Wine & Words

 We get a lot of people in the stores who ask for “local wine.” I explain that the only really local wine, meaning made from grapes grown here in Eastern North Carolina, is from the native Muscadine grape and that it’s very sweet and has a taste unlike any kind of wine you’ve ever had…unless you grew up down here, in which case it reminds you of the fat grapes your granddaddy grew on a trellis in the back yard. Then I try to move them on to “real” wine that is made in North Carolina’s Yadkin Valley. If they liked the sound of my “granddaddy” description of the Muscadine, however, I showed them the wines we used to carry from Bennett Vineyard, just across the Pamlico River in Edwards, NC. Recently, however, I stopped carrying the Bennett wines because they just weren’t well made. A couple of bottle popped their corks while sitting on the shelf and a number of bottles had some kind of nasty green sediment in the bottom.

So I was excited when Mary told me Jack Bishop from Vineyards on the Scuppernong in Columbia, NC had stopped by the Washington store and left samples. Now, I have to confess that neither Mary nor I really like Muscadine wine. Neither of us grew up in the South with fat, sweet grapes from the farm. But, then, there are a number of styles of wine that are not my personal favorite, but I have to be able to taste and evaluate them for our customers. Mary’s tasting with Jack Bishop led her to the conclusion that these are well made wines, and she passed the samples on to me for my evaluation.
I was surprised. These are well made wines. Some of the varieties have a graph on the back of the bottle that runs from “Dry” to “Sweet,” with a little pointer indicating where that wine falls on the spectrum. Now you might not think that the big, fat, sweet Scuppernong grapes could make a dry wine, but in the hands of a capable wine maker, there’s no reason why the grape sugars can’t all be fermented into alcohol. All of these wines hold a consistent 12% alcohol level, respectable without being overpowering, and allowing them to be good food wines. And the ones marked “Dry” are actually dry, without that cloying sweetness I usually associate with Muscadine.

Tuesday morning I spent about an hour on the phone with Grace Bishop and heard about how she is a real estate broker and husband Jack is a developer, and they were living in Manteo, and development in the “Inner Banks” was just getting ready to boom, so they bought 300 acres along the Scuppernong River just outside of Columbia. I was amazed at how much their story sounded like Yvonne’s and mine. Anyway, development didn’t boom, but they loved their new land and their adopted little town so much that they decided to do something else there. Some local people said, “Why not grow grapes? That’s historically what this land was used for.” Indeed, the Scuppernong River gives its name to one variety of Muscadine that was first mentioned as a "white grape" in a written logbook by the Florentine explorer Giovanni de Verrazzano while exploring the Cape Fear River Valley in 1524. And the men Sir Walter Raleigh sent to explore this coast, captains Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, sailed right up the Scuppernong (possibly as far as present day Columbia) on their 1584 voyage of exploration and discovered "Grapes of such greatness, yet wild, as France, Spain, nor Italy hath no greater.”

Back to the 21st Century, where Grace and Jack Bishop planted 25 acres to Muscadine grapes (10 acres for the fresh grape market and 15 for winemaking) and contracted with consulting winemaker Thomas J. Payette (Vineyard & Winery Management Magazine’s “Winemaker of the Year” in 1999) to start making and bottling quality Muscadine/ Scuppernong wine.  So Vineyards on the Scuppernong was born.
They’re committed to maintaining a high level of quality by making no more than 6,000 cases a year (compared to the more than 250,000 cases pumped out each year by the ubiquitous Duplin Winery). Jack and Grace have a wine shop in Columbia where they show their wines, but these wines are not available in local grocery stores. In fact, the Wine & Words stores will be the only places in Beaufort County where you can get these well-made local wines.

I’ve decided to start with three of their wines, the ones that are their best sellers. If these meet with a good response from our Wine & Words customers, we’ll get additional varieties. The starters (along with the Bishops’ descriptions) are:

Somerset
This dry white wine has the aromas of carefully selected Muscadine grapes. It's clean and crisp finish is perfectly paired with fish or poultry dishes.
Tyrrell:
This dry red wine is from Tyrrell County's finest Noble variety of Muscadine grapes. It pairs perfectly with any beef or lamb dishes and is enjoyed by those who love a full-bodied wine.
Simply Scuppernong:
This sweet white Muscadine wine will make you think back to the days you stood in the vineyard and picked those sweet grapes yourself as a child. Perfect for just sipping on the porch in the evening or pairs perfectly with spicy Asian food.
The wines are best served chilled.
We’ll be offering samples of these wines this week at both Wine & Words stores and I’ll add two of them to the “By the Glass” list at the Back Bay Café. We are proud to be supporting quality winemaking in North Carolina’s “Inner Banks.”