With legislative hurdles cleared, Brandywine farm enters winemaking business as other farmers take a wait-and-see approach
Other farmers take a wait-and-see approach
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As a half-dozen friends and family manned a makeshift grape-sorting station in the driveway of his Brandywine home, Joseph Romano scrambled around his garage-turned-winery, tinkering with the six large metal fermentation tanks installed inside.
Several hundred feet down the driveway Aug. 26, his wife, Jo-Ann Romano, was working with a few other friends and neighbors to cut bushels of grapes from rows of vines on their two-acre farm. Aside from the occasional crate of grapes that spilled on the way from the vineyard to the driveway, things ran smoothly.
The county's agricultural community has been searching for a profitable alternative to tobacco since the state bought out that crop in 2000, so the Romanos say they know their progress will be watched.
"A lot of people look back and remember ... their grandparents had grape plants, and they picked them and made jelly. No one had the volume to make wine to sell retail," Jo-Ann Romano said. "It's more curiosity on how the process goes to a commercial scale."
The Romanos hope to turn the grapes they've been growing since 2006 into 7,500 bottles of wine by next summer. They harvested about 2.5 tons of grapes for a white wine between Aug. 26 and 28, and plan to harvest grapes for a red wine soon.
Like tobacco, which dominated Maryland's agricultural economy for centuries, grapes flourish in local soil. The Romanos and one other local farmer, Gordon Gemeny, who has a 200-acre farm in Brandywine, began growing grapes in 2006.
The Romanos and Gemeny were among farmers and wine enthusiasts who successfully petitioned Maryland and Prince George's County lawmakers to streamline liquor laws that were a hodgepodge of county-specific rules and alter county zoning codes this year to allow for local wineries. In the past, Prince George's County farmers could make up to 200 gallons of wine for personal consumption — each gallon of grape juice produces about five bottles of wine — but until the laws were changed this year, could not mass-produce or sell it.
There are 42 licensed wineries in Maryland, according to Kevin Atticks, executive director of the Maryland Wineries Association, which promotes the interest of state vineyards and wineries. Licenses are also pending for three wineries, including the Romanos'.
Atticks confirmed the Romanos' suspicion that other local farmers and members of the agricultural community are waiting to see how they do before starting their own vineyard or winery.
"This happens when wineries open in new places," Atticks said. "You've got the entire farming community ... watching to see if this is a viable use."
Although the legislative battle is over, the Romanos face a host of new challenges, from combating crop diseases and bad weather to financing their operation. Atticks said starting a vineyard usually costs between $9,000 to $15,000 per acre, while the start-up costs of a winery can run anywhere from $40,000 to several million dollars, depending on the operation's size.
The Romanos declined to reveal how much they've spent to date on the vineyard and winemaking machinery, which includes everything from the vines and trellises to the grape destemmer and fermentation tanks. Jo-Ann Romano did say that they've financed the operation with assistance from state and local matching grants.
Once juice is squeezed from the harvested grapes, it goes through an initial round of fermentation lasting a week to 10 days, and is then moved to another tank for a second round of fermentation that can last several months, Jo-Ann Romano said. Joseph Romano said they plan to start bottling in April. They have yet to name their wine but expect to sell it at local farmers markets and on the farm for between $11 and $14 per bottle.
Gemeny said he turned down grant programs to help finance his winery because they placed restrictions on how he ran his two-acre vineyard. He estimates he has spent at least $60,000 on his vineyard and winery equipment so far. Although Gemeny said he has produced a few dozen gallons of wine for personal consumption, he has not applied for a license yet.
"I want to make sure that we can make a commercially acceptable quality of wine before I spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars," he said.
The one area the Romanos say they aren't too worried about is the market for their product. Jo-Ann Romano said they plan to capitalize on the growing demand for locally grown products around the metropolitan region.
"Less people are [farming] because the public in general had lost appreciation for a homegrown thing," she said. "That's something that got lost and it's picking up again."
ztillman@gazette.net
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