TodayVineyard yields a ton of grapes, hopes
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Lori Smarr picks grapes at Bonnybrook Vineyard in South Midlleton Township. Her and her husband own the vineyard and sell their grapes to a winery in Adams county. (Michael Bupp/The Sentinel)
Lori Smarr admits she didn’t realize the amount of work it would take to run a vineyard.
But as she stood among the vines picking grapes alongside her family and friends on Sunday, she seemed to be enjoying herself.
“It’s a fun way to bring the family together and do something good for the community,” she said.
Lori and her husband, Larry, own Bonnybrook Vineyards in South Middleton Township. They planted the grapes in 2003.
“This is our first mature year,” Larry Smarr said.
The Smarrs have three-and-a-half acres of grapes, or 2,952 vines.
“It has the potential to produce 10 to 12 tons of grapes,” Larry Smarr said.
Their vines include Cabernet Franc, Traminette and Chardonnay.
“We lost all our Chardonnay last year due to powdery mildew,” Larry Smarr said. He said disease is a big issue in the East, but “the soil is good. The climate is more similar to Europe than California.”
Fortunately this year, the crops fared much better.
Under blue skies and warm breezes Saturday and Sunday, the Smarr family and friends fanned out across the vineyard to harvest more than a ton of grapes, which were immediately trucked to Adams County Winery in Ortanna.
“We can make a good wine out of them,” said John Kramb, co-owner of Adams County Winery, who was helping to pick the grapes on Sunday.
“Time is critical,” he said. “We’ll process these tonight.”
Adams County Winery works with four vineyards in Pennsylvania. Each year, the winery bottles 25,000 gallons of wine, or about 125,000 bottles.
The grapes picked Sunday at Bonnybrook were Cabernet Franc, which will go into the winery’s Red Shadows wine.
“It’s a nice red wine,” Kramb said.
But don’t expect to see it on the shelves this year. “It will be a year before this is put in a bottle,” Kramb explained.
Prior to starting their vineyard, the Smarrs had no experience in grapes.
“We had a nice hillside and an interest in grapes,” Larry Smarr explained.
“We’ve seen a lot of vineyards and they looked so pretty,” his wife added.
So they planted the smallest amount of grapes that would allow them to be commercially viable.
“We knew there was a market for the grapes,” Larry Smarr said.
They spent a lot of time attending seminars and reading books on vineyards. And their work crew — about 15 helped harvest this year — is made up of family and friends.
The couple believes in supporting other local businesses, like Adams County Winery, and keeping the land as working agriculture. It had been a sheep farm before they purchased it and they have no plans to develop any part of their six acres.
Now that the harvest is nearly complete, the next step is for the regular fall maintenance and then the vines will be left alone until February, when up to 80 percent of the foliage is pruned off to make way for next year’s growth.
Then the process — and the work — begins again.
“It’s been a lot more work than I expected,” Lori Smarr said. “But this year, the weather’s been fabulous. It’s been fun.”
