Celebrate America's Birthday Month with this special "Wine Across America" episode of Big Blend Radio's "Wine Time with Peggy" podcast.
FEATURED GUESTS
- Peggy Fiandaca - LDV Winery in Arizona: https://ldvwinery.com/
- Winemaker Dave Specter - Bells Up Winery in Oregon: https://bellsupwinery.com/
- Carole Skeeters-Stevens - Travel Medford Oregon: https://www.travelmedford.org/
- Innkeeper Mikelyn Martin-Wustman - The Bird & Butterfly Inn in Texas: https://thebirdandbutterflyinn.com/
- Travel writer & photographer Jo Clark: https://www.haveglasswilltravel.com/
Featuring Peggy Fiandaca, who along with her winemaker husband Curt Lawrence Dunham owns and operates LDV Winery in Arizona, "Wine Time with Peggy" airs every 1st Wednesday at 4pm PT / 7pm ET. Follow the podcast here: http://tinyurl.com/42j5zucj
Welcome to Big Blend Radio's One Time with Peggy Show featuring Peggy Fiandaka who, along with her winemaker husband Kurt Lawrence Dunham, owns and operates LDV Winery in Arizona. Welcome everybody. You know we love our first Wednesday Wine Time with Peggy Show. Peggy and her husband Kurt own LDV Winery out in Southeast Arizona. The Winery itself is out in the Chiracawa foothills so it's kind of southeast of Tucson so not far and then in Scottsdale they have a tasting room. Now we've been to the vineyard and of course we went wine tasting and we tasted their their baby vignettes that are now out and out for the public but you know we have to get to Arizona to go and taste them and we have not been to the tasting room yet but that might change soon. But anyway go to LDV Winery.com and all the links I give on the show notes today will be we'll be in the show notes I should say but welcome Peggy how are you? I'm doing well. Of course I'm trying to stay cool with multiple 115 plus days in the Phoenix area which are you know anything above 110 is unbearable so staying out of the heat and inside with a lot of air conditioning on so not too bad. Well you inspired the show because you wanted to showcase regions across America and that's what we're doing I mean as this airs on July 3 we're getting ready for 4th of July so I think we need to take a look at the almighty grape and how it's fermented and fabulous so that's a good thing. Peggy how is everything in the vineyard right now over because it's a little cooler where the vineyard is right than Phoenix. Right right so we are as you said southeastern Arizona we're at 5,000 foot elevation so we're high altitude vineyard so when you see the picture behind me of the Jericho mountains those are 10,000 feet and so we get a lot of cool winds and rain off from that mountain. Of course a monsoon season has just started so we had our first monsoon rain it didn't because I'm a little bit higher on the mountain I didn't get hit with a torrential rain like my fellow vineyards that are about a thousand feet lower than I am or the majority of grapes are grown they got hit pretty hard but no no hail of course we got to worry about hail at this time and but no it's it's under a hundred degrees up up where we are but it is warmer than usual even at the vineyard right now so a lot of water going into the vines but we can't wait for driving across country to in the heat in the next week or so it's going to be fun. Good awesome if you're coming west huh? Yes we're coming west we're coming west so yeah we'll be fun it'll be hot and sweaty till to dry hot and sweaty right so it will be fun but I'm glad the vineyard's doing good right it's just oh yeah we are the we got wonderful crops set on all of our grapes we had we had a bit of shatter and uh because we have very high winds that come off that mountain and so that's what we you know worry about in the springtime when the when it was budding so we our gurnage got a bit of shatter but um they look great I mean the clusters are huge they are all you know we planted 1,100 vines this year and the babies have come out really beautifully so um knock on wood everything looks really well towards a great harvest this year if everything goes well between now and august. What does the Arizona profile look like for wineries how many wineries do you think you have in southeast and then it pretty much goes up north right towards like camp Verde in that area um right well when I was excited about showcasing wine regions around across the country where there are so many up-and-coming wine regions in smaller vineyards like ours that are really doing fabulous things and they don't always get the headlines and I really want to showcase that hey you know we're out here people are shocked that Arizona has a really fast-growing wine uh wine industry now we have three different wine regions one in southeastern Arizona where I am um they're the mexico into mexico board air south of Tucson is our oldest wine region and then north north of the Phoenix area about an hour and a half to two hours is the Verde Valley wine region so when I started our winery about 18 years ago we were licensed number 17 in the state of Arizona and we're at 110 licenses today so it's a very fast-growing region um there's a lot of challenges facing the growth of the industry like production caps and water um in parts of the state and uh but it is still a growing region and we're starting to produce really high quality wines it's not just touristy wine which was the original vineyards that we're producing now we have really quality uh winemakers like ourselves that are wanting to produce the highest quality grapes and wine from those grapes um so it's I think you're going to hear a lot more about Arizona as a wine region in the future like some of these other growing wine areas yeah we can totally attest to a Peggy and Kurtz wine ldv i'm serious i'm serious and and it's it's brutal because we will fight over it um and we've also had the honor of tasting Bell's up winery uh we've got Dave and his wife are run and owned the winery and Dave is the winemaker um he went from the world of accounting to splish splash i'm playing with grapes and and splashing around in wine right Dave is it more fun welcome back it's a bit of a culture change but that's okay i always tell people that my relationship with alcohol is much healthier now than it was back in those days yeah that's a good one but but but we absolutely love it we have a very small 10 acre piece of property here in the Willamette Valley um i i was laughing here listening to to Peggy talk because we're almost a complete opposite situation today is about 75 and sunny um and we have had plenty of rain over the winter so no need to irrigate and i i kind of felt bad for our good fortune up here well i don't you know what i remember i talked with you carol as well um we were up in Oregon and in the ice storms and all of that and i'm going and i was telling Peggy about this on a show and then we're driving past through the dowels and going to the northeast corner and i'm seeing vineyards i'm like oh no they're gonna have to turn to ice