Maryland spotlights wine industry in opening of tourism campaign

05-21-2009

 

BALTIMORE (May 20) – The Maryland Tourism Office is launching a new promotional campaign – Maryland Spotlight – that features a monthly focus on an individual aspect or theme of Maryland travel. May’s spotlight is the Maryland wine industry. In June, the theme will be free things to do in the state. July’s focus is “buying local” particularly from a culinary aspect highlighting the state’s abundance of fresh produce and seafood. And in August, the emphasis will be on family fun.

As part of this effort, the Tourism Office is also encouraging residents and visitors to call attention to their favorite attractions and destinations in the state through the Spotlight on Maryland Treasures promotion. Individuals can enter photos of their favorite Maryland travel treasures in an online monthly contest hosted by the Tourism Office’s web site, www.visitmaryland.org.

“Maryland wine and Maryland tourism are a natural pairing,” says Margot Amelia, director of the Tourism Office, about May’s spotlight. “Visiting wineries – especially with the development of new wine trails in the state – has traditionally been considered a popular niche in the tourism industry.”

New wineries are also emerging across the state. Maryland now has 36 licensed wineries, of which 28 are open for business. The industry has tripled during the past six years, says Kevin Atticks, director of the Maryland Wineries Association (MWA). “We’re opening five wineries this year, six or seven next year. Pretty soon, we’ll have 50 wineries in the state.”

According to MWA reports, Maryland wineries sold approximately 1.36 million bottles of wine during fiscal year 2008, which translated into slightly more than $15 million in total sales. During fiscal 2002, state wineries sold 503,000 bottles, yielding $5.5 million in total sales.

Moreover, during the past five years, wine sales have expanded an average of nearly 20 percent annually, Atticks says. The figure was 23 percent from 2004 to 2005, and 18 percent from 2007 to 2008.

A reflection of Maryland’s burgeoning wine industry is the growing number of festivals and events that the wineries host both individually and collectively. “The festivals are a huge draw – (bringing in) 70,000 or 80,000 visitors each year,” he says. Festivals and wine-tasting events, he adds, “are the best way to introduce people to wines.”

Follow the wine trail

Wine trails are also propelling Maryland wineries. The trails allow travelers to visit a cluster of wineries in a specific region. For instance, the Frederick Wine Trail, an hour west of Baltimore, includes seven wineries – the largest concentration of wineries in the state. Frederick County is an area steeped in Civil War heritage.

The Mason-Dixon Wine Trail is a collection of eight wineries near the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. Four of the wineries are on the Maryland side. It was in this Piedmont Plateau region of Maryland where Maj. John Adlum operated a vineyard on his farm in Havre de Grace at the onset of the 19th century.

He sent a sample of his wine, made from native vines, to another wine expert – Thomas Jefferson, who was president at the time. The president endorsed Adlum’s decision to use native grapes after he sampled the Maryland-made wine. Later, in 1823, Adlum wrote the first American book on viticulture and winemaking. He has since been known as the “Father of American Viticulture.”

Both the Frederick and Mason-Dixon trails have a historical flavor. The Patuxent Wine Trail in Southern Maryland does, too. Launching this month, the Patuxent Trail links five Southern Maryland wineries in a region that also contains the beginning of the Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail.

Solomons Island in Calvert County is where Joshua Barney, a retired Revolutionary War naval captain, led his “Chesapeake Flotilla” – a small fleet of barges and gunboats – to fend off the much larger British fleet that had turned off from the Chesapeake Bay to sail up the Patuxent River. The British were en route to razing Washington, D.C., in 1814, during the closing weeks of the War of 1812.

As a wine district, Calvert County is where wineries have been experimenting with their products – a reflection of the diversity of wines produced and grapes grown there, Atticks says.

The two other trails to debut in 2009 are the Chesapeake Wine Trail – also opening this month – on the Eastern Shore and the Piedmont Wine Trail, which includes wineries in Baltimore and Harford counties.

Favorable topography, climate

When Atticks considers the Mid-Atlantic states from a wine perspective, he says Maryland has a distinct advantage. “We’re lucky. With our topography and climate, we have all of the major classifications of wine-growing regions here.”

Vineyards in Western Maryland produce grapes, such as cabernet franc, that can withstand cold temperatures and a short growing season. The Piedmont Plateau in Central Maryland, where the state’s oldest wineries are located, is a good area for cabernet sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay and pinot gris, he says.

The two newer grape-growing regions in the state are the Eastern Shore and Southern Plain. With a climate tempered by the Chesapeake Bay – warm days and cool nights – the Eastern Shore is Maryland’s fastest-growing wine region. Southern Maryland, another expanding region, has hot days and hot nights, making it suitable for Southern Italian and Mediterranean grapes – barbera and sangiovese, for instance.

Though Southern Maryland was long known as a tobacco-growing region, grapes are becoming the crop of choice. It was in this part of Maryland, after all, where Gov. Charles Calvert planted 200 acres of European grapes on the east bank of the St. Mary’s River in 1662
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