Southern Maryland Tour - Part II - The Winery

After stopping to ogle the tobacco farm, we made it to Friday's Creek Winery.  We stopped to talk with the vitaculturist on the way in, who taught us (or tried to teach us) something about the grapes that they grow there and what wines they are used to produce.

These vines were hard hit by the storms, and the week of rains with TS Lee, and apparently, a significant part of their crop this year was lost as a result.  These vines are bare as a result of a mildew following all the rain.  The grapes are scorched and dried and not worth making wine out of.

One of the controlled temperature rooms for cellaring the wine in oak barrels.  It smelled wonderful...

The business end of the winery.  A large heap of de-stemmed grapes is being given an initial fermentation to release the color from the skins and produce the color for a red wine.  They'll be further crushed and the juice extracted to ferment into wine in the steel vats to the right.

We stayed a while and tried a few wines.  John bought a bottle of red and a bottle of white, to carry home in checked baggage.  I don't think I'll need to buy wine for another year...