wine and that's not the profile for Oregon you know so i mean it how your vineyards make it through all of that right and in Oregon with that kind of cold weather it doesn't seem to get as affected right because everything's dormant yeah the for us you know when we get our bad weather as as you said all the vines at that point are dormant um and you know even though it doesn't get normally it doesn't get terribly cold here um even through ice storms snow storms we really nothing is going to affect the vines until we start to get about the time of bud break um we did have one situation a couple years ago back in 2022 where buds had broken it was roughly the middle of april buds had broken in the vineyard and then we had the latest freeze that Oregon has had in 50 years um this is sort of one of the benefits of planting on a hill because at least for us the the cold air sloped down the hill didn't pool anywhere didn't stick around very long uh so the only place in our vineyard that we had damage was at the very bottom of our property it flattens out a little bit but for folks that had vineyards that are down much closer to the valley floor or folks that planted in on flatter or swale areas those are people that saw probably 80 85 percent of their primary buds that got pretty much zapped in that so fortunately it looked like from what we can tell the industry as a whole recovered from that but it is the kind of thing that that makes you a little worried um once you start to get the bud break but uh for for us it's uh like I said for anything that happens in January, February and March really isn't going to concern us very much uh how many wineries are in Willamette Valley and Oregon because I remember going through there doing a bit of wine tasting and we drove I think from McMinnville uh to the coast and went down it was a beautiful day um but we had to slow down because you can't drink too much you know you know you have to be careful um but you know it seemed to be like quite a big area. The Willamette Valley is pretty large it's roughly 100 miles north to south it starts up in the Portland area um which is uh just a few miles or so from the Columbia River and it runs all the way down to Eugene in the south uh and then from east to west depending on where you are it can be you know about 50 miles east to west so it's it's a long wide area but the numbers in the Willamette Valley have increased tremendously uh in the last couple of years we are now up to 800 wineries in the Willamette Valley so wow despite being a big area um when you're driving through now I'll say this when you drive through the area it doesn't feel it doesn't feel like everybody's just sitting on top of each other right I mean we do have enough distance between them but I think one of the things that makes it a challenge when folks come here is to try to figure out you know 800 places where are the places that are best for them individually to go um and so one of the things when when folks call us we always sort of encourage them to talk about you know what sort of experiences that they're looking for and then you know we can usually almost always help to guide them to the best places where they will want to be okay and you you have people make appointments with you where you can actually sit with them and do a tasting right which is pretty cool exactly and and that's the only way we've ever done things because we are a very small winery I mean we're not the smallest but we're pretty close I I make roughly 600 cases total per year amongst everything that I do um and we really when people come in the biggest thing is we really want them to get to know us get to know the wines and ask anything I tell folks all the time there are no state secrets or or magic to what we do it's just a lot of hard work and I want to be able to get folks the right wines for them and the best way to do that is to get to know them sit with them and and just talk you know I mean just kind of take wine back to what it was always supposed to be in the first place which is something that brings people together drives great conversation and great memories and we just find that in a much more in a much more intimate environment the way we can do it's just much easier for all that to happen versus let's say a larger tasting room and you know where you may have people that don't know much about the wines that are kind of trying to run the show okay and now let's go over to Carol Carolskeeter Stevens as she is in Medford Oregon which is the Rogue Valley southern Oregon so they get a little bit of heat you know but they've got Crater Lake in their backyard so you can go swimming if you want you know it's a beautiful region just like llama just like kegie over in Arizona but welcome back Carol how are you good how are you doing doing good and so everyone should know Carol represents travel Medford and you can go to travel Medford.org and I want to give the website out over for a Dave for BellsUp Winery just go to BellsUp Winery.com again all the links are in the show notes so Carol can you give everyone kind of a profile of how big your region is and how many wineries and you're not you're right at the edge when people are going up five from California it's like you may be going to Napa but just keep your foot on the gas no good just get a lot of us good I'm not knocking them we don't have any sales tax so there's that right so we can always say good girl so you know Rogue Valley is southern I mean it's just southern as you can get our wineries outside of the Ashland area literally are on the last exit in Oregon you keep going and you head up the hill and you're in California and then we go all the way north just to south of Grants Pass then above that you hit Illinois Valley the Umqua Valley but the Rogue Valley here consists of the Applegate Valley the Upper Rogue and kind of the Bear Creek Jacksonville area we have about whopping 85 we just dropped a zero from the Willamette Valley uh wineries down here um but you know has been an interesting an interesting journey I first started getting involved with Rogue Valley in the early 2000s we had a winery out in Sam's Valley and um we're up in the Willamette Valley working our way in the in the world of Pino at Domain Surrey and you know um my partner is a family-decided to plant grapes and um they plant them because originally they plant baby kiwis and baby kiwis have a lot of frost um issues they frost they bud early and they don't ripen till late so they can get the early and the late frost so we found that out really easy but the great thing about baby kiwis is they have the same trellising as grapes so we were able to put some grapes in down here and you know the Rogue Valley I will say it's it's my you but it's really still isn't it's infancy it reminds me a little bit of walla walla in the 90s that you know there's people that have been here doing it for a while there's um we have over 70 varieties planted here