Waterfowl & Bottling JCR

Vineyard manager Richard Murphy & his wife Cara at the Waterfowl Festival

 

Nancy Kreek volunteered on Friday

In case you haven't heard, we've been officially sold out of our most popular wine- Joe's Cool Red- since Saturday. We took our last cases to the Waterfowl Festival in Easton, MD where is was quickly snatched up by visitors out enjoying the beautiful weather and festival atmosphere. There was a smattering of bottles available at the winery which were traded among customers after the last bottle was sold. Also popular at the festival was our Vidal Blanc, one of the few (or only?) dry white Vidal Blanc wines in the state. Check out the great article from the Star Democrat.

Fun with capsules!

Anyway, the drought of Joe's is brief as we are bottling more wine this Thursday. William the Winemaker foresaw the popularity of the wine and started making more over the summer, so we have 1000 gallons ready to go. It's definitely worth stopping by, maybe on an early lunch break, to see what's happening and pick up a bottle fresh off the assembly line. We'll hopefully get started at 8am and it will take 3-4 hours to bottle all the wine.


Also this week Chris English is playing at Friday's Happy Hour. A local blues guitarist who graced the Dorchester Citizens for Planned Growth fundraiser last month, he promises to give a good show. Find out more at his webpage: http://www.brolow.com/.

The Hunter's Banquet has been canceled for this year, but we hope to offer a similar event next year. My sincere apologies to those of you who have made plans to attend and we hope we can interest you in other events at the winery. We are getting ready for our Christmas Market too, on December 4th. Anyone interested in setting up a table is welcome to contact Chloe (chloe@laytonschance.com) for more information.

Recent Events

Welcome back Laura and Joe! They've been away for the past week and we've missed them at the winery. While they were gone we had several fun events, from the Vienna Heritage Foundation fundraiser to our Ladies Night home shopping evening.

Tom & Jennifer

The VHF had a great turnout and several speakers came to illustrate the main cause of the afternoon- to raise money to support building a permanent home for a recently acquired Native American artifact collection. Tom Bradshaw, curator of the collection which is currently housed at Salisbury University, and Jennifer Notari (an SU graduate student) showed some pieces of pottery.

Lots of ladies!

 Ladies night was also a fun evening- it was chilly outside but the winery was cozy and warm. We served local cheese from Chesapeake Bay Farms and Chapel Creamery, and guests browsed beautiful displays of unique jewelery, cooking items, home decorating goods, make up and skin care products, and more. Jennifer's presentation went well and many ladies went home with door prizes donated by the vendors.

Alex Wersen of Rusted Axle & the Gingers performed at the winery on Friday night with Katie Gutoskey on vocals for happy hour. Everyone enjoyed the music and the relaxed atmosphere of the evening, and we appreciated having two volunteers join us for the night.

Can you see the beautiful sunset behind them?

What's coming up next? Another chance to join us for happy hour on November 19th, and we're busily planning holiday parties for December. If you haven't booked one yet for your business or group, give us a call (410-228-1205) soon! As advertised in Metropolitan Magazine, we're offering our event room free for daytime events (up to 75 people) during the month of December, and at a 25% discount for evening events.

Watermelon Wine Update

Mid 50s this week and the leaves are all brightly colored. The rush of harvest is over- William finished cutting soybeans last weekend and they finished planting wheat yesterday so the bulk of the fall farm activities are finished. It finished surprisingly early this year- normally everyone is busy until Thanksgiving! I suppose with farming you can never predict the weather and you work as hard as you can while you're able.

What it also means is that William can turn his full attention back to the wine! We tasted some samples of Alison's Wonderful Watermelon Wine last night. It was delicious!! It isn't as pink as we expected- the color disappeared during fermentation and now it is a light peachy color. Sweet and fruity, it's really going to be wonderful. A pure watermelon wine! For those who haven't heard the news, we won't be bottling this until 2011, as the process has taken longer than we expected. I promise to send a news flash out when it is ready!

But we are definitely bottling Joe's Cool Red this month. It's incredible but we have all but sold out of this regional favorite. Richard and I did a full count yesterday and there are less than 300 bottles in the whole winery. We're scheduled to bottle on November 18th, so if you're interested in seeing how this works come out and join us. We'll have a full assembly line going and we expect to fill 5000 bottles to replenish our stocks.

Tomorrow evening we have our Ladies Night Home Party (6-9pm at the winery, $5 admission for wine tasting and refreshments). Speed shop your favorite home vendors and enjoy a fantastic presentation by Jennifer about how to prepare for the holidays stress free. She claims that you can be ready by the first week of December so that you can actually relax and enjoy the holidays!

Tonight Jen and William present some of our wines at the Signature Chef's Banquet at the Hyatt for the March of Dimes Fundraiser. Say hello and consider a bid for the free event we are offering in the live auction!

Halloween Party

The bonfire-to-be

I think we're ready- Garland built a beautiful bonfire pit and made lots of marshmallow roasting sticks, and Claudia got all the craft tables set up. We'll do the pumpkin carving outside in our picnic area- don't forget to bring a pumpkin! We've got the tools for you and we'll have a few spares in case you forget yours. Also remember to dress up in your best costume because we're giving away prizes for the Most Original, Scariest, and Cutest costumes. Bring your guitar or your favorite scary story to share around the bonfire. And try some of our spiced wine!

