Mother Nature sits at our table,” Larry said.
“The colors of our wines will change from
season to season, harvest to harvest. The
colors of real wines come from the skins of
the fruit,
not from a
color chart.
When you
think about
the wine
you’ve been
buying,
when was
the last time
the color of
your wine
ever changed? I can tell you it never has. If
we sell out of something, there is no more
until the next harvest. We don’t just order
more juices and concentrates.”
Larry said the four words you need to look
for on your wine bottle label are “grown,”
“produced,” “vinted” and “bottled.”
“We have to comply with federal law,”
Larry explained. “That label can’t be on that
bottle unless it’s truthful. Real wineries grow
stuff, and it’s right on the label. The
factories have to tell you too, but their
description is on the back side, in tiny
print. There they tell you how they
make their wine. Mostly you’ll see
“produced and bottled” or “vinted
and bottled.” The worst ones just say
“bottled.” That means they bring wine
in from other facilities and simply put
their label on the bottles. As far as
what vinted means, it just means it was aged
there. For factories, that requirement may
only be 30 minutes. For a real vineyard, it’s at
least a year.”
On the Bunker Hill Vineyard wines,
you often see the words “natural” and
“unstrained.” These are words you rarely, if
ever, see on a mainstream wine.
“If it doesn’t say it is grown at that vineyard,
it is outsourced,” Larry said. “They take the
juices and concentrates that they buy; they
stir them up, they match them with a color
chart, and they strain all the fruit out of the
juice. They take all of the goodness out.”
So how can they market a product like that
without the consumer being upset? Larry
said they fi gured it out a long time ago: They
use words like
“hints,” “notes,”
“fl avors” and
“aromas.” “What
do those words
have to do with
anything that is in
that bottle?” Larry
asked.
Shown at right is the
Woodham’s selection
of “Forest Keeper”
wines.
Below left, an example
of what the couple
does with 12-pack
soda cartons to make
a double wine bottle
carrier.
Below right, just a few
of the homemade
jams and jellies made
at Bunker Hill Vineyard
and Winery.