which is uh you know a positive and kind of a curse at the same time right you know Willamette Valley can talk about Pino they can talk about Chardonnay Napa can talk about Cab we can talk about anything from Albirino to Zinfandel literally a to z and everything in between uh so you know that it's a challenge we are a warmer climate it's about 97 degrees out today and um but we'd get cool evenings we get um a kind of a later spring and then kind of an early fall so we'll harvest a little bit later than the Allamette Valley but in the last probably 10 years there we're we're approaching not so not so far away anymore just because of the varietals the warm climate varietals we have planted down here and you have Harry and David in your backyard too so if you want wine and cheese and fruit you can um but that's the other thing I mean your your wine region really goes with the agricultural bounty too right it does we you know we're home to Rogue Creamery which has the world's best blue cheese and if we have Harry and David and Pairs and wine and you know we have a kind of artisan I mean it is an agricultural mecca down here which is great and you know water is a issue down here unlike up in the Willamette Valley we've been really blessed the last couple of years a lot of the wineries are on the irrigation district and depending upon how long that water stays on we're able to continue to water um we have to be really aware of wild fillet threat and so the wineries spend a lot of time you know prepping and making sure that you know they do their part um for a wildfire prevention um but some of those things you know as any glorified farmer you know why make growing grapes is farming right and people forget that right it's like we're glorified farmers and people are like oh no but you're in the wine industry it's like no we're farmers it's like all these things and when we just farm a really expensive cash crop and so we have to we and we get one chance a year everybody said well how's the vintage this year and I always say it's the best one this year so that's all we can say um but it is you know it is you know we're glorified farmers and so mother nature you know is is either on our side or she isn't and she challenges us every year for sure I think Dave you guys are gonna have to start throwing buckets of water in the south and then you know go you know a little bit east over to Arizona you know everybody wants a little bit of water um but they were only that easy yeah you know we we did a lot of wine tasting in grand junction and the palisade area they have a palisade fruit and wine byway in Colorado it was very fascinating because the Colorado you're in the Colorado River Plateau and it changed because the way the river was going obviously the Colorado River is not anything as what it used to be what used to be the mighty river mighty Colorado is kind of a trickle now and they've been doing a lot of work on it um and but what's interesting is these vineyards are growing and because they have mountains around they have grand Mesa every time you go to a winery it's everything's moves everything's built along the way the the river curves and there's a lot of curves there and um they have alpaca farms and all kinds of stuff going on peaches you name it and the wine there is exceptional so I just want to give a shout out to that area because they're also dealing with water issues but I mean you could go around a corner to the next winery and the profile is completely different because of these incredible micro climates that they have from the Colorado River you know I I love that so anyway shout out to Colorado but we're gonna go east over we're gonna go to Mike Lynn Mike Lynn and her husband own and run the bird and butterfly in in Jasper Texas then we're gonna go up to the Blue Ridge Parkway so you've got some good areas here um so let's go over to Mike Lynn Westman and her and her husband own again the butterfly the bird and butterfly in in Jasper so welcome Mike Lynn how are you hello we're great how are you doing good so you run the bed and breakfast um and you were on our show about a year ago I think it was talking about just before Veterans Day yeah we were talking about baking for soldiers and the end support of our troops yeah very awesome program and we just did another one and glad you're on the show and so how's life with the bed and breakfast because I know you're you were kind of getting new at the beginning there right you were kind of we were we started our second year in October and it's been interesting we had someone locally where we are we're not in the town of Jasper proper we're probably fifteen or twenty minutes north by Lake Sam Rayburn and there's a lot of money here that you would not know necessarily because there are a lot of second homes here but there is a good concentration of wealth and someone suggested to us that we started wine dinners because there's nothing like that around here that you can that you can do so we tested it with a guy and he was a nightmare but there were it's a great saying that if you can't be a good example you'll have to be a terrible warning and he was that um and there were some great takeaways from that and we started we know a couple of summer yays and so we were reaching out to them and we're not having very good luck and and probably February February or March last year we found this gentleman whose name is Guy Stout we're just about two hours northeast of Houston and we still maintain our home in Houston so we go back and forth with some regularity and we found this fellow named Guy Stout and he is a master Sommelier which we didn't know that was a thing we're much more educated now so and he's out of Houston so we emailed him and said the look we know you're you know we should be a good deal for us but we know you know a lot of people and we're trying to get these wine dinners going and you know we would be happy if you would make some introductions for us he also owns a vineyard in Napa and produces stout family wines and we said if they want to have a stout family wine dinner all the better he wrote us about two days later we sent a picture of our property we do have a very lovely property and he said what a gorgeous place we would love to come host a stout family wine dinner there and my husband and I were both like oh my gosh like this major guy I mean he is completely famous in Texas they came and did the dinner and it was amazing and everybody lost their minds because it was so good and he was just you know for somebody who could afford a really big ego he's the most down the earth person that wait a minute how big is his belt buckle i'll text you later oh no he's um he was with a a liquor distributor so he's i mean he's a certain he's a master summary he was either the first or second master in Texas he's a certified wine educator he sits on the court of master summary a he's also a certified spirits something else i mean this guy