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CO VER S T OR Y EAST NY Scranton PENNSYLVANIA Blair Vineyards OH Pittsburgh Lancaster MD WV VA DE NJ Philadelphia The winery and tasting room at Blair are visible at left in this aerial photo, while the vineyards stretch down the hill to the right and face southeast, south and southwest. the hillside and contains the stainless steel tank room, the barrel room, a bottling area and finished bottle storage. Because the building is based on bed- The winery With the vineyard site planted, Blair turned his attention to designing his winery. One Oregon winery he visited particularly inspired him. The three-tier, gravity-flow winery at Penner-Ash Wine Cellars in Newberg, Ore., appealed to Blair because of the potential for gently handling the grapes as they were moved from picking lugs to fermenting tanks, and the wine from barrel storage and finally bottling. The hillside Greenwich site was ideal for building a gravity-flow winery. Blair, who worked in the family real estate develop- ment and construction company Blair and Son Inc., now located in Paoli, Pa., outside Philadelphia for many years, designed the basic plan, while the finishing details were done by a local architectural firm, Home Field Advantage, in Pottstown, Pa. The top level is the main entrance into the winery and consists of the tasting room, a kitchen, offices and an outside covered tasting pavilion. Grapes also come in from the vineyard at this level, and lugs are dumped into the destemmer- crusher or directly into fermentors on the middle level. The lowest level is built into rock, there is no heat in the lowest level. The natural geo-thermal temperature re- mains between 55° and 65°F in the barrel room, while the storage room gradually shifts from a low of 40° to a maximum of 70°F in the summer. The winery was built in 2009-10, with Blair acting as his own general contrac- tor. The facility opened in summer 2010 and is now producing 12,000 gallons of wine. Initially, Blair handled everything from growing the grapes through making and bottling the wine. He soon realized, however, that he prefers to be in the vineyard and leave the winemaking to his consultant, Catherine Peyrot des Gashons, and her assistant, Hilary Gary, who does cellar work and some wine marketing. Peyrot des Gashons, who graduated from the University of Bordeaux, has worked at wineries in Burgundy and Oregon and cur- rently lives in Philadelphia. Gary worked as a financial planner and now is both learning from Peyrot des Gashons and participating in the enology program at the Harrisburg Area Community College. All grapes are handpicked into lugs, which are delivered to the top level of the winery 2 tons at a time. Some of the whites are fermented as whole clus- ters, while others go through the PMH crusher-destemmer that Blair bought from More Wine in California. Chardonnay goes directly into barrels for fermenta- tion. Primary fermentation occurs on the second level in 1-ton bins and in variable- capacity tanks ranging in size from 1 to 5 tons, which Blair purchased from GW Kent in Ypsilanti, Mich. Various strains of yeast are added to the different lots of wine depending on the varietal and style of wine that Blair is planning to make. Punch down is done hydraulically by a special piece of equipment by the SK Group, which Blair found in France and purchased through Pleasantville, N.Y.- based Prospero Equipment Corp. It takes approximately five minutes to punch down a cap using this equipment. Press- ing is done using the 35-hectoliter press manufactured by SK Group and sold by Prospero Equipment. Blair believes that variety in barrels is the best way to achieve a balance of flavors, and consequently he has acquired barrels from a variety of sources including Dargaud & Jaegle Tonnellerie (from Pre- mier Wine Cask), Tonnellerie Cadus from Bouchard Cooperages and Seguin Moreau. Chardonnay is the only variety that Blair ferments in oak. He uses 228- and 400-liter barrels for the Chardonnay and, depending on the season, leaves it in the barrel for seven to 10 months. All of his other wines are fermented in open-top fer- mentors; Pinot Noir is then put in French oak (90%) and Hungarian oak (10%) for Wines & Vines MARCH 2012 29