After church today, my wife and I decided to run down to Nashoba Valley Winery in Bolton, MA before we came home to watch the Patriots game this afternoon. Something I've been wanting to do ever since we moved here, but just haven't found the time yet. We left church at 11:00 and decided to see what restaurants we could find on the way to grab some lunch rather than go back home and fix lunch. Well, Bolton, MA is not exactly known for the quantity of restaurants within the city limit. We saw a grand total of two. One was a pizza joint inside of a tacky looking tourist trap just west of the I-495 interchange, and the other was J's Restaurant located on the winery grounds inside the old farm house. We opted to try J's Restaurant. The hostess informed us that they were normally booked solid, but had a little lighter traffic today because of the football game and had a free table available. Wow, what a find! The brunch spread was simply amazing: Cinnamon raisin French toast, gourmet egg strata, sausage, home fries with truffle butter, smoked trout and bluefish with capers, pork taquitos, Japanese seaweed salad, pumpkin bisque, farfalle pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and cream sauce, toasted banana bread, and three different salads including a nut salad with pecans, walnuts, macadamia, pistachios, and dried cranberries in a cinnamon caramel sauce. And then there was the cheese and dessert table! All that for $18.50 per adult.
After we were satiated, we ambled down to the winery and found a space at the tasting bar. Nashoba Valley specializes in fruit wines, especially apple. We started with the dry whites. First, a Baldwin apple wine that tasted nothing like apples--big burst of pineapple and citrus. Then a Chardonnay made from Massachusetts grown grapes--a big, full bodied, slightly buttery chard. Third, a Gravenstein apple wine with a little stronger apple taste, but still tasted almost like a sauvignon blanc. The last white wine we tasted was a dry vidal blanc. Another nicely made wine with big fruity nose that finished with a distinctly foxy taste.
Moving on to the reds, we sampled a blueberry/merlot that was quite good. A 50/50 blend of blueberry and New York merlot that was fermented separately and aged in oak before blending and bottling. Dark garnet color with very nice light berry aromas and smooth finish. Next was Chrysleton, a dry elderberry-apple wine that was an easy sipping light red. The elderberry added color and complexity to the apple wine. Almost like a róse.
We finished our tasting by sampling the dry blueberry and semi-dry blueberry wines. Good, but not my favorites. The dry blueberry was complex with strong tobacco and leather aromas and tastes. Perhaps a little too heavily oaked. The semi-dry blueberry was just lightly sweet, but had some oily notes in the finish.
All in all, a very enjoyable visit with some surprising fruit wines. All of the single varietal apple wines were almost indistinguishable from a white grape wine. I'd be interested in serving them along side a sauvignon blanc or perhaps a viognier to see difficult it would be to tell them apart. We ended up buying 5 wines to sample later, and those reviews will be posted here, so stay tuned.
The winery itself is in a wonderful location. The views across the orchards and vineyards are wonderful in mid-Winter, and I can only imagine how beautiful the views are when the trees and grass are green. They have plenty of picnic tables and space for summer picnics, as well as an outdoor space for weddings and gatherings. The tasting room is quite large, but the tasting bar is very small. The wine for sale is spread across a large area, but I can only imagine how crowded the tasting bar area gets in the middle of summer!
Salute,
a Wine Student
