NJ winery tour

A few representatives from yesterday's outing.  There are 35 wineries registered with the Garden State Wine Growers Association.  If you can get to all of them within a year and get them to stamp their page in the "passport" I think you get some sort of small prize for the effort.  Perhaps a matching pair of Kabuki kewpie dolls.

Back during our two week vacation, at the end of June, diaristwoman and I spent a rainy day touring three wineries in the Cape May area.  The wine growers association of course wants us to visit them all and we're gamely giving it a go.  This past Saturday we ticked three more wineries off the list.  Since many of the wineries are in the southern end of the state it shouldn't be too hard to do this.  The ones that are located way up in the northwest corner of the state will require a dedicated trip or two.  Of course the association has a website which you can peruse:  http://www.newjerseywines.com/

We started the afternoon with a stop at Bellview Winery.  I was a little hesitant because I associate the name "Bellview" with the well known mental hospital!

The tasting room however was very inviting.  As was the case with the three wineries we visited back in June, Bellview charges $5.00 per person to taste their offerings.  For the price one generally gets to keep the stemware with which one samples the wines on offer.  In this case, although there were several wines which we found pleasant, the prices were on the high side and only a cranberry-based novelty wine (it will make a refreshing hot afternoon spritzer when mixed with club soda) caused me reach for my wallet so we pressed on to the next winery which was only a few minutes away.

Coda Rossa apparently means "red tail" in Italian and is a reference to the red tail hawks that lurk in the vineyard of this winery.

Coda Rossa has attractively landscaped gardens leading to the tasting room.  One can see some of the vines in background.  Some of  Coda Rossa's wines come from their own grapes while others, although fermented at the winery are derived from California grapes.  A nice aspect of this winery is that their don't charge a fee to sample and they pour with a generous hand.  And sample we did!

I was smitten with two of the wines: the Tempesta, a full bodied red (a blend of Sangiovese, Cabernet & merlot grapes) from their own vines and also a very pleasant 50/50 blend of California Barbera and Petite Sirah grapes.  I bought six bottles which gave me a 10% discount and this handy six compartment bag to carry my booty to the wagon.  The discount dropped the cost per bottle to less than $14.00 which your diarist thought was good value for the money.

Auburn Road Vineyards, just west of Woodstown, NJ was our last stop of the day.

The tasting room is at the end of this inviting shady graveled lane.

Although the exterior of the tasting shed looked serene, inside it housed a noisy party atmosphere which made it difficult to concentrate on the task of wine sampling.  Tasting was free (your choice of three wines).  We sampled several that were drinkable but the prices, like those at Bellview were not competitive with the real world.  I bought a single bottle of their "Rustica" red table wine (a blend of Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes) and we soon left.

So, between our two excursions we've ticked off six wineries out of thirty five.  Only twenty nine more to go--if this was a bigger state I'd probably need a liver transplant!