No snooty French wine stewards or hearty Australian grape-growers rated Whidbey Island’s first Home Vintners competition. That satisfied everyone who entered just fine. While people who entered wanted some confirmation of their exquisite products, they weren’t looking for world-wide acclaim. Just some feedback on the beverage they had coddled along from fruit picking to fermentation.
Three Central Whidbey judges took their job seriously when deciding winners of the inaugural amateur winemaking competition last Thursday in Coupeville. Ron Cope’s plum wine took best of show; the Oak Harbor man’s raspberry wine also was named a judges’ choice. Ken Bloom of Freeland created a lemberger while Mark Kincy of Oak Harbor developed an Oregon pinot gris. Both also received judges’ choice honors.
“We have the good fortune to celebrate really great foods on Whidbey. Penn Cove Shellfish ships mussels around the world — highlighting all our island’s bounty will do good for the community,” Rita Kuller of Central Whidbey Chamber of Commerce said. Next year, the challenge will officially be associated with early March’s Penn Cove Mussel Festival.
Cooking up a wine race is one way Kuller and others are keeping Penn Cove Mussel Festival exciting, and promoting all that Whidbey has to offer.
“We started the competition because we wanted to highlight all of Whidbey Island’s fine foods — not just mussels. We wanted to get winemakers involved in the festival because what accents mussels better than wine?,” Kuller said. “And we wanted to have local people judging local products.”
Beth Graves, owner of Bayleaf gourmet foods, Frank Rayle of Greenbank Cellars and Jeff Hume, who described himself as the “common man’s opinion,” focused on 20 brown-bagged bottles.
They poured wine slowly, swirled glasses and held them to lights, they inhaled the bouquets. Finally, they sipped, and sipped again.
“Great nose,” “Very true,” “Round and ripe,” “Nice tannins,” “Light and lovely,” the judges murmured as they circled the table.
The judges declared Cope’s plum wine best of show. “We all agreed it was a sold wine,” Graves said. “After we’d tasted everything, this wine was on everyone’s list,” she continued. “It had a clear, round ripeness of fruit. And we could all imagine drinking it on a summer evening.”
Cope started wine making when faced with an overabundance of blackberrie.
“Neighbors were making blackberry wine, we tasted it and decided to try it,” he said. Cope credits local fruit for the success of his wines and his advice to novice vintners is: “Be adventurous.”
Ken Bloom’s wines have won ribbons at Island County Fair: best of show, best of class, third place.
Mark Kincy wanted feedback on his wine. “Lots of people you give your wine to don’t know a lot about what they are drinking,” he said. “I wanted to hear from people who know wine.” Kincy has been making wine for only two years but already he’s being adventurous: he has an apple wine in the works. “I got juice from Rock’n Apple Ranch in Oak Harbor. It’s young and too early to tell what it will become.”
Michael Thomas of Coupeville entered several wines; while he didn’t place, he was enthusiastic. “I like the camaraderie of vintners,” he said. “Wine making is resuming a dying art — it’s resurrecting craftsmanship in a bottle.”
It’s never too late in the season to start making wine. Read a book, get some equipment and fruit and wait for sour to strike. Something started now could be entered in next year’s Whidbey Island Home Vintner competition.
