A tale of two Connecticut vineyards
Editor’s Note: This is part of a summer-long series of day trips the staff of Hearst Connecticut Media will be taking and sharing their firsthand accounts of. To find other trip in the series, visit our website and type “Day Tripper” into the search bar. This will be the last installment for the 2018 summer.
First sip
There were just a few people sitting around tables sipping wine in the front yard of DiGrazia Vineyards in Brookfield on Friday afternoon as Mark Langford maneuvered his lawnmower through the grass.
Inside, his daughter, Alexa, was behind the counter assisting customers in the wood-paneled tasting room, once part of the home where Langford spent most of his childhood. Langford’s 86-year-old step-father, Dr. Paul DiGrazia, a retired obstetrician and gynecologist and founder of the vineyard, was out on a delivery.
“We have three generations working side by side, most of the time harmoniously,” Langford said with a laugh. He had abandoned the lawnmower and was seated in the winery’s patio, beneath a pergola from which white Niagara and other species of grapes hung, with me and my photographer for the day, Lynandro Simmons.
Langford’s title at DiGrazia is business manager. He helps to manage the staff of seven — which swells to 12 in the summer, including part-time tasting room help — and fills a variety of roles. That morning, he and a small group of staff bottled for several hours. Midday, he mowed the lawn. Sweat rolled down his cheek below his bucket hat as Langford introduced himself to DJ and I and prepared to give us a tour of the facility. Later, he’d head to Amenia, N.Y. to work the vineyard.
He’s been doing it since 1988, when, as a recent college graduate, he returned home to help his stepfather and mother run the nascent vineyard that was starting to slowly expand.
In 1978, DiGrazia decided he wanted to own his own farm, and bought a tract of land in Amenia, just over the Connecticut border.
“Instead of planting 3 acres or 5 acres (of grapes), which would’ve been a hobby, he planted 20 acres, and that’s what started DiGrazia Vineyards,” Langford said.
Six years later, DiGrazia got a license to be a farm winery and began to distribute on a small scale.
“They weren’t the best wines, but our neighbors bought them, and his patients had to buy them,” Langford said, though he clarified, “not pregnant ladies.”
In the early years, Langford said DiGrazia had to work hard to convince liquor stores to buy the locally made wine. At the time, wine drinkers tended to prefer foreign grapes, especially French. Wine was also thought of as patrician, and was not as widely consumed as it is today.
According to Langford, the whole industry has become more democratic. Young people have become interested, reds and blushes have become more popular and drinkers have become more open to niche wines.
“Native grapes and fruit wine were looked down upon by the wine community when we first started. But now they’re the biggest thing going,” Langford said.
This bodes well for DiGrazia, which has seven formula wines — one with a non-standard recipe, needing federal approval — which is rare for a small vineyard. Langford and his crew make popular blueberry and honey wines, and have experimented with ingredients like Ethiopian malts. Currently, Langford is developing a recipe for a CBD (Cannabidiol, a component of cannabis) infused wine, which he hopes will be available by early 2019.
As he led us through a tasting, Langford explained the most challenging aspect of running a vineyard had become hospitality. Customers’ expectations had risen with their ability to share their experiences on platforms like Yelp and Facebook.
“Everyone who comes here can go back in their car and write a review. So it’s not just the newspapers that you have to be ready for, it’s every customer,” Langford said.
Because of its size, DiGrazia has become known as a “picnic vineyard,” Langford said. But there are weekends when the small, wooden space is jammed with wine tasters.
“On a busy Saturday when the lawn is filled with people it reminds me of the keg parties that we used to have when my parents went on vacations,” Langford said, laughing.
Second sip
Jennifer Johnson has been a tasting room employee at Jones Family Farms in Shelton since March 2017.
Born in Shelton, Johnson has been aware of the farm most of her life. Her family bought Jones Farm Christmas trees when she was a child and, for a time, her stepmother was a nanny for the Jones family.
But it wasn’t until Johnson, who was unsatisfied with her corporate career in human resources, traveled to South Africa on her honeymoon and visited vineyards, that she started to wonder more about the origins of wine.
“I thought, it’s great just to drink wine, but how does it get to be that? How does it get those aromas or those flavors?” Johnson said, Friday afternoon from behind the large circular counter in Jones’ tasting room, a converted dairy barn, where all around other Jones employees were leading tastings. Outside and across a gravel sitting area, visitors could purchase full glasses and food at the in-house kitchen — a menu suggests wines to pair with various foods — and sit in a veranda that overlooked parts of the 400-acre farm.
Johnson led us through the tasting, which begins with the winery’s Riesling and then requires tasters to choose from two separate wine lists, one titled “Dry,” the other “Off Dry & Lightly Sweet.”
“We normally suggest you stay with one side since that’s how your palate works,” Johnson said.
I chose dry and was treated to a Muscat, a Pinot Gris, a Chardonnay, a Ripton red, Cabernet and a sparkling strawberry wine, called Strawberry Serenade.
“Twirl the glass to bring the aroma out, then drink,” Johnson suggested.
The Jones’ have been farming in Shelton for more than 150 years. In the 1940s, Philip Jones, Jr. began planting Christmas trees. Strawberries and blueberries were added by his son, Terry, in the 1960s, and Jamie started the winery in 2004, though he started planting grapes in 1999, like Langford, after returning home a recent college graduate.
“I went to college at Cornell (University) in the Finger Lakes where there are a number of farm wineries. I got interested and started reading and learning about it,” Jones said.
Jones stands in sharp contrast to DiGrazia in certain obvious ways. The size, atmosphere and scope of offerings vary greatly.
At Jones, visitors can take cooking classes, attend wine pairings, go pumpkin picking or listen to live music on Fridays and Sundays during the summer. It’s become one of the larger farm wineries in Connecticut, as has grown for a number of reasons. People have become more interested in wine and local products, especially local agricultural products, and the Jones reputation is spreading.
“You have a lot of things coming together to allow growth,” Jones said.
But, crucially, the two vineyards share a common goal of making great wine, no matter the size of the respective operation.
“I truly believe we’re making outstanding wine,” Jones said.