Larry said one of most important
things that people who don’t care
for wine need to understand is that
it isn’t necessarily sulfi tes that give them an
adverse reaction. It is usually the additives
and preservatives in mainstream wines that
react poorly with a person’s chemistry.
“When someone says they don’t drink wine
because of the sulfi tes, I ask them if they
have the same symptoms, the headaches
and the rashes, when they eat French fries …
because there are far more sulfi tes in French
fries than in wine.”
In fact, many processed and preserved
foods, such as deli meat, canned soups,
dried fruits and grocery store jams and jellies
have more sulfi tes than a good bottle of
wine.
Lenore said there are eight generations of
Floridians in their family: They know the land
well. When asked why they decided to start a
wine business, Lenore had a simple answer.
“We knew wines weren’t being made the
way they were supposed to be made,” she
said.
Larry agreed. “That’s a true statement. The
wines you have access to as a consumer
today, are nowhere near what you should
expect in a bottle of wine,” he said. “They
are made from juices and concentrates,
primarily. The ones we make here are really
the wines of our ancestors. Everything we
make is fresh, everything is seasonal. I don’t
think any other winery in the state, or in the
country for that matter, can say that.”
They learned the process of wine-making
the same way our ancestors did … by trial
72 GASPARILLA MAGAZINE • September/October • 2021
and error. Winemaking is an art, Larry said,
not a science. If you put yourself in the
mindset of our ancestors throughout the last
8,500 years that wine has been made. They
fi gured out a long time ago that winemaking
has a purpose, and it isn’t to enrich a handful
of people or corporations. Wine was made
to store the harvest. With no means of
refrigeration, what wasn’t consumed of a
harvest rotted on the vine. Our ancestors
developed this process for that reason – to
preserve a harvest, and to ensure that their
future generations could enjoy that same
harvest.
“It’s always fresh, captured in a single
place and moment in time. It isn’t sourced
from this third-world country and that thirdworld
country, brought in and stirred, then
matched with a color chart. Every single
bottle we have here captures the essence of
a single harvest. All we have done today is
to extend that into our present time. It’s not
a complicated process, but you have to start
with the knowledge that there is a reason for
winemaking.”
Know What’s in Your Wine
The Woodhams have learned the best way to
insulate their “wine cave” the natural way – with vines
and other foliage.