My wife, oldest daughter, and I visited Boyden Valley Wine Factory in Cambridge VT. This location is located in a pristine location of Northern Vermont with large fields all around surrounded by scenic mountains. It takes about 30-40 minutes to travel from Burlington, VT.
The tour is free and takes about 10-15 minutes to complete. The tour takes place in the basement of the main store. The tour guide describes the process of fermenting the wines in the oak barrels and stainless steel barrels (which 15 years ago was used for milk). The tour guide gave us descriptions of the fruit and grapes wines and show you their bottling plant machine, which to me didn't seem very big but can bottle up to 1000 wines per hour (I may have this number wrong but it was impressive). Most of the grapes for the wine is grown on their farm (and the vineyards are close by). Some grapes are imported from PA and other farms in VT. The tour is nice and informative but think it could be refined or retooled to describe the process from harvest to bottling. When we arrived they were had a bit vat of cranberrys fermeting for their cranberry wine (which was cool to see). The tour guide correctly answered all the tough questions from my NECI student (daughter) had for them.
Also at Boyden Valley you can spend $6 to sample a variety of wines. They start off with the white wines. My wife and I enjoyed the Cow Tipper wine which is a dry Riesling and my daughter liked this as well (even though she is not a fan of this type of wine). I like the Seyval Blanc but the girls didn't. This is a Sauvignon Blanc wine with grapes grown from PA. The Glogg wine is a red wine and is best served warm (designed to warm you up after a day after skiing). We tried a variety of fruit wines. I liked the Blueberry the best. The cranberry wine would definately go good with Thanksgiving dinner.
We tried the Ice wines where the grapes are crushed after they are frozen. These types are wines are popular in Northern regions including Canada. Workers wait for the first real frost in VT and capture the grapes. The wine is more fruity and tends to have more alcohol content and more residual sugar (also to me it seems to be thicker and sweeter). Both my daughter and I thought the Vermont Ice Red tasted more like cough medicine. However both girls really enjoyed the Vermont Ice which is made from Le Crescent grapes.
To end the our we tried the new Vermont Ice Apple Creme. This is not a wine but similar to an Irish Creme! Yum! Yum! We bought a bottle to enjoy over the holiday season. It may be available at your local NH Liquor outlet soon but will be more difficult to get into Mass. Also your glass that you sample comes with the wine tasting fee so we have two cool new glasses to remember our visit and to enjoy our wine that we bought.
Boyden Valley Web site
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