A Taste of Jersey Wines

As the saying goes, if you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life. That certainly rang true while working on the March issue of New Jersey Monthly. It’s all about wine—specifically Jersey wines.

Discussions about the wine issue started in October. My assignment was to coordinate a blind tasting of New Jersey wines, complete with gold and silver medal winners. There are close to 40 wineries in New Jersey; we invited each to submit their two best bottles and then divided the submissions into seven categories. The categories were created based on what types of wines are being produced in our state. Red wines fell in to one of four categories: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Other Reds. White wine was divided into two categories; Chardonnay and Other Whites. We then had a fruit wine category for Garden State favorites like cranberry wine.

We assembled a panel of judges—wine educators, retailers and restaurant sommeliers/owners—all from New Jersey. Blue Morel Restaurant and Wine Bar in the Westin Governor Morris Hotel in Morristown served as the perfect venue with a private wine tasting room. It was a pleasurable morning of tastings, musings and laughter. I thought to myself : “This is work?” Organizing the wines, pouring them for the judges (sorry for the occasional spill) and discussing Jersey’s wine industry was just plain fun.

While working on this project, I talked with most of the winery owners, many whom have converted family farms to vineyards. Most of the wineries offer tours and wine tastings on the weekend. Some even provide a venue for large events such as weddings.

A total of 26 Jersey wineries submitted 52 wines for our tasting. You can read all about the tasting and discover the winners in the March issue.

It was also interesting learning about the politics and legislation involving our wine industry. While the March issue was being finalized, new legislation was passed providing wineries more opportunities for distribution and tasting-room sales.

Personally, I’m excited about the March issue and hope that you will enjoy reading it while sipping a glass of wine, preferably a Garden State wine. New Jersey Monthly editor Ken Schlager and I even made a video preview of the issue.

Tags: Morristown