This past autumn, the heretofore unassailable bastions of France and California were breached. On October 11, in a cozy tent, more than 200 oenophiles gathered to compare the best wines of France, California, and our own New Jersey. It was blind taste test administered by John Mahoney, chancellor of the Philadelphia-based Dionysian Society International, at Hammonton’s Amalthea Wineries. With all chances for “shoulds” and prestige removed, not even the pourers knew which of the 18 wines they were serving.

        Competition was stiff. Of the 12 Cabernets and six Chardonnays; three were French, five came from California, and 10 belonged to the host vineyards of Amalthea, owned and vigilantly run by Louis Caracciolo. Chateau Mouton-Rothschild weighing in at $300 a bottle, and California’s Stags Leap SLV ($113) were among heavy Cabernet favorites. Joseph Douhin Clos des Mouches at $95 seemed the premier Chardonnay. But when the votes were tallied and the covers removed, ‘twas the Garden State’s vintages that grabbed top honors. Snobbery was defeated by true taste. Almathea Cellars Reserve of 2002 took first among the Cabernets, available at a mere $36 a bottle.

     Ironically, this tasting dubbed The Judgment of Paris, took its name from another historical upset. In 1976, in a similar blind tasting in France’s capitol city, a Californian Napa Valley Chardonnay and Cabernet, to the shock of all and trauma of many, defeated French vintages for the first time. (To learn of the tale of the original, much earlier, Judgment of Paris, check the sidebar below.)


     None of this surprised Gary Pavlis, wine author and head of Rutgers Fruit Research & Development Center. Only three weeks before he had gathered several Garden State wine experts for a French - Jersey tasteoff with similar results. Of the 10 Chardonnays, New Jersey’s wines took the top five slots, with top ratings going to Unionville’s 2005 vintage. In the Cabernets, New Jersey took four of the top five positions, with Amalthea’s Europa II (2004) taking first place. “To be honest, none of us really expected the New Jersey wines to fare very well,” says Pavlis. “We surprised ourselves.”

      While all this critical acclaim has proved gratifying to winegrowers, it’s not really paying the bills. New Jersey ranks fourth in the nation’s wine consumption, but her 38 wineries supply a mere one percent of all the state’s market. Of course, the Garden State’s 1000 acres of vines scarcely compares with California’s 800,000 plus acres. Yet wine has never been only about size.

    “Let’s be up front here,” says Garden State Winegrowers Association President, Jim Quarella, “We face a big anti-wine bias in New Jersey.” Admittedly, very little snob appeal is attached to bottles of wine from our own Garden State. Alas, hosts more often serve them with apologies than pride. Worse still, despite enormous efforts of the growers and their association, a great number of New Jerseyans are totally unaware that their state even produces wine.

      While taste may defeat snobbery in the vintners’ tent, retailers have to go with what sells. They will devote their limited, highly competitive shelf space primarily to familiar labels and vintages, leaving only a small corner for new introductions. Reddy Bathena, CEO of Buyrite Liquors notes that he has very little New Jersey wine in his 56 stores. “I would love to be convinced that New Jersey holds wines of the necessary quality and renown. In fact, I look forward to being convinced and placing them on my shelves,” he says. However, they are not there yet.

    Certainly one of New Jersey wine’s biggest stumbling blocks is a matter of age. Though the state has been producing wine since the late 1600’s, most of its current wineries are comparitively new. Quarella launched Bellview Winery in 2000, on a Landisville farm his family had held for four generations. To date, his 30 acres of grapes yield 15,000 gallons of wine annually.
30 acres - the average size of New Jersey’s commercial vineyards - seems ideal for a single family business, or in the case of Quarella, as a manageable section of a larger farm.

     Also typical is Bellview’s youth - a mere eight years. In 1984, the Garden State claimed only 12 registered wineries at its first growers festival. Compared with some European vines boasting lineage back to Charlemagne; or South America’s grapes planted shortly after Columbus, or even California wineries older than Ronald Reagan, we are very much the new kid in the field. And oeonophiles’ romance with the age of a vine and its winery is matched only by their awe reserved for a suitably vintage bottle.

    A New Jersey Dawning. “Don’t be fooled, New Jersey wines have plenty of room for market growth,” says Quarella. “But with all the stigmas, we can only expand through quality.” Towards this end, the Garden State Wine Growers Association has instituted the Quality Wine Alliance. An expert team of growers and tasters judge all commercially available wines. Through a series of exhaustive tests, each is deemed without flaw, stable, and acceptable. You will not find this kind of taste guarantee in all of France.

     Individually, Jersey wineries have taken up the battle cry of quality in increasingly professional ways. Louis Caracciolo has spent his whole life in the betterment of the grape. After intensive study in France and California, Caracciolo opted to turn back the clock for his Amalthea Cellars. He employs what he terms a “hands off” or ‘Third Wave” method which harkens back to a simpler, less chemical handling of the juice. “We press the grapes, let it ferment, let the juice age in plain oak barrels, and leave it alone,” he says.
      While Caracciolo’s method may sound rustic, it is scarcely cavalier. Rather, it forces an almost fanatical emphasis on the growing process. Pruning, soil cultivation, pinching, leaf pulling - the precision and labor are endless. Thus, when finally plucked and pressed, the wine stands eloquently on its own. So eloquently have Amalthea vintages stood, in fact, that they are being rated equivalent to bottles four times their price.

