Produced and bottled in New Jersey

[Craig Camp]

The Hopewell Valley Vineyards and Royal Wine Corp., two faces of the New Jersey wine industry, are about as different as two companies can be.

[WHT]

I thought that there was another in south NJ. Renault is one of the older ones and offers tours. Use ask.com quite a few listed.

[Jason Perlow]

Theres Alba Vineyard and about 2 dozen others, I think. Alba produces a decent Reisling, as I recall.

Alba sponsors a multi-vineyard wine tasting event on its premises every year, I think one is coming up. We went to it once, it was a lot of fun.

EDIT: Here is Alba's calendar of events:

http://www.albavineyard.com/calendar.html

[lamb]

A friend is a marketer for Tomasello

Tomasello

he's given us samples from the winery. According to him, their dessert wines are their top sellers. I just couldn't bring myself to try them once I opened the bottles and took a whif

Have tried their Chards and Pinot Grigio - just ok.

He is active at the wine tasting events. Says they are lots of fun.

[Rachel Perlow]

The Garden State Wine Growers' Grand Harvest Festival is coming up in a couple weeks, October 2-3, 2004. We went a couple of years ago and had a great time. It takes place on a huge field at Alba Vineyard. It's a beautiful drive out there and a very nice setting. In addition to the wine tasting, there's music and food stands, although a lot of people picnic.

Hmm, maybe some of us could meet up and do another potluck picnic?

[cranrob]

Don't forget Silver Decoy Winery in Robbinsville (Hamilton Township). Nice guys.

[Phil Ward]

Thanks to Craig for the link but I couldn't get it to come up. Hmmm.

That beeing written, there are now about 22 wineries in our state from the north, Sussesx County, all the way to south, Cape May County. Having written numerous articles on them and having tasted the wines over the past 15 years, I can say we are producing some high quality wines in NJ. Are they world class? Debatable. We are producing wines that are representative of the garpes from whence they spring. I have had some very fine examples of Seyval and Vidal Blanc, Marechal Foch and especially Chambourcin. I have had a couple of good examples of Norton/Cynthiana which usually grows well in VA and Missouri. The biggest problem for our state is getting Vinifera varieties to grow well in our climate and soils. To date, I have not had a great example of a vinifera based wine. Some good, some not so good and some, why did they bother.

I truly believe that the individuals who run these wineries are doing their best to supply the needs of the state's wine lovers with quality wines at reasonable prices, continuing agriculture in our over populated state, the "Garden State", and many are actually making a profit.

I wish all of our NJ Wineries continued success and hope they get support for the NJ Dept of Ag for many decades to come. I also hope that the consumers and tourists support these wineries with their dollars.

That's my $.02 and thanks for reading.

Phil

[kenrbnsn]

I'm surprised no one has posted the main URL for the Garden State Wine Growers Association...

We've had some pretty good wines from NJ wineries and a few really bad ones.

The best wines are (IMHO) the fruit wines from Cream Ridge Winery and Tomasello Winery.

[KatieLoeb]

The biggest problem for our state is getting Vinifera varieties to grow well in our climate and soils.

I can't think of anywhere else in the wine growing world where sandy soil and humid summers lead to good wine. Great for tomatoes. Not so much for the grapes.