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The Florida Winery

The Florida Winery

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

It won’t take long for you to realize that we do things a little bit differently around here. We refuse to accept that wine must taste of grass, tobacco, or dirt. Around here we like our wine like we like our women and ice tea…sweet! We don’t mess around when it comes to wine either, just check out the over 50 awards and medals we’ve won in our first four years!

All talk and no walk you say? Well pony up to our tasting bar and we will let our stunning selection of highly enjoyable libations walk all over your taste buds. Relish in pure unadulterated pleasure without worrying about how your swirling the glass. Sit back, Sip, Enjoy, Relax, Repeat…responsibly of course.

The winery is where the magic happens. All of our wines are made right here in house, just steps from the beach, where you’ll find the most unique winery on earth. Beach real estate isn’t cheap, s0 we squeeze a lot of wine out of a small space: about 900 square feet! We use three 2,000-liter jacket fermentation tanks and nine 2,000-liter racking and aging tanks. Filtering is handled by our 40-plate plate & frame filter, and all the bottling is done by hand right in the front window.

It’s not a lot of room, but it’s enough for us to create the most amazing libations known to man.

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Chocolate Shop Wine

Chocolate Shop Wine

Friday, January 18, 2013

Chocolate Shop, the ultimate “Chocolate Lover’s Wine,” is a deep, ruby-red wine blended with rich, velvety chocolate.  Chocolate Shop provides you with an indulgent wine experience like no other.

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Volcano Winery

Volcano Winery

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Aloha! Wine tasting in Paradise is just a sip away at Volcano Winery. We’ve been creating unique wine and fruit blends on the southern slope of Mauna Loa Volcano on the Big Island since 1986, making us the United States’ southernmost winery.

We gather local tropical fruits like the yellow guava and the jaboticaba berry and blend them with traditional wine grapes to create local wines inspired by volcanic fire and the bounty of the island. Our location near the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park lets us make vibrant wine that captures the playful spirit of Hawaiian paradise — and our relaxed, laid-back atmosphere.

In fact, our fruit -blended wines were so unique that the federal government (BATF) had to come up with new category designations to classify them!

We’ve seen many changes in our 25+ years, but the commitment to produce special, award-winning wines made with Aloha has always remained in our hearts.

If you plan on visiting the winery, you can enjoy a tasting with one of our fun and knowledgeable staff members and even drink wine by the glass out in the picnic area. Come relax and sip into “Hawaiian time.”

We’re open every day except for Christmas, from 10 to 5:30. Aloha!

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Tieton Cider Works

Tieton Cider Works

Monday, April 2, 2012

The fruit that is used in Tieton Cider Works Cider comes from Craig and Sharon Campbell’s Harmony Orchards. This land has been in our family since the 1920s, when our grandfather homesteaded it here in Tieton, Washington. It has been farmed organically for the last 25 years by an appreciative grandson.

The orchard is perched above the confluence of the Tieton and Naches rivers at an elevation of 2000 feet, considered high for a growing region in Washington State, giving us the advantage of growing our fruit at slightly cooler temperatures. The long sunny days, cool nights and fertile soils craft exceptionally great tasting apples, pears, cherries and apricots.

As a third-generation Yakima Valley farmer with a degree in horticulture from Washington State University and 33 years’ experience in marketing produce, Craig has always been curious about the back-story: the history, production, science, and industry of food. From his unique vantage point, he has studied what consumers are looking for in an apple. Growing new varieties of trees is truly what makes Craig happy.

Ten years ago he started looking for niche apple varieties that weren’t being overproduced in the commercial market. As a result, land that was once predominantly planted with Red and Golden Delicious now has blocks of Ambrosia, Honey Crisp, Jonagold and Pinova Apples. Four years ago Craig started planting cider apples, those gnarly, inedible wild apple varieties needed to make great cider. We now have one of the larger acreages of cider apples and Perry pears in the state.

A love of land, food and drink has inspired us to make cider with the fruit we are growing at our ranch, Harmony Orchards.  We know the ciders we make are an expression of the harvest and reflective of the fruit and the place that it is grown.

We are excited to present these ciders to you. They are a blend of our own organically grown dessert apples and full-bodied traditional cider apples. Most of all we are thrilled to be involved in reinterpreting the tradition of cider making.

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Peninsula Cellars

Peninsula Cellars

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Peninsula Cellars is a family-run winery founded by the Kroupas, a pioneer family of northern Michigan cherry farmers. The winery is located on the Old Mission Peninsula in the heart of tart cherry country, just north of Traverse City, Michigan. The region lies along the 45th parallel, halfway between the north pole and the equator. This gives the region its distinct microclimate that makes it perfect for growing high-quality wine grapes.

Our philosophy toward winemaking has always been very minimalistic, allowing the regional expression of the fruit to come through. The sun, the rain, the wind, and the soil, all under the watchful eye of the grower, are what make our wines so good.

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Eden Ice Cider

Eden Ice Cider

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Our mission is to produce high quality, boutique wines from traditional and heirloom varieties of apples 100% of which are produced in Vermont.

Our customers are discerning chefs , sommeliers and wine shop owners, open-minded fine wine drinkers, sweet-wine lovers, foodies, people who love Vermont, and gift givers. We are committed to quality and integrity, to minimizing our carbon footprint and to supporting our employees, community and local economy.

Eight pounds of apples go into the making of each 375ml bottle of ice cider. Our ice ciders have won 9 ice cider gold medals and been recognized by Food & Wine, The Art of Eating, Wine Spectator, Culinate, Eatocracy, Serious Drinks, Edible Manhattan and “Martha Stewart Living Radio.”

