When Mullica’s unofficial historian, Louisa Mazetis, was born in 1925 — in the big stone Butterhof Shady Brook Farm on Route 30 — the glory days of local wineries were already in the past.
But she learned a lot about them, and a lot about wine, she said. That’s because the house where she was born had been the center of her grandfather’s Butterhof Winery, she said. It had a 13-foot-high wine cellar.
“There were more than 30 vineyards in the area,” Mazetis, 87, said of the countryside in and around Mullica Township and Egg Harbor City in the 19th century. Egg Harbor City had a sign across the pike that said, “The Wine City,” she said.
But problems with insects, and then Prohibition, pushed many farmers out of the wine business, she said.
“Mullica Township has no wineries now,” she said.
She hopes the rest of Mullica’s history doesn’t disappear like the wineries did.(MICHELLE BRUNETT)
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/...cle_0dd90352-bb79-11e2-beb8-001a4bcf887a.html
But she learned a lot about them, and a lot about wine, she said. That’s because the house where she was born had been the center of her grandfather’s Butterhof Winery, she said. It had a 13-foot-high wine cellar.
“There were more than 30 vineyards in the area,” Mazetis, 87, said of the countryside in and around Mullica Township and Egg Harbor City in the 19th century. Egg Harbor City had a sign across the pike that said, “The Wine City,” she said.
But problems with insects, and then Prohibition, pushed many farmers out of the wine business, she said.
“Mullica Township has no wineries now,” she said.
She hopes the rest of Mullica’s history doesn’t disappear like the wineries did.(MICHELLE BRUNETT)
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/...cle_0dd90352-bb79-11e2-beb8-001a4bcf887a.html