is major credentials and he's in my kitchen chopping tomatoes to be helpful i mean he's just for somebody that could afford a big ego he's just says no pretense whatsoever just super nice super down to earth helped us with some other introductions um a few months later we had another master come out and we did another dinner and then um there's a local vineyard by us in penfield that's about probably 35 minutes northeast of us and so they came out and they hosted a dinner for their wine and we thought well golly there Texas has eight avas there are 500 wineries in Texas now most people know about Fredericksburg in the hill country so Chuck and I did a trip to Fredericksburg and we started reaching out to folks and we got scheduled all through the end of this year and we actually are even scheduled into January of 2025 the wine dinners are just a big hit well Texas the wine I know we've uh connected with Messina Hoff winery um they were one of the first wineries out there she's been on our show two or three times um and then um los pinos we had fun with los pinos but that was up north of glade water so we were right and we went and they so a lot of their grapes are coming from the hill country but then they had some up there which I think is amazing they do a really good Tempreneo and um they were kind enough to let Nancy take one of the last bottles at begging you know that's a big deal like if you only have so many left and um they're like I don't know what Nancy did but somehow they she gets Tempreneo from everybody I don't know what she does but um we left with that Tempreneo and and she said it's hers that's it and but I got a serosa I was quite happy you know but um Texas really has quite I think because you're such an amazing huge state and so many climates right the wine is just so variable it's all over the place um the area that we are is known for muscadine grape which is a very sweet grape it's more like a dessert wine and so you know we talk about using that as a wine but when you have people coming up from Houston who have more sophisticated palates and they can get any any you know what we call our Francie Tootsie wine they can get real real wines they don't want to come up here and drink muscadine I mean they'll go for lunch or something and try it but they're looking for a real wine experience and so having a master some lee or even a certified or level two or level three some lee come out and put together a pairing with food and some interesting wines or having a winemaker come out and present their own wines it's just such a unique experience that's fantastic well mikelyn mikelyn if if you if you ever want to invite us out we have a lot of wine club members in Houston and around Houston well all over Texas so I think we could fill up a nice evening we do a very small gathering we only sell 20 tickets we don't do it in our dining room we do it in our living room when we move out all the furniture because that's just the most practical way to serve 20 people but it's an intimate night the guests like it because they get you know real one-on-one with the winemaker or with the sommelier and so it's a very intimate and personal night that's a lot of fun and and everybody really enjoys it so yes we would love to have you come out oh my gosh party or for this trip oh my gosh and then Joe's got to go we got to go Joe I got to bring Joe Clark on because we've kind of done a circle I was trying to do across America but Peggy's in the middle there because she's in Arizona it's her show so we start with Peggy so we did we went from Oregon back across Arizona to Texas and now we're going to go up to the Blue Ridge Parkway really isn't that the Blue Ridge Mountains that's the area and everyone Joe Clark has the best website name have glass will travel.com and we agree and also recipes travel culture.com and she's got some great articles covering North Carolina and Virginia up on our website the Yedkin Valley in North Carolina she's covered that and she has more coming up on Virginia so welcome back Joe how are you thank you I'm good how about you but doing good are you getting thirsty yet well no because you know while they've been talking up and stiffing oh look at that you're prepared so you're in South Carolina is there I know what last time you were on the show talking about Myrtle Beach and I said well how's the wine kind of prepping towards the show and you said she already she already told you how it is it's Muscadine Muscadine that's all we can grow at the coast so it's that sweet heavy grape syrup um so if you you know that's why I'm talking about Blue Ridge Parkway and Yedkin Valley ah so tell us a little bit about that area so people understand the Blue Ridge Mountains and and that whole you know it's amazing all right the Blue Ridge Parkway is part of the Appalachian Mountain chain which ranges technically from Pennsylvania and West Virginia down to Georgia and the section that I am looking at is along the Blue Ridge Parkway which is about 400 and I think it's 469 miles in Virginia and North Carolina and um I think there are 10 wineries along the Parkway proper we have 300 wineries in Virginia 250 wineries in North Carolina so we don't have one section that's got 300 like California or somewhere but you know if it wasn't for us they wouldn't have grapes oh we we were growing the we were growing grapes and we had the the vines when France was at France that had the blight and I lost almost all their vines they got some of the rootstock back from Virginia and North Carolina to start over again a little from Texas and from Arizona huh interesting but it was a very sturdy American American rootstock is very sturdy and it is protected from a lot of the the problems that France was experiencing at the time absolutely the Norton are we going to get into french fries just now uh oh I will I'll be able but the elevation is on the Parkway the elevation is 3000 feet above sea level and the two wineries there that I love are Chateau Morcette and Villa Appalachia one is French inspired one is Italian inspired and they're across the Parkway from each other so you can you could literally walk from one to the other uh those are 40 well let's see this is 46 years now for Chateau Morcette I think and 35 for Villa Appalachia but it has changed hands now Chateau Morcette started out in the garage a couple that had bought a country home mountain home to kind of get away from the day-to-day drudge of earning a living and then they they were so bored they started making wine in the garage and it got out I think that sounds familiar yeah it is and it didn't take long for their son to get hooked and off he went to college to learn to be a winemaker so it's it's been a a true cycle for them when they built the new winery and the Chateau if you will one of the the head plumber the man designing and doing the plumbing uh David Morcette was complaining that they didn't have enough grapes and they didn't have people