Behind the Wine

Behind the Wine
There are more area vineyards than you may realize. Make the time to take a look’and a taste. Cheers.

When we dispatched Matt Desiderio to discover the essence of winemaking in Delaware, he dutifully visited all two Delaware wineries: Nassau Valley Vineyards and Pizzadili Vineyards and Winery (strictly speaking). He also hit southern Chester County to include Chaddsford Winery because, well, at 25 years young, it is, by many years, the granddaddy of them all. Being so close, we’ve always claimed it as our own.

Truth be told, there are more wineries in southeastern Pennsylvania. We couldn’t include them all, so here they are, the five that, with Chaddsford, make up the Brandywine Wine Trail:

Folly Hill Vineyards,

,

, (610) 388-5895;

Kreutz Creek Vineyards,

Grove, (610) 869-4412;

Paradocx Vineyard, The Shopps at Longwood Village, U.S. Route 1,

, (610) 444-9003;

Twin Brook Winery,

, Gap, (717) 442-4915;

Va La Vineyards, 8820 Gap Newport Pike, Avondale, (610) 268-2702.

I mention them to encourage you to take an afternoon to explore. You don’t need to travel to the Rhine, the Rhone or the Seine to experience greatness. You don’t need to fly to Napa Valley or coastal Oregon. You need simply to hop in the car. There are no adventures greater than the ones in our own backyard. (Just remember to indulge responsibly.) You can read all about them in “Uncorked,” beginning on page 56.

Speaking of the yard, it seems we take much of it for granted. We are so inundated with information-in the mailbox, on the billboard, via our emails-we’ve become desensitized. And as savvy marketers work harder to get our attention, the more we tune out.

So what about the signs we see everywhere every day? Do they maintain significance? Do they even register on our overloaded brains? We asked advertising professionals to let us know what they thought of our local logos. See what they said in “A Brand New Look” on page 68. One very cool thing we learned in the process: The DuPont oval, another granddaddy, makes the century mark this year.

Finally, we ask the question: Does investment in the stocks of local companies pay off in any way more than the lift we get from boosting the home team? If we buy a stake in DuPont or Bank of America or Artesian Water, is there a different sort of dividend to expect? Will there, indeed, be a financial dividend? We asked our resident market expert, Jim Waltzer, for a bit of analysis. See what he found on page 62.