Some pinning hopes on grapes after tobacco buyout dries up

Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2007

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff Photo by Reid Silverman Joe Wood stands in the vineyard that he hopes will become a new cash crop on a farm where tobacco once was king. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

There was no doubt they would have to find another way to work Forrest Hall Farm, to use the land in Mechanicsville that had been home to Joe’s grandparents and for generations had produced tobacco to sustain the Wood family.

So they tried hay, but they couldn’t grow the kind of hay that horse owners want to buy.

Their next venture was more successful — corn mazes. Every year, they form a maze by cutting down the corn in a pattern and invite the public to walk through the maze.

Now another alternative to tobacco has come onto the scene. Southern Maryland farmers are growing grapes, and the St. Mary’s County commissioners recently approved $500,000 in funding for a winery in Leonardtown that would allow farmers to join a cooperative, first selling the grapes to the winery and then profiting from the wines the grapes create.

The Port of Leonardtown Winery is slated to start production in September 2008 if all goes well, giving local farmers a local place to take their product. It will include destemmers, a wine press, vats and bottling equipment. The winery will be housed in a former state garage building.

Christine Bergmark, executive director of the Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission, said she thinks grapes are a viable farming product for Southern Maryland, but whether they will replace tobacco as a moneymaker for farmers ‘‘is another question,” she said.

‘‘It’s been very viable in the Northern Neck of Virginia,” Bergmark said. ‘‘There are award-winning vines being produced in the Northern Neck. ... We have the capability to become a great” source of wine.

The Port of Leonardtown is a step in that direction.

The agricultural commission offered a grant program in the last few years to help farmers get the help they need to start a vineyard.

‘‘Having a grant is not just about the money. We’re also bringing down experts to teach” about the way grapes are grown and what it takes to accommodate the vines, Bergmark said.

A lot to learn

Joe Wood know a lot about growing, treating and selling tobacco.

But start talking grape vines and things can get fuzzy. Wood often says, ‘‘We don’t know yet.” He’s not sure whether slower-growing vines, which create more clusters of grapes, could mean problems in the long run. He’s not sure how much he should cut back the vines in the fall, when the grapes have been harvested and it’s time to get ready for winter dormancy.

‘‘There’s a lot we’ve got to learn about grapes,” Wood said. ‘‘My entire life I grew up on tobacco. It’s taking a bit of getting used to.”

Wood was standing in the middle of his vineyard on a hot morning with the sun beating down on grape vines that were supported by long wires and wooden posts. The bunches of grapes were in various stages of ripeness, ranging from a pastel green to a faded lavender.

The wooden posts were his own design, and he’s been told he’ll need to replace them with steel posts that can last about 20 years. It will be an additional investment added to the money he has already sunk into the five-acre vineyard.

The first of his vines were planted about three years ago, and if not for this summer’s drought that made it hard to grow just about anything, Wood thinks he would have had a good crop.

His initial investment was several thousand dollars. After the purchase of about 700 vines, trellises, wire and posts came the various chemicals to get rid of Japanese beetles and fungi that could grow on the plants.

Local vineyards, local wine

A couple of years after farmers opted for the state tobacco buyout, Wood, as president of the St. Mary’s County Farm Bureau, and other farmers were asked county government could do to help them keep farming.

Among the Ideas were a livestock slaughtering facility. ‘‘We couldn’t generate enough interest to do it,” Wood said. Plus, many people wouldn’t want such a facility near their own homes.

‘‘Everything came back around to grapes.” The idea took hold and eventually turned into creating a Southern Maryland winery.

William Gordon Gemeny of Dowell, who this year more than 600 vines on a farm in southern Prince George’s County, said the winery will give farmers a reason to catch onto growing grapes.

‘‘The Port of Leonardtown is a source to sell your grapes. That’s what it’s all about,” he said. ‘‘It doesn’t do any good to raise grapes unless you have a place to sell them.”