growing grapes and they needed people further down the mountain growing grapes that they couldn't grow at 3000 feet and he said I got some land what kind of grapes do I need to grow next thing you know he was growing grapes and a couple of years later his son and uh his wife came back home to roost and they established stanburn winery down in Patrick's Springs so they started out growing grapes for one winery and ended up creating their own winery which sadly this will be their last year they've had uh they've had some tragedy in their family and they just want to regroup and they've decided that that's what's important is family not of a winery so if anybody's listening and you want to know more about maybe buying a winery I don't know if it's for sale you'll never know I know who to find out from yeah every winery is for sale every winery is for sale yeah probably right yeah especially in this economy yeah yeah um but people ask me what's my favorite line and my my standard answer is bottle oh there you go that's that's a good good start it all has a steel dance it all has a lot you know people say I swine that's awful it's so sweet and syrupy and I go oh yeah and it's so good with ice cream it has a place all every wine it's rare that I don't like a wine it is about how you pair it right Peggy it's always about how you pair it and the company you have and the company you have you've got absolutely but there are some bad wines poorly made wines and yeah they're at the bottom shelf in the grocery store you know well there's a there's a winery in Virginia that I don't talk about and it's not too awfully far from some of these but he makes a really good vinegar oh there you go well done cook it well you know you know what I what I love about these conversations is the connection about tourism and travel you know and wineries being part of the focus of destinations and Joe you do that food wine and travel that's you know what you're about um so you will go to a region with the main focus of wine and then you but you'll do things in between right because it can't you can't be whining all day but you know well yeah just start early enough you can just kidding just not really but you never know yeah yeah anywhere I go for whatever reason you know if I'm if I go for a book conference I would be googling wineries near me I'm always looking for the winery is near wherever I am if I'm traveling um we went to some really good wineries in the azores uh I'm always looking for wineries and people come in and this is a picture of part of my winer rack in my pantry people come in and they see all this wine and they go are you an alcoholic no if I weren't alcoholic I wouldn't have all these bogs in mine exactly no they would get emptying in the trash no just because you have a lot of wine it doesn't make you an alcoholic it's a baby's thing but you know they're babies um like the vna is they're babies and you know they're part of their crafted I think going to a winery and having the experience and like day we were talking about that over at bells up winery I mean that's the thing is tourism plays a part of it you know for for your region right um if it wasn't for travelers getting to it it's not you can't just sell wine online is what I'm saying absolutely and you know a lot of times especially for people that come to visit us yes they're they're going to be here and they're going to go see wineries but it's going to be a lot more than that you know this this region has so much going for it you know the coast is an hour and a half away we've got Mount Hood we've got all sorts of wonderful hiking trails I mean it's an outdoor paradise here it's pretty much anything you want um and so usually when when people are coming to see us you know it may be for a week trip and maybe they're going to spend two days maybe tasting wine maybe three but then the rest of the time they're going to be out enjoying all of the other amazing things that the Willamette Valley has to offer so we've always said that you know for us it's it's almost less important to seek out people that are purely about the wines than it is about wine as part of their lifestyle and that's kind of where we feel we can fit in nice and tell tell everyone a little bit more about your wines because I think you do more than Pino and that always people like oh you know there's more than Pino Noir in Oregon there is and really only now is when we're starting to see that expansion I mean our climate here in the valley is is very different than just about anybody else who's on the call we in general have a cooler wetter climate which lends itself very well to grapes that don't need a very long time to ripen so a lot of pretty much every white uh and then on the red side Pino Noir but there are others um and we're starting to get into that now but but for us um we've always looked at this area and said okay 800 wineries the vast majority of them only making Pino Noir on the red side and you know we kind of realize that A if you're a local you're probably dying for some variety B if you're here tasting wine and you've been to 10 other places and had 25 Pino Noir's by the time you get to us you're probably dying for some variety so we do that in two ways one is we purchase some fruit from over in the walla walla area it is still in Oregon so we get to say we are 100% Oregon grown and mean it but we get a Sarah and we make Cabernet from a little vineyard just across the border from from Washington and then at our vineyard site too we have a couple of very unique varietals planted one of which we do have available a Seval Blanc which is a grape that you normally find in the Finger Lakes in New York but it's planted down into Pennsylvania Ohio Michigan does really nicely in cooler weather climates and it's a great match for here and back in 2020 we also planted a northeastern Italian red grape called Skio Petino we are one of about eight plantings in the U.S. that I can find at the moment but that's a grape that's grown in the far far northeastern corner of Italy up in Fruley, foothills in the out so higher elevation not a perfect match for our weather here but it's pretty close in terms of growing season and the reason we have that is that A we wanted to diversify and B I just personally love Italian reds and I wanted to plant one and I get to be self-indulgent once in a while so we're gonna have a commercial planting within the or excuse me a commercial product within the next two years we're still kind of trying to figure out work out a couple of the kinks but we really like what we're seeing but when folks come to visit you know they absolutely love that we're kind of some of the ones taking the lead on saying hey we are capable of growing other varietals here they may not be things that are as commercially well known as you know the big boys your pinos your caps and so on and so forth but for us it's really less important because when people come to see us just