Garden State Wine Festival, In The Pines 9-19 and 20

RednekF350

Piney
Feb 20, 2004
4,944
3,080
Pestletown, N.J.
At the beautiful Valenzano winery in Shamong this weekend with a lot of good food, entertainment, helicopter rides over Wharton and Wine !!
We might stay home and hit this this weekend.
I have had a lot of their wines and they give mine a run for the money.

They are expecting 10,000 people. Yikes !!
Jeff can walk home from this one if he has to.
http://www.valenzanowine.com/news.html#events

Scott
 

RednekF350

Piney
Feb 20, 2004
4,944
3,080
Pestletown, N.J.
I agree they have some nice wine but it certainly lacks the punch of good 'ole CrAzy JuIce.

Tom,
Mine hits about 18% alcohol because of the small amount of sugar that I add and because I let it "run till it's done".
Commercial wine makers typically monitor fermentation activity with a hydrometer and put the brakes on at around 12% by adding potassium metabisulfite to kill all biological (yeast) activity.
I monitor nothing and when the airlock goes silent, it's done.
Sulfites give a lot of people headaches and that is why you see the warning on every bottle of commercially sold wine.
No chemicals in mine and the high alcohol becomes its own lethal weapon against any surviving yeast or any other bio activity.
Scott
 

PINEY MIKE

Explorer
Jan 30, 2009
707
25
Bamber Lake
We make a poopload of wine too and add nothing, not even yeast. Does this wine festival have all the NJ wineries (Garden State Wine Growers Assoc.) there so you can go from tent to tent tasting all their wine? The site doesnt say. My favorite fest is at Alba vineyard in NW NJ. We go each Fall and its always a blast. Its nice up there too with the vineyard, rolling mountains, cornfields, etc. Sometimes the foliage shows up early too. Be sure to bring a small table and your own food spread, as its always overpriced at these events (sounds like this fest is strictly for this vineyard so maybe the whole food thing is different). FYI, they all say its the biggest fest, but the biggest and best is the Grand Harvest at Alba.
 

subkron

New Member
Nov 5, 2008
20
0
We've being going to that wine fest for a few years now. They only have their (Valenzano) wines for tasting, but the music is usually good and the food there is pretty good, but perhaps a bit overpriced. We always bring chairs and pack some food/snacks since we usually purchase a bottle to drink while there. They have a number of good wines, so we also usually purchase some when we leave.

To be honest we're probably not going there anymore since the crowds have really grown over the past couple of years. It was really a great way to spend the day when they first started the fest, but now you have to deal more with crowds at the tasting area and also in the music area. Great for the winery, but I guess I got spoiled when it was a bit more intimate.
 
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