Gemeny said the winery can be a draw for tourism, as well. ‘‘It can provide an outlet to educate people on the making of wine.”

New grower’s point of view

James Horstkamp is not a farmer; he’s a home builder. But he lives in the Maddox area of Chaptico, and he’s been thinking for a while about what he might do with his property. Much of it is leased out for soybeans, but Horstkamp wanted to see what he could do with a section of it.

The possibility of getting a grant to help finance a new vineyard was enough to convince him that grapes might be an interesting way to go.

With help from the St. Mary’s County Cooperative Extension Office of the University of Maryland, Horstkamp decided to dedicate an acre to grapes. It didn’t take him long to realize just how much work it was going to be.

‘‘We had to break up the soil and break up the hardpan, and we wanted sufficient drainage,” he said. He got a soil analysis done to see what he would have to do to make the earth suitable for growing grapes, and then he got started. With a few of his friends, he spent about two weeks driving posts and constructed a trellis at a cost of about $3,000. It took just one day to plant the vines using an auger. Now he spends about a day each week training the vines and spraying them for insects and fungus. ‘‘The first main goal is to have the grapes reach the first wire,” he said. ‘‘The goal is root establishment.”

The second year is about getting the vines in the right place on the trellis. That year means a lot of pruning of leaves to give the grapes the right amount of sunlight.

Ben Beale said the lesson Horstkamp has learned is an important one for people who are considering a vineyard. Beale is an extension educator for Cooperative Extension in St. Mary’s County, and said research is key to a successful crop. ‘‘I recommend new growers to visit existing operations so they can understand how intensive it is in terms of management and the labor requirement,” he said. ‘‘They need to get their hands in the dirt, get their hands in the vines so they understand the reality of a vineyard.”

Horstkamp said the draw for wine made in Leonardtown will be less about the wine itself and more about the winery. ‘‘The reason people buy wine from here is because they are from here,” he said. ‘‘That’s the advantage of a winery.”

For Horstkamp, the labor has been about the experience of truly farming. ‘‘I’m surrounded by farms, and I’m all for preserving farms. I wanted to be part of the experience. When the matching grant came up, it was the impetus. I knew I was going to be in it with a lot of other new people. That’s why I got into it.”

Smashing good time

Pat Isles’ grandparents made wine when he was a kid, but he didn’t pay it much attention then. When he got older, he decided to start growing a few grapes at his Lusby home. So he started with eight grape vines, and the research began.

Isles has a crusher and press for the grapes, as well as quite a bit of other equipment. He is able to process the grapes, ferment them, age them and bottle them at his home.

He has moved his expertise from his back yard to Summerseat Farm in Mechanicsville. The farm was purchased and turned into a nonprofit about 10 years ago, and the new ownership decided to make use of the vineyard that was already there. Isles had his work cut out for him, but he has turned the vineyard into a producer of 50 to 80 gallons of wine each year. ‘‘The vineyard isn’t big enough to produce a substantial volume,” he said, but he plans to make the grapes part of the Port of Leonardtown’s offering.

Right now, Isles and others at Summerseat handpick the grapes from the vineyard. ‘‘If we’re doing white wine, we usually will crush and piece the grapes, which extracts the stem,” he said. ‘‘You’re left with crushed grape berries. The juice is settled 24 hours or so to let some of the solid settle out.”

Then, the juice is fermented for four to six weeks.

For red grapes, the berries are allowed to ferment on the stem for four to 10 days, Isles said. Then the juice is pressed off. ‘‘That extracts a lot of the color and flavor compounds common with red wines.”

Sometimes, Isles lets his grapes sit on oak chips. He might filter the wine, or he might not. He might age the bottled wine for a few months or two years. ‘‘For white, I can usually have a bottle drinkable in about a year,” he said. ‘‘Some wines need more time in the bottle for the flavor compounds to mature.”

E-mail Carrie Lovejoy at clovejoy@somdnews.com.