•• Vermont Grapes, Vermont Wine: Blossom to Bottle ••

County's first winery finding its niche

By Kathryn Flagg-Addison Independent

07-10-08

NEW HAVEN — As vintners go, Chris Granstrom is an unassuming fellow — mild-mannered and friendly, the New Haven strawberry-grower-turned-winemaker channels not Napa Valley arrogance so much as salt of the earth good nature.

“It has this kind of aura of mysterious knowledge and snobbishness,” said Granstrom of winemaking, standing in a cool room among the silver vats where his first large batch of wine fermented this winter. “I think that’s all overblown. I mean, it’s like a lot of things: the more you take the time just to pay attention and learn, the more you understand about it, the more fun and satisfying it is.

“All you really have to know is if it tastes good to you,” he laughed.

Granstrom and his wife, Michaela, celebrate the grand opening of Addison County’s first winery, Lincoln Peak Vineyard, this weekend. The event is the culmination of efforts that took root six years ago, when Granstrom planted his first grapes.

Now, he grows 12 acres of vines — and runs a large nursery operation providing plants to other growers interested in new varieties of northern grapes.

“Being in the nursery business, I see a lot of people getting started, and a lot of people come to it through either a love of wine, or an overly romanticized notion of what the whole enterprise is like,” said Granstrom. “I came to it from a different approach, which was just farming, and growing things.”

When he heard about new breeds of grapes being developed by the University of Minnesota and the late private breeder Elmer Swenson, of Wisconsin, Granstrom’s interest was peaked. The new varieties were designed to survive harsh northern winters — and unlike Concord grapes, one of the few types grown previously in New England, these new grapes made for excellent wine.

“I just had a feeling that this was going to catch on in northern areas and whoever was out front and able to supply plants to people who wanted to get into it would be in a good position as far as a business enterprise,” Granstrom said.

So Granstrom — who, along with his wife, had grown strawberries and apples in the Champlain Valley for two decades — ordered his vines, and gave the operation a go. He now has around 25 varieties growing on his land, though now that he’s discovered his favorites he expects the number of varieties to shrink a bit.

The business did catch on. Granstrom still ships more vines out to the upper Midwest, where the northern vineyards have taken root more quickly than in the Northeast. But he has a hunch that it won’t be long before Vermont — which currently only has 14 wineries, only half of which press wine from grapes — similarly embraces the new grape varieties.

A flourishing business enterprise in its own right, the nursery also gave Lincoln Peak the flexibility to let their vines reach maturity. Last year’s crop of grapes is the first Granstrom and his wife fermented and bottled for retail purposes — and Lincoln Peak now holds the distinction of being the only winery in Vermont to make its wines using only the grapes grown in their own vineyards.

The retail operation got an additional boost last year when Granstrom received a U.S. Department of Agriculture Value Added Producer Grant (VAPG). The VAPG grants are intended to make agricultural businesses more profitable by helping them prepare their products for direct retail sales or by enabling them to specialize to a greater degree.

The program is perfect, Granstrom said, for producers like dairy farmers who might be interested in turning their milk into cheese — or, in his case, vineyard owners who would rather try their own hand at winemaking than sell their grapes in bulk.

As a vintner he is almost entirely self-taught. Granstrom said he read books, attended seminars and weighed the advice of a Quebecois wine consultant — but mostly, he said, it was a process of trial and error. The result? Lincoln Peak produced around 900 cases of wine this year — nearly 11,000 individual bottles.

With another large swath of vines set to reach maturity for the fall harvest, Granstrom expects Lincoln Peak will more than double that output next year.

The winery touts four varieties — a red, two whites and a rosé, which Granstrom said has proven particularly popular with summertime customers. So far, he said, the response from the winery’s earliest customers has been complimentary.

“Just judging from the very positive response that the wines have gotten so far, I’m feeling pretty good,” said Granstrom. “I think we’re going to find a niche as a new business here.”

Plus, his products have already struck a chord with consumers excited about supporting local producers.

“I have to tell you, five years ago when we started this, this whole local foods movement was barely starting, and it really wasn’t something that I really saw coming,” Granstrom said. “Now that it’s so much in the vogue, the fact that we’re here and producing a truly local product — it seems like a lucky stroke of timing for us.”

But proximity is no substitute for quality, he said — and Granstrom is proud of his grapes.

“The real quality of the wine is determined by the grapes themselves,” he said. “We’re very meticulous about really caring for the vines.”

Granstrom is already excited about next year’s crop of grapes. He’s looking forward to testing new techniques — including whole cluster pressing, a technique employed in the making of upscale white wines — and tinkering with his blends.

After all, for the landmark local vineyard, winemaking is as much an exercise in experimentation as it is in business savvy — one that the Granstrom family turned winemaking clan has embraced with gusto.

As an afternoon thunderstorm rolled in — amid Granstrom’s assurances that his hardy little grapes are immune to such occasional bouts of Vermont summertime weather — Granstrom’s youngest daughter, Maren, strolled into the winery looking flushed and happy. She’d been planting flowers lining the path to the winery’s front room in preparation for the grand opening festivities.

The 16-year-old Mount Abraham student recently returned from a five-month exchange to Argentina, Granstrom explained.

But she’s excited to be at work on the vineyard again, she said.

“It’s a lot of fun,” she said. “It’s just fascinating.”

Addison County’s first winery has been selling their wines for about three weeks now — but Lincoln Peak, which takes its name from the view from the vineyards, celebrates its grand opening on Saturday. The event will include live music from 2 p.m. until 5 p.m. and visits from local cheese makers.

The winery’s hours for the rest of the summer are Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from noon until 5 p.m. The vineyard is located at 262 River Road in New Haven, just off of Route 7.

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