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Roger Morris | The News Journal | 05/10/2006

Opening the 'cellar door' to Brandywine vintages

New Zealanders like to buy their local wines at the "cellar door" and pick up their fresh vegetables and fruits at the "farm gate," which somehow sounds more cozy and bucolic than "tasting room" and "farmers market."

But if you like to buy locally for cooking and drinking — as more and more people are doing — then the area's Brandywine Valley wineries can generally be described as "cellar door," as most tasting rooms are in the wineries' cellars or just next door.

Although a few local wineries sell through Pennsylvania's state store system or through Delaware retailers, the over-whelming majority of bottles of locally made wine is sold directly to consumers in tasting rooms or by direct shipment (a topic for another day).

All of the local wineries are family-owned and run, and the chances are that whoever is pouring the wines and answering your questions either makes the wine or keeps the books. And a trip to the tasting room often means that you may see vines being pruned in the adjacent vineyard, wine being bottled, or grapes being crushed.

Only Chaddsford, the largest and oldest local winery, has its tasting room open every day (except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day), but most of the others are expanding from weekends only to more weekdays. Paradocx is open Wednesdays through Sundays at its Pa. 52 Fairville site and plans to open its new tasting rooms this fall on Flint Hill Road in Landenberg, adjacent to its vineyards, and at its PennsWoods property. The latter tasting room will be at the old Smithbridge vineyards off U.S. 202, whose grapes are bottled as PennsWoods, but in a different building.

Folly Hill, which recently moved to a larger tasting room at the same property, is open Thursdays through Sunday, Va La is open Fridays through Sunday, and Kreutz Creek on the weekends. Stargazers is open on Sundays only.

Tasting fees range from $5 to $7 to sample three to seven wines, and some give you the tasting glass. Stargazers is free except for large groups, and Folly Hill is free on Thursday only for two wines. Chaddsford has a $15 weekend educational tasting of its reserve wines, and Va La is mulling over a similar plan for its limited-edition wines. Of the six, four have satellite tasting and sales rooms around the area. Folly Hill and Va La presently are available to taste only at their cellar doors.

All of the tasting rooms sell food and have places to enjoy it with any wine you might buy. As summer is near, most are advertising special events, mainly musical ones.

For people who remember the quaint and quite way "that Sonoma used to be," that's the way the Brandywine Valley still is except during promotional affairs. You can still enjoy the good old days at your local cellar doors.

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