DIY winemaking around D.C. is a pricey barrel of fun

The folks would be invited back in February to rack the wine off its lees — the sediment that forms in the barrel — and again in August to bottle it and take it home.

Germantown couple Jim and Karen Meade and their friend Jeff Strovel of Laurel were the prospective owners of half of the barrel I saw being started at Tin Lizzie. “We love food and wine, and we wanted to see how wine is made,” Jim said.

Personal Post

“If you want to find a cooking class, they’re anywhere,” Strovel chimed in, adding that as a youth he helped plant the Fiore Winery vineyards in northeastern Maryland. “Where else can you learn how to make wine?”

An hour and a half to the southwest, near Gainesville, Vint Hill Craft Winery sits on a former federal complex where cryptographers deciphered Nazi codes during World War II. The wood-frame building houses gleaming stainless-steel sorting tables and fermentation bins, as well as the requisite oak barrels: catnip for wine lovers.

Vint Hill was the brainchild of Chris Pearmund, a principal partner in Pearmund Cellars in Broad Run and the Winery at La Grange in Haymarket. Pearmund, 50, says he envisioned Vint Hill, which opened in 2008, as an evolutionary step in the wine experience.

“You can pay $5 for a taste or $10 for a glass, $20 for a bottle or a couple hundred for a case,” he says. “You can go to a winemaker dinner for $150 or make a barrel of your own wine for $6,000. Or you can become a partner in a winery for a heck of a lot more.”

DIY winemakers at craft wineries such as Tin Lizzie and Vint Hill have a range of pricing options depending on how much wine they want and where their grapes come from. At Tin Lizzie, a full barrel costs anywhere from just under $3,000 to $6,750, the latter for ultra-premium cabernet sauvignon grapes purchased from the prestigious Stagecoach Vineyards in California’s Napa Valley and aged in French oak.

Vint Hill customers — Pearmund calls them vintners — can buy grapes from Virginia, California, Oregon or Washington. Prices vary accordingly, with premiums for luxuries such as new oak barrels. On average, they pay $6,000 to produce a barrel of wine; at 25 cases per barrel, that equals $20 per bottle. They work with Pearmund and Vint Hill’s winemaker, D.J. Leffin, to make the style of wine they want. A few restaurants have made wines under their own labels, and Paradise Springs winery in Clifton made its initial wines at Vint Hill before opening its own facility. Last year, Vint Hill had about 80 vintners, producing just over 60 barrels of wine, Pearmund says.

One Saturday last June I joined Paul Dickman at Vint Hill as he and Leffin decided on the final blend for his 2010 cabernet sauvignon. Before retiring from the federal government as an energy policy executive, Dickman, 59, took enology classes at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville. He had made wine in the basement of his home in Vienna, and he had spent weekends volunteering at DuCard Vineyards in Madison County to learn how to prune and trellis grapevines. Through his government ties, he connected with another former nuclear fed who grows grapes in Napa Valley; the vineyard there became a source of prime cabernet sauvignon and merlot for Vint Hill.

“When I retired, I wanted to do something with one of my hobbies,” Dickman says, “and I’m lousy at golf.”

Dickman participated in sorting the grapes after they arrived at Vint Hill last October, selecting the yeast for his barrel, punching down the wine to ensure that the juice and skins mixed properly, and monitoring the wine’s chemistry. In June he swirled and sipped his way through half a dozen blends before deciding to add 10 percent of Virginia merlot and a soupcon of California zinfandel from barrels of surplus wine that Vint Hill maintains. He also designed a label, calling his brand Atomic Wine and the cuvee Schrodinger’s Cab.

What will he do with his 25 cases of wine? Dickman says he’ll give some to friends, and he wouldn’t mind selling some through Vint Hill’s tasting room. “Everyone who does this has it in the back of their mind to make a wine someone else will want to buy,” he says. This year, he plans to make two barrels.

Columbia resident Terry Sullivan has made wine at both Vint Hill and Tin Lizzie. Sullivan, 60, is a home winemaker and, with his wife, Kathy, writes the Wine Trail Traveler blog.

“I think both places are appropriate for the hobbyist and the first-time winemaker and anyone who just wants to know more about wine,” Terry says. “At Tin Lizzie, it’s more about letting the grapes express themselves, while at Vint Hill the focus is on what you want the end product to be and how to get it there.”

At both schools, customers can participate as little or as much as they like in the winery operations. Pearmund says most of his vintners come to Vint Hill about eight times a year, but some come more often because there’s almost always something to do.

“We had one couple who wanted to start their own winery,” he recalls. “They gave up when they realized how much work is involved.”

Details: making your own wine.

McIntyre blogs at dmwineline.com; follow him on Twitter @dmwine.