South Jersey Locavore goes to the Jersey Fresh Food & Wine Festival

On Saturday, the boys and I drove down to Heritage Vineyards for the Jersey Fresh Food & Wine Festival. I enjoyed my day there, but I have one gripe and I’ll get it over with first. Then, I’ll move on to the fabulous wines. What’s my gripe? The lack of Jersey Fresh food. There was one small stand selling some produce. Other than that, the food for sale was not Jersey Fresh. It was the typical festival vendors. It would be great to see some local restaurants come in and sell food that centers around what’s in season in like they had at the East Coast Food & Wine Festival.

Wait, I have a second gripe. No where online did they have the speaker information. At least it wasn’t easily findable. So I missed George Taber speak, again. If I had known there were going to be  speakers, I may have farmed the boys off to friends for the day so I could have gone to some of the presentations. I do believe I’m going t0 start stalking George Taber just to meet him and get him to autograph his book.

Okay, on to the non-griping. There were 26 New Jersey wineries at the festival. I couldn’t possibly taste every wine from each winery that was there, so I decided to not visit the tents of wineries that I’ve been to or that were at the East Coast Food & Wine Festival. I also decided to taste only two or three wines from each winery. I was driving, and I had the boys with me. I left a lot of wine untasted, but that just means I’m going to have to start getting out and visiting the wineries themselves.

The first winery I believe I’m going to take a trip to is Auburn Road in Pilesgrove.

I liked two of the wines I tasted from Auburn Road very much. I tried their 2008 White Bottle and their 2007 Classico. The Classico is described as a Garden State Super Tuscan because it’s made in a similar way that the Super Tuscans from Italy are made. The Classico is something I will definitely be drinking come this fall/winter when the days get cooler and I switch back to deep reds.

I’m looking forward to checking out Auburn’s wine bar where you can drink their wine and on Fridays enjoy a meal made by a local caterers, chefs and special guests from all over the area.

I may have missed meeting George Taber, but I did get to meet John Debella. It’s actually not the first time I’ve met the Philadelphia radio icon, but it’s been well over a decade. It is the first time my boys got to meet him, and they were thrilled to meet someone famous and get his autograph. WMGK had a contest going on where you could answer class rock trivia questions and if you got the question right, you could spin the “wheel of wine” for a prize. After having to phone my husband to help me with the answer to “name three singers from Van Halen,” I got to spin and earned two stamps in my New Jersey wine passport book.

Another winery I was introduced to at the festival is Natali Vineyards in Cape May Court House. I was introduced to their wines by Diana who introduced me to the winemaker and poured me three of their wines – Cedar Hammock, Pinot Grigio, and Viognier. They were all good, but I was especially blown away by the Cedar Hammock – a blend  of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes and aged at least two years in oak barrels. I’m discovering that New Jersey does great red blends.

I ran into Tina, better known as SouthJerzeyGirl to those on Twitter. Tina works for the South Jersey Tourism, and she’s a big supporter of our local foods and beverages. We enjoyed tasting some of our state’s great wines together. I also ran into John and Lisa from John and Lisa are eating in South Jersey. They were just arriving as we were leaving. Don’t you love the fashionable green wristbands?

Four Sister’s Winery from Belvidere had a Cayuga – a semi-dry white – and a Papas’s Red – a table wine – that I liked a lot.

Each winery was given these bags that held 6 bottles of wine to use for purchases. I found the bag a little awkward to use, especially when there was an odd number of bottles in it.

I visited a few other wineries, too, and I was impressed by at least one wine at each one (remember I was only tasting two or three per winery). In no specific order, here are the other wineries whose tents I made it to and one wine from each that stood out.

Plagido Winery in Hammonton – Cabernet/Merlot blend

Heritage Vineyards in Richwood – 2007 Chardonnay “no oak”

Sylvin Farms Winery in Germania – Sauvignon Blanc

Wagonhouse Winery in Mullica Hill – Jersey Girl (big surprise that I liked this one because it’s a sweet white with natural flavors added – sweet but yummy)

I didn’t get to all the wineries I would have liked to, but it was very hot and the boys had been good sports so we only stayed 2 1/2 hours. Slowly but surely, however, I’ll be tasting more wines from our region and reporting back to you on what I discover.