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Chateau Chantal

Chateau Chantal

Sunday, September 25, 2011

The unlikely story of Chateau Chantal’s beginning is pretty well known in Michigan. Robert Begin worked
as a Catholic diocesan priest for 12 years in his home area of Detroit until he made a decision in 1972 to begin again, as a businessman this time, heading a construction company. His wife, Nadine, had taken a similar path by entering the Felician Sisters. After 22 years, she, too, made a decision to seek a different life.

In 1974, the two former clergy married, and followed Robert’s dream of building a European-style winery chateau.

The Begin family — Robert, Nadine and daughter Marie-Chantal — opened the doors of Chateau Chantal in 1993, upon the completion of a French-style three-room B&B, winery, and vineyard estates. The B&B now has eleven units, and the 65-acre estate on Old Mission Peninsula includes vines sprawling across rolling hills that produce grapes for the winery’s growing list of award-winning wine.

Chateau Chantal’s history began in 1983, with the formation of Begin Orchards and the purchase 60 acres of cherry orchards on the estate property. Chateau Chantal is well-known for its creative approach to fruit wines as well as the quality of its grape wines, both under the direction of Michigan native Mark Johnson, who received a degree in viticulture and enology at the Federal Research Station and Institute in Geisenheim, Germany. Johnson has been the winemaker at Chateau Chantal for nearly 20 years.

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Latah Creek Wine Cellars

Latah Creek Wine Cellars

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Mike Conway — with over 34 years of winery experience — and his wife Ellena, pair to run one of the most successful small wineries in this relatively new viticultural region in the northeast corner of Washington state. Latah Creek Wine Cellars, established in 1982 in Spokane, is one of only a few family-owned and operated wineries in Washington.

While Mike assumes the management, winemaking and vineyard tasks, Ellena takes on the accounting, fiscal, tasting room, and gift shop. In 2005, their daughter Natalie joined the family business as an assistant winemaker.

Over the past 25 years, the winery has taken hundreds of awards in local, national, and international competitions and has had numerous wines featured in Wine Spectator‘s “Annual Top 100 Selections” as well as Wine Enthusiast‘s “Annual Top 100 Selections,” often with an added note of “Best Buy.”  Latah Creek, heralded by Wine Spectator as one of the top producers of Merlot in the state of Washington.

Mike started his career as a microbiology technician for the largest winery in the United States, E&J Gallo and the nearby Franzia Brothers Winery. After spending three years as an assistant winemaker with the Parducci winery in Northern California, Mike moved to Washington to start Latah Creek and The Hogue — joint ventures with grape grower Hogue and winemaker Conway. After two years, the two operations were separated so full attention could be given to Mike and Ellena’s own winery: Latah Creek.

The winery produces about 17,000 cases annually. Roughly 10 percent of that total consists of red wines while another 10 percent is devoted exclusively to Chardonnay. Sixty percent is comprised of their two most popular varieties: Riesling and Huckleberry d’Latah. The remaining 20 percent includes smaller lots of Muscat Canelli, Moscato d’Latah, and proprietary blends of Maywine, Spokane Blush and their newest wine, Natalie’s Nectar.

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Montezuma Winery

Montezuma Winery

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

For more than thirty years, George Martin had been a bee keeper. George, along with wife, Virginia and son Ed, maintained and built a honey production and pollination business containing 2,000 hives in Maine, New York, Florida and South Carolina.

With dropping honey prices and increasing costs, the family, now with son Bill, began niche marketing their honey in 1998. Bill had always dabbled in mead making and home brewing and the next year The Martin Family applied for a farm winery license, and commercial production of honey wine began. Soon after, Martin’s Honey Farm and Meadery in Sterling, New York was born.

In 2001, the Martins’ realized the importance of their location in the fruit belt of New York and decided to try their hand at making fruit wines.

The concept of Montezuma Winery was then formed. Montezuma Winery quickly took off, so much so that we moved the production facilities and gift shop to our 14,000 square foot building in Seneca Falls. Although we do produce high quality grape wines, the focus is fruit and honey wines.

Both Montezuma Winery and Martin’s Honey Farm and Meadery have claimed numerous awards including Gold, Double Gold, Best of Class, Best Fruit Wine, and Commercial Mead Champion. Our wine list offers a range from dry to sweet and includes Riesling, Merlot, Blueberry, Rhubarb and our most popular, Cranberry Bog.

The Martin family efforts continue to create and enhance a unique product line, quality products, and an experience that is memorable and enjoyable for their loyal customers. Stop by and enjoy the award-winning wines, family atmosphere, and extensive gift shop at Montezuma Winery!!

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Fabbioli Cellars

Fabbioli Cellars

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Fabbioli Cellars is a business and a concept that has been in the works for almost 20 years. When we moved to California in 1987, we had in the back of our minds the idea that we could find a piece of land and grow some grapes. It sure sounded easy back then! Eventually, we knew that the idea would not work for us in California, but our time was well spent gaining the knowledge, skills and confidence to make it happen in Virginia.

In early 2000, Colleen was driving young Sammy around to get him to settle down and stumbled into a 25-acre parcel in the southern Lucketts area, just north of Leesburg in rural Loudoun County. The planting began in 2001.

At Fabbioli Cellars, we focus on growing and making high-quality wines using traditional methods and 21st-century knowledge, all while utilizing sustainable agricultural practices.

 

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