincy told me they use wood chips in a bag and drop it in the wine, but for no more than 10 hours.  Aside from saving money on the cost of barrels, the Muscadine grape produces a wine that is too light and fruity to handle too much oak.  Sitting in a barrel would cover up all the grape flavor and leave a wine overpowered by oak.  Even with the small amount of time the Scarlet Oak was oaked, you could get a real sense of the oak.  The sweetness of the Ellis Red Reserve was replaced by more bitter oak flavors.  I think the best way I can describe the flavor would be tobacco but I don't know if that is quite right. Much more complex than any of the other wines I tasted, I think I enjoyed this one the most.  The cost of this wine was higher at $16 and that must be because the oak increases the price of production.  Even with that, it is the wine there I was most likely to buy.

Moving on from the dry wines, we moved to the semi-sweet wines.  I started out with the Blush Plantation Reserve and my instant reaction was, WOW that is sweet.  It was the first wine chilled of the group and all the wines from here on out were that way.  I forgot to take a picture of it, probably because I did not like it so much.  I was just overpowered by the sweetness.

Papa Johnny's White Bliss

The next semi-sweet wine I enjoyed more, though.  As seen in the picture to the left, the Papa Johnny's White Bliss won a gold medal at the North Carolina State Fair and was the wine Quincy was sipping as I walked into the tasting room.  This was the first wine he had worked on and it won the medal so it was an obvious source of pride for Quincy.  Still pretty sweet for my tastes, it was better than the last one.  The sugar wasn't enough to cover up too much of the taste and this was the wine that showed off the greatest amount of true Muscadine flavor.  Very aromatic, it was just a good tasting, simple wine.  It was one of the wines my girlfriend and I brought back.

The next wine I also forgot to take a picture of but it was a strange one because, despite being a red wine, was still served chilled.  I was told the sweet and semi-sweet wines they make are all best chilled because the sugar can actually possess a bitter taste room temperature.  Quincy compared it to drinking a Coca-Cola at room temperature vs. chilled.  So it was and tasted just like the first red I had, just sweeter.  That is the one thing about these wines.  There really wasn't a whole lot of variation in taste outside of the oaked wine.  It got to the point where, whether red or white, the only real difference in taste was the sweetness level.  By this point in the tasting, I was a little put off by the lack of variation and the sweetness but Quincy and his family were very friendly so I continued the tasting.

Revolution Red Reserve

The Revolution Red Reserve brought sweet wine to a whole new level.  I would be interested to see if the amount of sugar in this wine compared to the amount of sugar in soda because the sweetness was so overpowering.  My girlfriend enjoyed this wine because of that fact but I couldn't find the flavor of it over the sweetness.  I just feel like this wine would give me a headache if I had more than a glass or two.  I understand why it is popular but it certainly is not for me.

The final sweet wine I tasted was the Clara Breeze.  Like the Papa Johnny's, it had a very distinct muscadine smell to it.  Unlike the Papa Johnny's, I could only taste the sugar in it. Not much else to say about it other than I was ready to go back to the dry wines.

Clara Breeze

 The last wine I tasted was where things got interesting.  Because the vinifera does not grow in Raleigh, the vintners experiment with different types of fruit to make their wine.  My girlfriend tried peach wine and I tried the apple wine, as recommended by Quincy.  It smelled and tasted just like a tart apple cider and was surprisingly good.  With just a bit of a bite at the end, I really enjoyed this wine and grabbed three different bottles for $15 on my out.  It was my first experience with fruit wine and, unlike the sweet wines, was not overpowering with the level of sweetness. Whether or not it is a good idea, it is definitely something I could sit down with a drink a lot of.

Apple Reserve

There are apparently two more white wines they make that are dry that come out in a few months.  I assume allowing the wines to ferment completely and leave no residual sugar is keeping the wines from being ready by now but I would be interested to taste how the dry whites compare to the dry reds.  That could be an interesting little taste test.

 Before checking out, I asked Quincy if we could wander around the vineyard for a while because we missed the tour.  He said to go ahead and wander away and it was cool to see the vines with tiny green leaves just starting to grow.  I was surprised with how small the vines themselves are as they wrap around the wire and fencing.  For some reason I was picturing a larger vine but I guess not.  In the pictures below you can see all this and, being my first trip to a vineyard, I was impressed.  Overall, my impression of the muscadine grape is that it certainly has a distinctive taste.  I definitely prefer the vinifera as a wine making grape as the sweet, juice box like taste of the muscadine grape quickly gets old.  I would prefer my next winery visit to be a place that grows a more traditional grape.  With that being said, my overall impression of Adam's Vineyards was favorable and I was most impressed with how open and nice the Adams family was.  A neat little get away in the farms and small towns just outside of Raleigh, I hope all vineyards have the same homey atmosphere and friendly people running them.

In front of the vines

In front of the vines

Just beginning to grow leaves