Drink up, Florida

COURTESY PHOTO "Country White," by Henscratch Farms Inc. of Lake Placid, was voted best. On the Saturday morning before Easter, Fred and Wendy Weaver arrived at Eden Winery, just off State Road 80 before it reaches Alva. The Ohio residents said they turned off the road because the weather was dreary and they saw the sign. They sat looking out at the vineyards and palm trees, sipping a glass of Alva Rouge, a light, fruity red, on the porch.

"It's pretty good," Mr. Weaver said.

Florida wine? Sounds iffy. Yet, Florida wines competed impressively against 34 other states and 10 foreign countries at the 104th Florida State Fair in Tampa in February. The Sunshine State is no Burgundy, France, but can apparently hold its own.

"More competitors entered this year's wine competition than any other previous year," Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles H. Bronson said. "We're very pleased with the exceptional performance by Florida wineries during this prestigious international competition."

Thirteen wineries from up and down the panhandle (there are 16 total in the state), came home with 64 medals after 27 judges including sommeliers, wine writers, wine sellers, wine educators, winemakers and probably even winos, tasted approximately 1,800 wines.

PHOTO CREDIT Left, Eden Winery owner Mildred Kiser began a wine tasting for travelers from Illinois and Michigan; she's been there 28 years. Top, the entrance to Eden, one of the southernmost vineyards and wineries in the United States. Henscratch Farms Inc., of Lake Placid won the top prize - Best of Show - for its "Country White," made of a large type of Muscadine grape native to the southeastern United States called Scuppernong.

"The fruit quality is so intense, so they have a tendency to finish better at a sweeter level," Henscratch proprietor Johanne Lauchman said. "That's why the wines of the South are always sweeter wines. The white wines are generally a sweeter, husky flavor and the red wines are rich, robust fruit flavors."

Florida Weekly wine columnist Jim McCracken said that while Florida wines won't have the wide-ranging complexities of wines grown in climates that are not warm, humid and sub-tropical, winemakers are learning to adapt.

"States like Oregon, Washington and California have climates and soil that allows them to use traditional European grapes and growing methods," he said. "But Florida wineries are left to do the best they can with what they have.

"Your traditional wine grapes - Cabernets, Chardonnays, Merlots - aren't very well suited to our sandy soil and environment. (Florida winemakers) are doing what they can with what can be grown around here. New York State wineries went through this same genesis - this same birth - of what would work well. For example, they found that the Riesling grape, which is grown most prominently in Germany, Austria and Alsace-Lorraine, also works well in New York.

"That's what areas like New York, Florida, Ohio and Texas have to do to produce wine. They do it in niches. They can find one or two or three products that do fairly well. But across the board, they're producing lots from native American grapes and also lots of fruits."

Some Florida wineries are making wines from Key limes, mango, passion fruit and oranges. Eden Winery sells one made with Carambol, or Starfruit.

Florida Orange Groves Winery in St. Petersburg, which won three Gold medals and five Silver medals at the fair, bills itself as the only citrus winery in the world. They also make blackberry, blueberry and pineapple wine - 33 different types of wine in all said owner Raymond Shook.

"It sort of bothers me when we talk so much about grapes all the time when the wines that taste good are being made up here," he said. "And they do really taste good."

Florida may now be competitive when it comes to wine tasteings, but not production. For example, even though Shook has expanded his operation, with the capacity to ship about 50,000 cases of wine per year, that's nothing compared to big California wineries which can ship out upwards of 300,000 cases. And restaurants don't generally carry Florida wines.

"Until the customer knows about the fruit wines and says to that restaurant, 'Don't you have any of those nice mango wines that Florida is known for,' they're not going to carry them," he said.

A few years ago, Shook developed a grapefruit wine that would go with seafood, and tried for about two years to sell it to Red Lobster.

"Finally one of the restaurant managers here in St. Pete that I got to know said, 'You know, you're wasting your time, because even if you got through the door, Sutter Home is selling their wines for less."

Viticulture coordinator with the Department of Agriculture, Tom Thomas, said Florida wineries haven't gotten the attention they deserve.

"They've moved out of the bottom pier and into a (higher level) on the winemaking scale," he said. "It's not actually that recent - I think they're just not getting a lot of press on it. For 8 or 9 years they've been doing pretty well, but it's just now starting to come to light."

And McCracken said the future of Florida winemaking is sunny.

"As winemakers learn more and more about how to do it here, they're going to get better and better," he said.