We love to map out a few wineries for a weekend drive and just go. It’s usually a beautiful summer day when we know the vineyards will be lush with grapes and we can enjoy the sun on our faces. But in winter, it can be better: bare grapevines against a white winter landscape hold the promise of spring buds and the fireplaces glow and cast russet onto our cheeks. A different kind of warmth, a different scene, cozy and friendly.
People ask me what has inspired me to write about wineries. I was inspired around 35 years ago at a small winery east San Luis Obispo in the hills between the ocean and the mountains where a young woman with long blonde hair told us that she came to work at a winery upon graduation from a nearby agriculture program. Somehow, until I was at a winery where they grew their own grapes and made wine on the premises, I didn’t get how much went into a bottle of wine.
After that, every winery trip has led my husband and me to sit at a tasting bar to experience the wine while talking to the person across from us about where the vineyards are, who makes the wine, and how the winery came to be. Yes, it’s fun to taste wine and notice the nuances with the swirl, the nose, the tentative tip-of-the-tongue and the swallow, noticing what happens after the wine is swallowed. The complexity of it amazes me all the time — but in order to really know wines, one has to be open to them, just like when you visit the art museum, you need to acknowledge that art takes all forms, and all of it is relevant.
Then there’s the place, the ambience, the personality of a winery, which can be super-stimulating in places like Napa or the New York Finger Lakes. I want to know why a log cabin or why the turrets or why the white-washed building? Why are the vineyards behind the building, why not be surrounded by them? What was this land before it was a winery?
In Ohio, which was called “vinland” in the mid-1800s and had 23 wineries on South Bass Island in 1900, we have a long history of winemaking and grape growing. The tasting of the wine is the same, and the experience of the places is stimulating. What I’m frequently told is “Ohio doesn’t have any good wine,” which miffs me because the people who say that haven’t traveled on the wine trails or talked to the vintners or sat by a fire to capture warmth on a brilliant February afternoon and evening.
Over the next couple of weekends, we are setting aside Sundays for exploration of new wineries that have cropped up in places in towns whose names you don’t recognize, but yet someone had the dream of planting grapes and building a tasting room and showing people how the wine is its own “grown-in-Ohio” kind of wine influenced by the climate and the soil. I’m thinking about the coziness quotient of the wineries I know (and I haven’t visited all 300 in the state) and a few stand out as being cozy in winter. Among them are Laurello and Harpersfield in the Geneva area, Quarry Hill Winery in Berlin Heights, Chateau Tebeau in Helena, and Gervasi Vineyard in Canton.
There’s no doubt that Gervasi Vineyard, which began as a Christmas tree farm and first opened as a winery in an old barn, gets a lot of hype. It’s a marvel with the main dining room in the old barn, the paths around the lake, the Italian villas and newer quarters for overnight stays, its vineyards, and all the other things that make it a destination winery. In the winter, when the patio is not an option, the Bistro, in the renovated barn, serves upscale rustic cuisine by candlelight. Through the windows when sipping wine at the bar waiting for a table, winter is something to look at from a distance. Candlelight warms the romantic space, and a hearty pasta served with their Abbraccio Cabernet Sauvignon, will warm you up from the inside out. The wood throughout the old barn glows from within and the downstairs dining room has a large fireplace.
The only time I visited in Helena was when I interviewed Bob and Mary Tebeau and took pictures for Ohio’s Lake Erie Wineries. I remember the fireplace, the high ceilings, the windows, the charm. It’s time to go back to this winery an hour-and-a-half from the Cleveland area, in the winter, and combined with other nearby wineries, like the historic Fireland winery and newer Cooper Whale, also in Sandusky County. The Traminette and Noiret will be sipped in front of the stone fireplace and pizza will be the perfect accompaniment.
Quarry Hill, on a ridge south of Lake Erie where on a clear day one can see the lake in the distance, is west of Cleveland in Berlin Heights, on your way to Sandusky. The first time I met Mac McLelland was when he was serving his wines at the Quarry Hill Orchards fruit stand owned by Bill Gammie and was dreaming of having his own winery. Today, the winery is surrounded by its own grapes and serves its own wine, and the stone fireplace dominates the multi-windowed tasting room. Relaxed, informal, and pleasant, a getaway to Quarry Hill on a Friday or Saturday night when music is played, would be a treat.
As we plan our trips to wine country in February and March, the newer wineries will be the focus, but wo places we’ll likely visit in the Geneva area are Laurello and Harpersfield. There are so many excellent wineries on what the Ohio Wine Producers Association calls the Vines and Wines Trail, it takes a three-day weekend to visit my favorites. While Harpersfield has one of the best fireplaces in the area, and it really does warm up the place like a French farmhouse, Laurello’s Tuscan-style leather furniture and pictures of Italy make me feel at home, and I’m not Italian. I’ll never forget sitting in one of those leather chairs signing books. But yet I love the drive up through the vineyards at Harpersfield and the hope that the dogs will be on the premises. Both wineries have a rich heritage and have operated as wineries serving mostly dry wines for many years.
While writing this article, I’ve experienced the way writing and exploring and dreaming can fire up the imagination. I hope you’ll have a chance to visit some wineries in winter too. Make sure to check hours before you venture out and review wineries maps so you can wander. You don’t want to miss a winery that’s just down the road!
Claudia J. Taller is the author of Ohio’s Lake Erie Wineries and Ohio’s Canal Country Wineries and has written extensively about Ohio’s wineries. Look for upcoming articles about her journeys on the wine trails of Ohio.
Canton, OH 44721
525 OH-635, Helena, OH 43435
Berlin Heights, OH 44814
Geneva, OH 44041
Geneva, OH 44041