     Silver Decoy Wineries, though one of the youngest wineries in the state, has already established its offerings with several awards typically taken by only older vineyards. Proprietor Mark Carduner, while not readily revealing exact processes, tells of a method whereby the berries for his Cabernets are being harvested with more sugar and ideal acidity than ever before.

      Yet as every business owner knows, having a better mousetrap is only profitable if the public knows you have a better mousetrap. A big boost in this direction occured for 16 of New Jersey’s wineries in March 2007, when the American Vintners Association designated much of southern New Jersey officially as the Outer Coastal Wine Region. Like the Napa Valley or the Bordeaux regions, this denotes certain types of soil and climate conditions. For the buyer, it connotes a definite style and quality of wine.

      Because of the Outer Coastal conditions New Jersey, Cabernet Sauvignons are known to be fuller and fruity. “In South Jersey, we have a sandy loam which keeps our vines' feet beneficially dry, and gives a much longer growing season which gives our Cabernets more time to ripen,” explains Pavlis.

       Making the leap from bottles sold out the winery’s back door, up onto the retailer’s shelf has become notably easier for Garden State producers as the word gets out. For small wineries such as Bellview and Monroe’s Cream Ridge, approximately 90 percent of their output goes directly to retail stores. For a larger vineyard such as Tomasello, as much as 90 percent of stock is sent to wholesalers who successfully sell it both in and out of state. Tomasello claims to be the state’s oldest existent winery - having uninterruptedly produced for well more than a century. When asked about America’s infamous 1919 - 1933 alcohol Prohibition, its owners merely respond with a sly wink.

      The New Jersey Wine Growers Association has proved itself exceptionally dynamic in promoting its members. The organization’s statewide festivals and blind tastings have buyers carrying away not only cases, but a whole new outlook on our state’s product. “It’s the blind tastings that are building our reputation,” says NJWGA president Quarella.

       A further Garden State advantage comes with the price tags. Being small, lean, family run operations New Jersey costs per bottle can remain low, despite the small acreage. Events can also be staged inexpensively. (At the October 11 Judgment of Paris, Caracciolo’s mother cooked all the event’s food in her own oven.)

    “Pricing is everything in wine,” says Pavlis. “France’s $100 Cabernets may totally conquer New Jersey’s $20 Cabs, but people buy in the $25 to $18 range, and there New Jersey has them beat.” Every grower agrees that New Jersey vineyards will definitely be moving into the higher end of the market - several already offer $100 bottles. “But that middle range is where we shine and where we make our money,” Quarella says.

      Fruit wines have proved to be another exceptional money maker. Renault Winery located in Egg Harbor and Cream Ridge Winery have established strong followings of people who make the trip just to stock up on raspberry, blueberry and other such wines. “Sellers almost have to have at least one fruit wine in our state,” says Quarella, “because they are so profitable.” As the king of cranberries and blueberries, the Garden State is presenting such wines as a specialty feature, rather than the oddity they might appear in other regions.

      In l9l9 when the governmental Prohibition agents came to South Jersey to close down all stills and vineyards,they closed over 100 wineries in Burlington County alone. And the urge to produce the grape has returned. Every week, at least two families come calling on Pavlis in his Rutgers office, seeking information on launching a winery. Prohibition is long gone, and the anti-Jersey wine stigma is melting like spring snow. The season is ripe for New Jersey to retake its rightful place as a major quality wine growing region.

A wee bit of history: The Original Judgment of Paris

      As such judgments do, the legendary Judgment of Paris sparked no end of strife. As the bards of ancient Greece sing it, everything began high on that country’s Mount Pelion. Here the Olympian gods had assembled to celebrate the wedding of one of their own, Thetis, to the mortal King Peleus. (Later these two would sire the famed warrior Achilles.) But alas, in revenge for not being invited, the goddess Eris spitefully rolled a golden apple in the party’s midst inscribed “For the Fairest.” As ladies will, each assumed the apple was meant for her. In fact, three of them chased after it as it as the golden fruit continued to roll to the foot of Mount Ida where a prince of Troy sat tending flocks. The young lad, named, you guessed it, Paris, picked up the apple just as the three goddesses arrived to see it in his hand.

     Then, in a round of divine bribery, Athena, Goddess of Wisdom offered Paris all the wisdom on the globe in exchange for the apple. Hera, queen of the gods, offered him all the world’s power, and Aphrodite, goddess of love, tenderly offered Paris the loveliest woman in the world for his bride.

       Paris, being after all a man, went with his loins, “judged” that the fairest apple should go to Aphrodite and gave it to her. The only catch was that the world’s loveliest woman - a blonde named Helen - happened to be married to the Greek King Menelaus. But Aphrodite assured him that he need only to sail from Troy (located on the western shore of what is now Turkey) to Sparta (across the Aegean sea in southern Greece) and Helen could be happily be stolen and taken as his own, back to Troy. This Paris did, arriving back in the gates of Troy where he and Helen of Troy took up residence.

      In response, the Greeks launched 1000 ships and no little army to bring the lovely Helen back to her native soil (and husband.) Thus began the famed Trojan War - 10 years of devastation which the poet Homer so magnificently described in his Iliad:

      In the succeeding Judgments of Paris, wine was the only weapon used. And while the field was not littered with fallen bodies, it has been said that emotions ran similarly high.