Todd Trzaskos - Wines of Vermont: A History of Pioneer Fermentation

Published by American Palate

A Division of The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright 2015 by Todd Trzaskos

All rights reserved

Images are courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted.

First published 2015

e-book edition 2015

ISBN 978.1.62585.618.0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015945063

print edition ISBN 978.1.46711.813.2

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

Recently, on an unusually warm spring night, I sat at table with Todd Trzaskos at a dinner welcoming a good friend who was in the States to tour and represent her familys wines from Sicily. She came to us for a short visit halfway through the trip, seeking a little rest and to refuel for the remainder of her travels. She and my husband, Caleb, cooked a Sicilian meal together with ingredients from our farm, and we invited a group of friends interested in things like wine, food, cooking and agriculture to come share in the bounty and the conversation.

By the time we had finished inviting everyone, there were twenty-four of us. We were a group of wine and food professionals, cooks, farmers, filmmakers and environmentalists. Almost all of us lived within ten miles of one another, except some friends who had come from as far as New York City and Quebec. We ate and drank, passing dishes of little herbed omelets and home-cured meats, couscous brought from our friends farm in Sicily and roast chicken with braised greens. While pouring whites and reds along with the food, the conversation was lively and full of ideas about what was happening in the present and what the future would hold for farming, cooking and fermentation.

After the meal was done, local bottles began to emerge in honor of our friend. Some ciders were openedone macerated with black currants, another young and sparkly. We offered tastes of one of our soon-to-be-released ptillant naturels, and Todd pulled out a white blend he had made from grapes from a Cornell test site on the New York side of Lake Champlain and grapes from our vineyard on the Vermont side of the lake. There was a red wine, as well, made and blended in the same way, reminiscent of a Loire Valley Chinon.

I looked around for a moment at our small community of people in this little corner of the soulful state we call home who believe in things like a sense of place and a taste of place. I knew that this was the culmination of Todds idea of a perfect evening. We were all here, fully invested in one another and what was in our glassesand what was in those glasses represented a wide spectrum of the possibilities of wine in Vermont.

I met Todd Trzaskos back in 1996, when Caleb and I opened our little bakery that would one day become the small restaurant we had always envisioned. Todd and his wife, Andrea, would come in daily for coffee, pastries, sandwiches or a light lunch, and we became friends initially over the coffee bar. I knew Todd for about ten years, and during that time it became apparent that we had a mutual interest as students of wine. We would meet at wine dinners that we would host or attend at other restaurants or at the yearly trade tastings put on by the active community of wine distributors in Vermont. We compared notes, talked about the kinds of wines we were tasting and the kinds of wines that intrigued us most.

By 2007, we had both started making our own home wines, but from juice and grapes from elsewhere. I dont think either of us realized yet the extent of the winegrowing community here in Vermont, but we were both so hungry to witness fermentation and the alchemy of grapes into wine that we were happy to have anything for raw materials to bring to the glass. Todd had already tried his hand at cider and beer years before, and while I was initially drawn to making wine purely for my own education as a sommelier, Todd had long held a dream of making wine since he was a child. Watching his own family traditions and the growth of a few small wineries near his familys home captivated even his twelve-year-old attention. By the mid-2000s, Cornell had planted a test site near his parents house on the New York side of the lake, and as the adult version of that child once enchanted by the notion of land, vine and wine, he knew he had to get involved.

After that first year of making wine for his friends and family, many pieces coalesced, and a certain lightning struck. With his involvement with the Cornell test site and his interest in local food and wine in general, it became clear to him that wine in Vermont was a movement that was really happening and digging roots deep into our Vermont soil, not just something that would flash quickly. He came across producers who intrigued him, and he found the work they were doing with cold-hardy grapes made from horticultural crosses compelling. But he saw that like in any burgeoning wine region, there were growing pains. By 2009, Todd had started Vermont Wine Media, a Vermont wine blog that provides news, announcements and wine and media reviews, a long-percolating brainchild that he saw could offer a venue for education, discussion and passionate support of the Vermont-grown and made wines that he was now experiencing. Through this blog, it became his mission to assist Vermont wines in continuing their trajectory, whether it was providing a base of wine-tasting education or a roundtable for local producers who wanted to share their working wines for feedback, encouragement and knowledge.

Just as the blog had been brewing for some time, this book on Vermont wines has been long fermenting. Todd began talking about this project of compiling a history of our own winethe story of the producers and the character of this landshortly after he became aware of the energy and enterprise behind the wine that was being made and the vineyards being planted. He wanted to chart and capture the evolution of what was happening and how planting vines and making wine here in this seemingly inhospitable place, in this newer guise of Vermont agriculture, was giving rise to a new farming paradigm for the state and for farmers. Wine as a prism for the grace of our own terroir, that mysterious collaboration of geology, geography, climate, vine, culture and human hand, was and is proving to be an endless source of interest and inspiration.

Todd brings this book together, painting a portrait in both broad and fine strokes, of our Vermont wine map, charting the history of where weve been and where we are going, of what our land was and is and what it can be. Inspired by that childhood vision of wine around Lake Champlain, this book, too, serves as an inspiration for Vermont winegrowers today and for those who will follow in this agrarian tradition, helping give voice to our unique and unfolding sense of place.

DEIRDRE HEEKIN

la garagista farm + winery
Barnard, Vermont