IN SEARCH OF PERFECT HOLIDAY WINE
BY AMBER NIMOCKS

I drove into downtown Elkin in early October, a wine drinker on a quest. I had spent a week’s vacation tasting North Carolina wine, searching for the perfect accompaniment for holiday dinners. As I headed home from the mountains nearWest Jefferson, I remained empty-handed. Brushy MountainWinery was my last stop.

Elkin’s Main Street, lined by tidy, 19th-century buildings with trim awnings and wide glass storefronts, looks so much like Hollywood’s idea of a small town that I half expected to pass Opie on the sidewalk. Brushy MountainWinery was dark, but it was 11 a.m. on a Friday, and I was feeling a little desperate, so I knocked assertively. An older gentleman shuffled to the door. My hopes for a discovery began to fade as he led me into the gift shop area in the front of the store. It looked like a nice place to buy an apron.

Once at the tasting bar in the back, things started looking up when the white-haired man poured me a taste of Brushy Mountain’s 2008 Appalachian Spring, a tart, clean Chardonnay-Viognier blend with a nose of slate and a tight finish. Not the perfect holiday wine, but it was well worth discovering.

My pourer was Matthew Mayberry, who owns Brushy CreekWinery with his wife Ann. Their grapes come from growers in the surrounding Yadkin Valley, and their winemaker works on site, in the cellar beneath the Main Street store. Mayberry is an Elkin native who developed an appreciation for wine when his career as a geologist took him to places far and wide. Back in his hometown, Mayberry hatched a plan for his own winery. The doors opened in 2006.

Wines like Bugaboo Creek Red and Booger SwampWhite, which caught the attention of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” have earned Brushy Creek more than notoriety for their names. They have also brought home the medals. Yadkin Valley winemaker Sean McRitchie, who has his own vineyard and label, made the first vintages of Brushy Creek wines. His deft touch is evident in the smooth finish of the spicy Bugaboo Creek.

I was impressed with the Red Bud Ridge Red, too. But I still hadn’t found a wine with the balance of sturdiness and delicacy required to stand up to a hearty holiday meal of roast meats and herb-infused side dishes without overpowering it. I told Mayberry what I was looking for. Without missing a beat, he poured me a taste of his blackberry wine.

Nose-wrinklers, take note: This is not the sticky-sweet bubblegum wine that the phrase “blackberry wine” tends to conjure. Brushy Mountain’s blackberry wine has a nose that recalls a briar patch on a sunny day and a full, round fruit flavor. It finishes with a clean flourish and a hint of tartness.

Mayberry wanted a blackberry wine to recall family history. The building where the winery is housed was once home of the Elkin Canning Company, run by relatives of Matthew and Ann Mayberry in the early 1900s. Local farmers grew fruit, mostly blackberries, and the canning company processed and shipped it, producing as many 20,000 cans annually at its peak.

JasonWiseman became Brushy Mountain’s winemaker this year, after working closely with McRitchie for several years. To make the blackberry wine, he uses a base blend of Yadkin Valley Chardonnay and Vidal. The goal, he said, is elegance.

“We start with a high-quality base that has been fermented very dry with no residual sugar,” he says. To that, he adds blackberry concentrate and some sugar.

“A lot of people can’t even taste the sugar,”Wiseman says. “We look to balance the fruit flavors with just the appropriate amount of sweetness to make sure the wine is refreshing.”

That it was, and the perfect culmination of my quest. eP

Amber Nimocks grew up in a Southern home where food meant love, and she was very loved. She attended UNC at Chapel Hill, where she fell in love with shrimp and grits, and journalism. She is the former food editor of The News & Observer, where her monthly wine column “Let It Pour” appears. Contact her amber@amberwrites.com .