Little sip of wine ... a little bit of fun
Novice and conventional wine drinkers mix, taste, and mingle at the 10th annual W.Va. Spring Wine Festival
By Brian Dalek
Register-Herald reporter
They came in all shapes and sizes to the 10th annual W.Va. Spring Wine Festival on Saturday at Daniel Vineyards in Crab Orchard.
There were wine connoisseurs and novices swirling wine glasses up toward the sky before a sip. There were young couples and families strolling over and peering at the 20 acres of land at Daniel Vineyards — which is small as vineyards go, but it is still the biggest in West Virginia with close to 10,000 grapevines.
According to Dr. Richard Daniel, owner of Daniel Vineyards, the goal of the festival was not to drink heavily under a warm sun, but to get a variety of people together in the name of West Virginia wine.
“We get some folks that know absolutely nothing, very few that know a lot and most in the middle,” Daniel, a former radiologist who retired in 1999, said about the mixture of wine drinkers at his festival. “But that’s a good thing.
“My job is to brainwash people into believing that these wines that you are tasting are as good as the chardonnay and the cabernet and the merlot that they are used to,” Daniel said. “If we can do that, then we have a convert.”
For $10, tasters received a Daniel Vineyards wine glass to sample from six of West Virginia’s finest wineries. Along with Daniel Vineyards, other wineries were Jones Cabin Run, West-Whitehill Winery, Watts Roost Vineyard, Lambert’s Vintage Wines and Forks of Cheat Winery.
Daniel estimated that 1,000 people would spend most of the day at his sprawling vineyard, tasting the best wine the state had to offer.
Alan Wolfe, a winemaker at Jones Cabin Run in Gilmer County, said he has been to the festival each of the past 10 years. His goal at the festival is to share the various wines that can be found in the Mountain State and to educate people on wine.
“We try to avoid head-to-head competition. When you reach a level of quality, wines generally are not better or worse,” Wolfe said. “They’re just different. That’s one of the attractions of being a wine aficionado.”
On a warm day such as Saturday, many people go for sweeter or white wines, according to both Daniel and Wolfe. The best thing is that there was something for everybody.
“If everybody liked one kind of wine, we’d only make one kind of wine,” Daniel said.
“Wine is the beverage of moderation. So you don’t see — usually anyway — people getting rowdy when they drink wine,” Wolfe added. “They just come and enjoy the flavors and the company.”
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Daniel considers himself a fan of the outdoors, but doesn’t hunt, fish or golf. In his words, he wanted to “keep off the streets,” and do something productive with his time outdoors.
He learned to grow and farm from his grandfather. So, he purchased the land that used to be the Twin Oaks Golf Course in Crab Orchard in 1989, hoping to turn it into a vineyard.
His first experience when he walked into the old clubhouse wasn’t what he had in mind with the land.
“I walked in on a beautiful day like this and it was raining inside the building,” Daniel said. “It had rained three days before, and there were holes all through. It obviously hadn’t been well attended.”
After almost throwing the clubhouse into the woods and forgetting about it, Daniel said he decided to make it the pavilion that stands there today, which was a perfect spot for some shade while listening to entertainment from Roger Hicks and The Country Express on Saturday.
Daniel said he prepared the soil for a year and planted the first vines in May 1990. Over the years, he has tried 114 different varieties of grapes to see what would grow, but sitting 2,500 feet above sea level with harsh winters dwindled his grape source to 14.
“I just love being out here,” Daniel said. “I get up about six, maybe 5:30, and I’ll work until it gets dark. Doing everything that needs to be done.”
He added he doesn’t work alone and credited the staff that helps him tend the vineyard daily.
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The idea to start a wine festival and make it a family event with grilling, music and local artisans probably came from the fact that wine doesn’t suit everybody’s tastes, but people still enjoy being outside in the summer.
“There are just a lot of people that don’t like wine that much or not at all,” Daniel, a red wine drinker for those interested, said.
Some attendees avoided the wine and were content to plop down on a picnic blanket overlooking a pleasant landscape or scout the rows of the vineyard.
People such as Darrell Green, of Midway, were at Daniel Vineyards for the first time.
“Just curiosity to see what it’s all about. We’ve never been out here before, and we live close by,” Green said. “We’re not wine drinkers or anything like that, but we just enjoy all this pristine beauty of the countryside.”
Others consider themselves
connoisseurs of fine wine.
“We have an aspiration to grow grapes ourselves and just like visiting with the people who have the businesses,”said Melissa Prescott, of Walton in Roane County.
— E-mail: bdalek@register-herald.com
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