Happy wine tasters at the 2010 Autumn Wine Festival

Quick wine update- Richard and Taylor filtered the Joe's Cool Red yesterday, all day, and it's getting close to being ready to bottle. It was in cold stabilization the past few weeks but that ended this week with a crash when all the ice fell off the side of the tank (we were expecting it). Our bottling date for that is November 19, so anyone who is interested is welcome to come check out the process.

A beautiful evening with DEA

Our event room is getting booked up with holiday parties for December. Instead of the usual price for daytime events we're offering free room rental, and for evening events there is a 25% discount. A unique place to host your company Christmas party so give us a call or email to reserve a date!



We'll host a fundraiser this Sunday for Dorchester Citizens for Planned Growth and next Sunday for the Vienna Heritage Foundation. Consider coming and supporting these very worthwhile causes. More information is on our website at laytonschance.com.

Autumn Wine Festival

 Another big weekend of wine tasting! We have an awesome group of volunteers ready for the weekend and I hope everyone reading this comes by our tent to say hello. Look for the big Joe's Cool Red banner! It's a great chance to tell folks on the shore what the Laytons have been working on for the past few years. Get more information about the Autumn Wine Festival here.

A nice turnout for Business After Hours,
and great food from Jimmie & Sook's

Everyone has been in the field this week (until Thursday morning's rain started coming down). William was picking soybeans til he couldn't see anymore, and Joe has started planting wheat. Hopefully the winds this weekend will help dry things out so that they can get back to the fields next week.

We have some new equipment in the winery. Since our 2000 gallon tank is full of Traminette (for our Lazy Day White) we had to order another giant tank to use when we're racking wine. The spidery steel base was a hit with the kids when it first arrived.


My favorite feature of the production area these days is the Chambourcin, which has been fermenting for a while and gives off a nice odor of alcohol and yeast. It tastes wonderful though, heavier than last year's Chambourcin with a nice full body. William makes sure that it gets stirred regularly to keep even fermentation. Really, it's tougher than it looks!

Happy Hour with JohnE Wa2C going on as I write. Come out and join us as we wind down from the week.

Grape Stomp Tomorrow!

 I've got to start this post with a big thank you to the volunteers who helped us last weekend at the Maryland Wine Festival. We had a blast- perfect weather, friendly crowds, and plenty of good wine. There's no better opportunity to taste Maryland Wine than at this annual festival in Westminster, although it did inspire me to plan a wine trail road trip. Anyway, everyone loved Joe's Cool Red and many people wanted it open and ready to enjoy right there at the festival.

William is testing the specific gravity of the wines right now. We have pressed and crushed a lot of grapes this month and everything except the Vidal is in a tank right now, undergoing fermentation. Testing the specific gravity lets us track how fast fermentation is going. Alcohol is less dense than water or juice, so as it ferments it becomes less dense and we can measure density with a hydrometer.

Janet and Nellie picking Chambourcin grapes

Finally, the 1st Annual Harvest Festival & Grape Stomp is tomorrow! Richard is setting up the stage where we'll have two stompers going at a time. The person who presses the most juice wins a Frappe Vino wine slushie (non-alcoholic slushies available for participants under 21)! Millie's Roadhouse is bringing food, and we'll have pony rides and a moonbounce set up for the young ones. $5 entry includes a free tasting of our 5 wines. No charge for kids. Doors open at 11, event runs til 6pm. Get here by 3 for a tractor ride with Joe, but if you miss that you can still get a combine tour later. Tommy Buckets comes on at noon, and JohnE Wa2C starts at 3. Music and fun all day!

Call 410-228-1205 if you have any questions and we look forward to seeing you!

Alison's Wonderful Watermelon Wine

Latin jazz

Had a great weekend at the winery. Jennifer works full time at MaTech in Salisbury and they held a Relay for Life fundraiser here on Friday night. The Sampson/Perez duo returned (one of the first bands to play at the winery back in May!) and good music filled the tasting room all evening. Jenn's parents also came down from Pittsburgh for a visit and I think they were pleased to see the outcome after many years of hard work.

Saturday evening we held our final Sundaes at Sunset for the summer. We'll bring it back in the spring as soon as evenings are warm enough. Lots of kids running around and we celebrated Alison Layton's 7th birthday with cake and ice cream.

We also decided to go with her suggestion for naming our watermelon wine: Alison's Wonderful Watermelon Wine. Can't wait to get that finished and bottled- look for it around Thanksgiving!

Lots of grapes= lots of pickers

Last week we picked Chambourcin grapes and we've got the press running right now with a load. A couple of volunteers came out and picked with us one morning which was fun. Picking is the best part of grape growing and we enjoyed sharing that with Laura and Ed. This week we do the Vidal and then the vines are empty!

Pressing Chambourcin juice

Don't forget to mark your calendars for September 25! The 1st Annual Harvest Festival and Grape Stomp will be going on all day and we promise to offer you a good time. Check our website for regular updates and more details!