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New Kent Winery
Spring Newsletter, 2012
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Dear Friends,
Spring is a beautiful time of year here at New Kent Winery, and as always we are staying very busy. Whether it's caring for the spring buds out in the vineyard, hosting weddings in the Tasting Room and Pavilion Tent, or preparing for our upcoming A Taste of New Kent Wine Festival, there is always something new and exciting to look forward to. Here is the latest from your friends at New Kent Winery.
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A Taste of New Kent Wine Festival - Saturday, May 12th | | A Taste of New Kent Wine Festival |
Join us on Saturday, May 12, 2012 from 11:00am to 6:00pm here at New Kent Winery for our annual A Taste of New Kent Wine Festival.
Spend the day tasting from 14 wineries, plus enjoy live music, local arts & crafts vendors, carriage rides and a variety of foods! Tickets are $25 in advance or $35 at the gate, and you can pick up tickets here at New Kent Winery or at www.atasteofnewkent.com. We hope to make this year's festival another great success!
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Pete showing the spring buds on our vines
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Eco-Friendly in the Vineyard
by Pete Johns, Managing Partner
It has always been the goal of the New Kent Winery to be good stewards of the land, whether this involves the overall development, our winery or the care of our vineyards. We try to live in harmony with the land and with the community.
Early in the planning stages of the winery and vineyards, we laid the groundwork of good stewardship with the introduction of our "Best Management Practices". Here is a brief review of some of these practices:
The use of our Lipco Tunnel Sprayer
This is the only recycle sprayer of its type in Virginia. This sprayer wraps over the vines and eliminates 90% of the spray drift, and it uses 30% less spray than a conventional sprayer. The unit has reservoirs to catch unused spray, leaving no residual on the ground that can leach into the Chesapeake Bay.
Injection of a Systemic Insecticide Program
This program is applied twice a year early in the spring. Systemic insecticide is absorbed through the roots of the vines, making any "bad bugs" that bite, chew or suck on our vines dead bugs while leaving the "good bugs" unharmed. By using this system, we are able to replace 8-9 insecticide sprays each year.
Care of Young Vines No herbacides are sprayed around our young vines for the first two years. We use an American made product, the Weed Badger, to mechanically weed around our young plants.
Harvesting Our Grapes with Local Assistance Our goal is to help the local community and citizens whenever possible. By using local clubs to harvest our grapes in the fall, we keep the money for this service within the community. Hunters for the Hungry Program We have the highest deer concentration here on our property within the Commonwealth. Working in conjunction with the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, we manage our deer population to ensure the herd is healthy and genetically strong. Any deer meat obtained is donated to the Hunters for the Hungry program, which professionally processes the meat and distributes it to local foodbanks and other nonprofits within Virginia. Layout of Vineyards to Fit the Evironment There is a saying, "Good wines are made in the lab; great wines are made in the vineyards." We have tried our best to ensure our layout and operations produce the best fruit possible. |
Spring at the Wineryby Mike Bobbitt, Operations Manager
As anyone who lives in central Virginia knows, we had an extremely mild winter this past season and spring has appeared months ahead of schedule. The vineyards are becoming more beautiful with each passing day, thanks to the long hours of work by Kevin, Jim and Mat, and business inside the winery is bustling. When you visit our winery, you may notice several new faces amongst the staff. Some may be familiar and others may be new, but I hope you will find the entire staff maintaining the highest possible standards. With nearly 50 events scheduled at the winery this year, participating in the various wine festivals off-site, and taking care of daily business, our staff has been growing weekly. I would like to thank all the Barrel Club members who've attended our last few Barrel Club events this year. Your interest and participation have made these events a great success. This past weekend we had our Barrel Club BBQ Cook-Off Dinner & Dance, in which guests rated other members' barbecue, enjoyed dinner catered by Willie's BBQ and danced to the tunes of Southern Branch. Congratulations to Jimmy Forrest for his prize winning ribs that were voted Best BBQ, and thanks to all our members who entered barbecue for the judging!
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Barrel Club BBQ Cook-Off
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Our next Barrel Club event, the Saturday Morning Brunch originally scheduled for June 16th, is being moved back one week to June 23rd. This brunch will be held for club members from 8:00am - 10:00am on the back porch and courtyard. We're still contracting with our caterer for this event, so we should announce details within the next couple of weeks. The reason for the date change is due to a full scale Civil War re-enactment now scheduled for June 16th and 17th at the winery. This re-enactment started off small and has steadily grown into a major event. What I was hoping to achieve with a relaxed early morning brunch on the back porch would not be the same with cannons going off and hundreds of horsemen herding through the grounds, so we hope to see you on June 23rd! Erin Moskalski has been busy with our caterers in scheduling Cooking Classes beginning on May 9th in the Barrel Room. These classes were extremely popular last year, and we hope to bring in some new and different talented chefs continuing each month on the 2nd Wednesday through September. Look for more details coming on the first class in May within the next week.
If you've not visited our retail area lately, you will be pleasantly surprised to find some of the most delicious cheese you could find anywhere in the state. Recently we began offering fresh Virginia cheese made by Eberly Family Farm in Harrisonburg. This past weekend we had some "cheeseheads" visiting from Wisconsin, and even they were impressed with the quality of this new offering. Fresh cheese isn't all that's new in the tasting room, so if you've not visited us recently, please stop in.
I could go on and on about all the great things going on with New Kent Winery; however, I will simply close with a magnificent photo taken by Jerry Huddleston (who DJ'ed an April wedding at the winery). Enjoy!
Cheers,
Mike
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Growth of the Virginia Wine Industry
Virginia's growing wine industry is starting to gain momentum as one of the premiere wine regions in North America. Between 2005 and 2010, the Virginia wine industry's economic impact has more than doubled to over $750 million dollars in contributions to the state's economy every year. During this time, the number of wineries has increased from 130 to over 200. The number of full time jobs that wineries and vineyards created also rose from about 3,160 in 2005 to more than 4,750 in 2010.
Sales of Virginia wine also increased more than 11% in the fiscal year 2011 to a record high of more than 5.5 million bottles sold. The spending directly related to winery tourism also increased from $57 million in 2005 to more than $135 million in 2010. This is one more reason why we at New Kent Winery are proud to be a part of the Virginia wine industry.
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