you may not know what the wine is but you get to taste it you get to form your own opinions and that I think that discovery process is so much of the parts of wine we all enjoy so much and go up a little bit I mean south over to Geralt and in Medford what are some of the experiences like for folks and and the kinds of wines that they can expect to taste in Medford and are the wineries open and you know allow that kind of thing are there wine dinners that kind of thing yeah you know I mean I think that that's the great thing about our our industry is that we're really open to to growing and so you know we have to work a little bit harder there is something to do seven nights a week down here that involves wine and food and you know we have a huge diversity and climate down here as you were mentioned we have Crater Lake which is 90 minutes away from us we have the Rogue River we have Applegate Valley and then you know so people will come they'll plan their trip and they'll they'll wine taste for a couple of days like they do up in the Willamette Valley and then they'll enjoy our region which is of course as a as a destination marketing organization what we want them to do we want them to stay here a little bit longer and stay in our hotels here but you know we have stuff from live music is a really popular thing down here our zoning is a little bit different than in the Willamette Valley so there are a lot of restaurants associated with wineries so there's a you know a wine dinner almost every night if you really wanted it so that's something that's unique about our region but then you know it is it's that music it's that farming kind of feeling it's that really grassroots type of environment that you know allows for you know you to stumble upon you know three winemakers sitting at the bar at the Jacksonville Inn right and they're going to share their bottle with you so it's a really intimate industry down here but also a lot of opportunity for people to get an in-depth knowledge and you know like like in the Willamette Valley and like in I'm sure all these other regions it's you know the likelihood that you're going to walk into a tasting room and an owner or a winemaker or a kid you know I mean we have a small brand we make 250 cases a year and my partner's a winemaker and a bigger one right and we joke around he said why not let's work seven days a week right and it's like you know I'm counting the days till the girls are 21 so we don't have to work every weekend right and it's but we're there right and it makes for such an awesome intimate experience and you know we'll sit behind the bar for a while and they'll say you know we won't say anything and finally you know they'll be like oh well who makes the wine and I don't hate us they're like oh my gosh you've got to be kidding me yet you know we've just been talking about the Brit Festival down here you didn't even you know you didn't say anything so it's that grassroots and really that entrepreneurial experience that people can can get down here I want to go ahead sorry go ahead yeah Lisa I was going to add on I think what's so important about wines and wineries is that it helps the rural economy and it helps diversify rural economies all over the country and it adds that extra to an experience in a rural area so if you if they're coming for outdoor recreation then they also have the the wine tasting as part of it or if they're coming for the history of the area it just is another add-on value add to the whole experience that they're having in the rural areas and I know in Arizona it is critical to the economic vitality of rural Arizona and we have a major economic impact even though our industry is small but growing it is experiencing a true economic impact on our rural areas well especially in your area Wilcox region which is again southeast right and you're a little bit out of that area but you've got I mean that community you as the wine region started growing you've got festivals hotels or you know oh yes we have people in the hotels now it helps the restaurants if there's wineries you know that all has to happen together and you've got like bird festivals you've got you know chivel common national monument is your backyard but you've got two you know interesting experiences one is the vineyard which you open up really for members and for people at harvest hosts who take their RV and you could dry camp on their property which is cool and then you have Scottsdale you're right downtown so people could be touring art and going well before we stand in a gallery let's have some wine and you do events so it's two different experiences and we did that purposefully I mean different than I think in Oregon and we're most of our wine regions or where the grapes are actually grown and where the wineries are they're not close to any large cities and so it's not like we have a Portland in our backyard or or that you know so I am so remote it's an hour to a grocery store where I am you know so you got to really want to come to me at the vineyard and so I could sit with my doors and my gate open to my winery and sit there for a week and no one will show up so I had to find a place except the illegal is coming across the border but so I had to find a place and Scottsdale downtown Scottsdale was perfect for us to have our tasting room and it is you know we act like a mini chamber of commerce in downtown Scottsdale because we can tell people all about the wine regions of the state and if they want to venture out to those wine regions we can help them do that but we get so many international visitors as well as visitors around the country it's very successful to have our tasting room in downtown we're about a 3,000 case winery but it allows us I have wine club members all across the country because of our location in downtown and we're pretty much 100% direct consumer through that now tell everybody about your wine and the petite sura the granage the rosé the vineyard sorry and then she's got the one that um it that's for date night yeah i'm gonna watch my language the last time yeah see as spoiled her she came to visit and had a great time at our our winery and drank a lot of wine but i need brownies and yeah but but brownies not the loaded brownies yeah not the Oregon brownies yes exactly but we are 100% a state winery so all that we don't buy grapes we don't sell grapes everything that we grow is what we make and we specialize in roan varietals and we decided if we were going to spend all our money and have this second act um and work this hard we wanted to prove the to focus our energy on only four varieties so we planted um petite sura sura granage and bionier so we're mostly a a big red house we do big reds and we uh do our vineier is our only white and we don't we very we might do a blend once every couple years and otherwise we do single varietal wines and we're really known for our petite sura's they do really well at our altitude and we're on volcanic