|
Currant Affairs at Dragonfly Farms Vinegary
Edible Chesapeake, Winter 2008-2009
By Mary K. Zajac
When Claudia Nami and Susan Lewis retired to rural Mt. Airy, Maryland in 2003, their plan was to use a portion of their eighty acres to raise viniferous grapes to sell to local winemakers. But when harvest came, they realized they had overestimated the market for their crop. Faced with a surfeit of grapes, the two friends decided to do what no one else in Maryland was doing. “Instead of making wine like everybody else,” recalls Nami, “[I thought] let’s make vinegar, because I use vinegar all the time.” Today their venture, Dragonfly Farms, is the first—and only—commercial vinegary in Maryland.
Nami and Lewis are quick to point out that theirs is no ordinary vinegar, and in turn, their work is no small undertaking. Unlike commercially made products, Dragonfly Farms vinegar is slow-fermented and estate-produced, which means that all the ingredients for the vinegar come from their property. Nami and Lewis use their own crop of black currants to create the vinegar “mother”—the bacterial base which converts alcohol into acetic acid, i.e. vinegar, akin to the sourdough starter in breadmaking—and they also make the wine that is combined with the vinegar mother to yield the final product. The harvest of both black currants and grapes varies from year to year in both quantity and flavor so that each year is a little bit different and is labeled as such. Explains Nami, “Our vinegar is like wine. It has a vintage.”
Neither woman had had any experience making wine, much less vinegar, when they began this project, but each was ready to embrace the land and move on to a new challenge. Although Nami had grown up on a farm in Virginia that raised “chickens and Chinese vegetables,” as she puts it, she had spent her adult career running a framing and printing business in Silver Spring and College Park with her husband of thirty years. After her husband passed away in 1999, Nami found she wanted to “be in the country” to raise her younger daughter. She asked Lewis, a business client who had become a friend, if she would be interested in trying out a second career growing something. A computer professional who had just lost a sister to cancer, Lewis agreed to move from Philadelphia’s Main Line and help scout a suitable site after thinking how wonderful it would be “to walk out the front door and be at work.”
And what a beautiful “office” the women have. Getting to the front door involves a steady climb up a nearly vertical drive, passing the currant groves in the process. At the pinnacle of the hill, their home overlooks five acres of vineyards that produce merlot, cabernet sauvignon, syrah, gewurtztraminer and chardonnay grapes, as well as acres of wooded hills whose silhouettes overlap on the horizon. On one side of the house deep violet butterfly bushes attract fragile flapping wings, and whimsical inflatable M&M characters in pink and lavender dance through the woods as deer deterrents. There are golden sunflowers here, purple echinacea there. Nami and Lewis grow the flowers, as well as vegetables, to sell at local farmers markets along with their vinegar, and plan to offer a CSA during the 2009 season.
Several of the farm’s resident felines walk with us as we take the gravel drive on the other side of the house down to the vinegary. A small, immaculately kept warehouse building, it is the repository for both wine and vinegar. In one room, barrels rest on their sides, aging wine. Another room is crowded with traditional narrow-necked glass demijohns, where the vinegar mother and wine make their magic. A third room holds the bottling works.
Nami and Lewis must deal with two harvests at two different times of the year, keeping them constantly busy. Black currants are harvested around July 4. The crop has been labor-intensive to pick, although this year, the friends acquired equipment to make the job remarkably easier. Nami and Lewis believe they are the only commercial growers of black currants this far south, and, while they sell some fresh berries at market, the majority of their harvest is used in the vinegar mother. As Nami explains with a Cheshire grin, “A black currant base makes it more complex, more delicious.”
The viniferous grapes, meanwhile, aren’t harvested until September when they are then crushed and de-stemmed and made into wine. “You have to have good wine to make good vinegar,” says Nami, and once the wine has aged a full year in oak barrels, it is combined in the demijohn with a portion of the mother, and fermented together for another six to eighteen months to create complexly tart amber-red vinegars with nuances of both fruits. Fermenting the black currant and the wine together “makes this one distinct flavor,” says Nami.
“It’s complex,” adds Lewis, finishing her friend’s sentence. “There are so many flavors. You get varietal wine flavors and the fruit’s flavors. We’re not adding anything,” Lewis continues. “This is 100 percent fruit. We let people enjoy what nature can do, not what man can make.”
“Unadulterated,” Nami chimes in.
Once the alcohol has disappeared, the vinegar is pumped into 200-milliliter bottles.
The entire process is slow and takes patience. And as Lewis explains, the product is far different from what consumers find on the grocery shelf because of the time and labor involved. “You can’t mass-produce this stuff,” says Lewis.
Today, Dragonfly Farms produces around 10,000 bottles of four varieties of vinegar. The Dragonfly, which is all black currant, boasts an intense spiciness and a little briar, while the Black Merlot bursts with bright fruit and tastes nearly sweet in comparison. Black Cabernet is darker with softer edges, and the Syrah suggests the most strength and acidity. The women plan on expanding the product base this year with the addition of a gewurtztraminer vinegar, and next year they will add vinegars made from honey and from tomatoes. The vinegars sell for around $40 at local farmers markets including Falls Church, Columbia and Greenbelt, and at Whole Foods Markets in Baltimore, DC, and Virginia. But, as Nami is quick to point out, because of their concentration, a little of these vinegars goes a long way.
As proud as Nami and Lewis are of their product, they are equally modest about their own part in it. “Mother Nature does most of the work,” says Lewis.
“And we try hard not to mess it up,” adds Nami.
Baltimore native Mary Zajac writes about food and wine, music, art, and the quirky. She is a columnist for Style and Chesapeake Life magazines, and her work has also appeared in Saveur, Maryland Life, and The Urbanite. She wrote about the 2007 wine grape harvest for the winter 2007 issue of Edible Chesapeake. |