soils and they just love this location yeah so petite sura granage is a little bit more tricky um i call that the Pinot Noir of the desert so they have that same Pinot Noir profile uh at least in our location and so we get the really bright fruit that we we have in our granage but it's typically a blending rape and we don't blend it we we keep it full full varietal and then our sura has been tricky to grow for some reason and we've had difficulty but uh with um frost incidents and and uh other issues so i think this this year we finally the last couple years a couple of bitches our sura's really coming on so we're excited about that but in here's i know i know so we have we have 13 acres under production we have 40 acres on property and we have probably another you know realistically another 12 to 15 acres that we can plant and i would love to get some moved it my husband and i you know he he says i'm too old for any more grapes but i keep wanting to to get some moved that so you can do a GSM that sounds like having children oh god it's like they're very cheaper to have children i was gonna ask michael and in jasper texas you want to tell people what they can experience i mean you go to a wine dinner right and then when people also uh stay the night for for when people come stay at the bed and breakfast because it is beautiful everyone's got to go and check it out it is very beautiful here we are on eight acres we have a thousand feet of Angelina river frontage we are probably three miles from lake sam rayburn which is the largest lake in texas at 114 000 acres if you like to fish it is a top bass fishing lake um we started these wine dinners um and we're doing them on wednesday nights as a way to try to generate weekday stays because weekends are easy for us everyone's going away for the weekend they want to go somewhere that's closest two hours it's no problem but our challenge is getting our week days filled up and we thought well if we do this wine dinner then people will come you know they're not inexpensive so it's probably someone who has the flexibility to be off on thursday or you know work from home or whatever and unfortunately and also unfortunately we've had such a great turnout from locals that we're not getting overnight stays um we typically do five courses um one night we did six and they brought nine wines and that was just the longest night of my whole life and we're never doing that again um yeah it was a lot it was a lot so um but we typically do five courses and we always offer to do six wines so if there's a course that either compare can you can do like a compare and contrast of two different whites or you pair a salmon with a white and a red we do that so that we get to kind of sneak in an extra wine and um and everybody loves it it challenges we do the cooking in-house it challenges us to to try new things our last dinner um we had Brendan vineyards from Comanche Texas here and they have a cab that's called Buffalo Rome and we paired it with a bison oh wow wow trying to find a nice and tender wine was fun i know carol has to run and go drink some wine um so thank you for talking here you know i know okay yeah right well thanks for joining us everyone again travel medford.org is the website for visiting Medford Oregon in the rogue valley thank you thank you guys and sorry i have to jump off but it was pleasure and i'm i i love texas wine i'm excited to try some arizona wine and anything else out of there i got to expand my umbrella a little bit and get a little bit less will have a valet pino noir in my cellars no no don't get carried away i know i love this all right thanks you guys bye bye thanks um real quick joe i wanted to go back to virginia nyadkin valley the wineries out there um the things to do you know in with them so you how long could you spend in nyadkin valley and how long would you say going in in my no that's the stupid question i think there were 40 wineries in the yadkin valley and it is surrounded by rivers so you could be kayaking and canoeing you could be hiking you could be horseback riding um i stayed at two different wineries in olog cabins in the vineyards and several others have on property houses that you can stay in so i mean i could go back and do the same ones i did on that trip and be perfectly happy and i'd you know i'm an overachiever but even i couldn't do 40 in four days i tried i found out four is probably my max yeah that's a lot it is i don't i don't you know i see people taste and spit out i don't spit out good wine it's not in me so you know if i start early like i said if i start early in up in the morning i could probably go tasting at four different places but tasting is an hour to two to three in some cases because most of them have foods local cheeses and things that they have available um the owners the winemakers usually the same person owner and winemaker they're there pouring the wine and talking so i'm learning about the the agriculture um the history of the area um the history of a family there's one of the wineries in yakin valley that in talking and and admiring the pictures on the wall um the the winemaker was talking about this was his um in-laws winery and he his his mother-in-law and his mother met first before the children were born the mothers were in lama's class together so how cool is that they they had babies together that grew up together fell in love and married and are running this winery together wow you know that that was just a neat story that that's that's how they met was uh we met in the womb that's wild that's wild you know um yakin valley is not far from ashville either in bernsville area actually where we go to a lot um and recently on our ashville adventures and ashville show that we do every second tuesday the day before peggy peggy show every i mean every first tuesday peggies is every first wednesday um we had ashville wine tours they actually have wine tour everyone gets in a van because everyone's so spread out but uh you know we've had a few a wine wines from that area and uh it's pretty good even the built-more produces its own wine i did a la dida you know it's a state wine isn't it ah sorry that's just a terrible joke but um before you all go i've got to ask the names real quick so obviously we know joe have glass will travel she's got a good name there you know and joe goes everywhere right it joe goes everywhere is my podcast with nancy and also my instagram account that's right and so she's on every second saturday i want to go michael and obviously a sunday yes sunday plus second sunday at seven that see she's got her things going on don't take her to a casino she's gonna look for triple sevens really really and before i relinquish the mic i want to ask a question about the um pinos are you making a rosé with any of that pino not only am i making a rosé i'm making a sparkling rosé as well because i most of the time i'm not a big fan of rosé it's okay but i had one that was just oh wow it was amazing and i started examining the bottle to see why it was so amazing and it was made from pino and i thought well no wonder it was so great it started out right see no wait a minute peggy tell about your rosé i was just gonna say you got to try a rosé of garnash we do a rosé of garnash that is absolutely fabulous it's full or bodied you know so it's a it's a we we lay it down in contact with the the skin so it's a darker rosé color but it's absolutely fabulous rosé is a good good wine i mean there's just that it's just perfect for pairing and everything for summer it's a summer line what are you serving in summer like what what's a typical breakfast oh for here we do a couple of things um you know my husband and i have differing opinions on what to serve for breakfast we serve some very decadent things probably one of our favorites and one of our guest favorites is our creme brulee french toast it's really more like a bread pudding for breakfast with caramel and we serve it with fresh whipped cream and my husband slices up these delicious little honeycrisp apples and we put some of the caramel on the apples because he's a sugar hauling and so that's a way to get more sugar on the plate um and that's one of our favorites and so when you know we always try to make sure that the guest gets it when they're here and i said gully i don't want to feel like that's you know that's all we have and he said you know a lot of people come and see us just once a year and he said i think they come here to get that because they're not getting that at home so they come back and they expect it they want it because look forward to it that's what he said so we we try not to mix it up too much we do a great homemade biscuit we get you know we deal with a lot of dietary restrictions and so people really don't eat eggs or they don't eat bread and that's when you bring the wine in and say but you can drink that really i'm just like they're just like this yeah yeah really that's fermented that's a fruit course perfect oh yeah well i want to go back to the name so michael and you know the bird and butterfly in so do you get a lot of nature people that come and sit by the bird or watch birds and butterflies we we do we have in the front of our in the front of the house we have kind of a slipping terrace that goes down because we're on an elevated area above a river and we have a lot of butterfly attracting plants there but where we are in east texas is a major flyway it's a migration flyway for both birds and butterflies so we get a lot of things that come through we have local woodpeckers barred owls there's a cockaded woodpecker and we're between two national forests so we're between right up the road from us is the angelina national forest and just on the other side of lake sam rayburn is the sabine national forest and those two together are over 300 000 acres of national forest so yeah we get a lot of naturalists oh that is awesome okay so i'm gonna go to you dave and closing bells up winery tell everybody about the name and then we've got to go to peggy's name the ldv winery because that's a good name too sure so so our whole branding starts with the french horn on our logo i was a french horn player for 20 years and when i was in college i was in the symphony in the wind ensemble and uh try to play still now it's it's been a while but when we started the winery what we were thinking about was you know how do you get people to connect with the wines beyond kind of the standard technical you know aromas flavor tasting notes that that we all kind of know and and i came up with the idea of giving each one of our wines a specific personality based on either a piece of music or a composer just something that really captured what that wine felt like and kind of tied that into what did that particular piece of music feel like when when you did it so we kind of had all of that laid out and the last part of this was finding the name of the winery and we said well you know we're gonna find a property and then we'll tie something about the property location in with the theme and it just so happens that we're located on bell road uh which has no that people asked me no they did not name the road after us it would have been amazing if they did but no unfortunately the bell family has lived on this road for three generations but bells up has a very specific meaning for horn players uh the the bell is the look the end of the horn the big part where all the sound comes out and most of the time as horn players when we play that in that part of the instrument sits on top of our right leg uh and and we kind of just play that way but every once in a while you get a moment when the composer wants to throw in a little dramatic flourish and when that happens there's a little note in our part that says bells up and when that happens you raise your bell up in the air and this is your moment to be the center of attention for a little bit so it really just kind of tied in everything that we had imagined when when we started this place up um also fit some very important marketing parameters it was short it was pronounceable and it started close enough to the front of the alphabet so that we appear early on lists without looking desperate in the process and it ties back to christmas trees is which is where your property was a christmas tree farm so bells on christmas trees kind of that's just the way my mind goes as well so i love this and love this and spell it that's also important yeah it depends on how much why they pronounce it all the basic things that you know customer it and it'll be memorable for people yeah i love that i love that so tell your story ldv winery so ldv is is named after my husband's family name so lauren's and dunham vineyards uh and uh this was our second act and um it's just we connect really our tag line is what's important to us which our tag line is earth's fruits come full circle so we are a sustainable sustainably grown vineyard we are our wines are vegan our zero residual sugar they are um gluten-free so we don't have any additives on in in the even in the vineyard we don't use manure in the vineyard so if we did we couldn't call it a vegan wine and so it's it's all about our connection to the land and um and uh it's just a we just love our location it's very special awesome everyone ldv winery.com bells up winery.com if i got that right dave got it all right and then keep up with joe it joe goes everywhere on her instagram and have glass will travel.com and of course her podcast is every second sunday at seven peggies here every first wednesday and you'll see michael in around a little bit more and dave say hi to sarah and thank you all for joining us here thanks so much thank you very much thank you cheers and cheers to everyone wine yes cheers thank you for listening to big blend radios wine time with peggy show keep up with ldv winery at ldv winery.com keep up with big blend radio at big blend radio.com
