Thursday, Oct. 25, 2007
Ed Boyce and Sarah O’Heron, the husband-and-wife owners of Black Ankle Vineyards in Frederick County’s gentle hills outside of Mount Airy, are part of the state’s farming future as well as its grape-growing and winemaking industries.
Both are former international management consultants with Kaiser Associates in Northern Virginia, jobs that took them all over the world.
‘‘That’s not much of a life,” Boyce said. ‘‘It’s one of those things you do for a while, then you go on to something you really want to do.”
And what the parents of five decided they really wanted to do was grow grapes and make wine.
‘‘We could have bought a place and just made wine, but we look at this as a farming operation,” Boyce said.
It’s an important distinction in a state that is trying to both preserve its agricultural heritage and grow a winemaking industry that, until now, has managed to flourish only in tiny pockets without state support.
But as more farmers find it necessary to diversify and new entrants such as Boyce and O’Heron arrive on the scene, some say the many state rules that may have worked well in the past have become roadblocks to innovation. The major difference between the wine-producing status of Maryland and neighboring Virginia, well known for its wines, is government financial and regulatory support, say the state’s wine industry observers.
That is beginning to change and the Maryland Wine and Grape Promotion Fund has plowed a quarter of a million dollars into the industry over the past two years. The state will grant $2.50 for each new vine that goes in the ground in a program administered by the Maryland Wineries and Maryland Grape Growers Associations.
State Agriculture Secretary Roger Richardson contends that new farming and winemaking ventures can do far more than keep developers at bay.
‘‘Maryland’s wineries and vineyards strengthen our local economies, benefit consumers with local products, keep rural land open, and improve the quality of life for our citizens,” he said.
There is also a grape gap the program hopes to close. Maryland vintners currently must purchase 1.25 tons of grapes from out of state for every ton they raise or buy in-state.
‘‘We need hundreds of cases of grapes and we need them yesterday,” said Kevin Atticks, executive director of the Maryland Wineries Association.
But one-size-fits-all agricultural permitting rules can still wreak havoc with an operation as complex as Black Ankle’s, which combines grape farming and winemaking with a proposed tasting room and retail outlet.
‘‘We’re very much committed to it at this point, but we were not prepared for the permitting process,” which has dragged on for months and eaten into the couple’s savings, O’Heron said.
The rules were written in 1977, long before it would become necessary for farmers to consider raising other crops to survive.
‘‘Quite a few farmers are trying to diversify. It’s a good idea, but it’s never been done before,” said Colby Ferguson, agricultural specialist for the county’s Office of Economic Development.
Boyce and O’Heron, he said, ‘‘just happen to be the first” to propose so many uses for one parcel of farmland and are therefore ‘‘the groundbreakers for a lot of these issues.”
A rules change introduced by Ferguson and approved by the Frederick Board of County Commissioners in September permits dual use of farmland for grape growing and winemaking, something unique to Frederick County in the state.
But the last proposed piece of the couple’s business, a proposed tasting room that also serves bread and cheese, has been held up by health department food safety requirements for a full, restaurant-size kitchen. The county also insists on a wide paved driveway in place of the planned special gravel drive designed for zero runoff and recommended by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Boyce and O’Heron had enough savings for what they knew would be a lengthy startup process. Grapevines don’t even produce fruit for three or four years and, once the fruit is harvested, it takes another year and a half to produce a bottle of red wine.
‘‘We started with a good nest egg. Otherwise we would have had to give up long ago,” Boyce said.
Black Ankle produced 25,000 bottles last year and 35,000 more this year that Boyce and O’Heron hope to be able to start selling on-site in April. Expectations are high for the product.
Joe Fiola, a University of Maryland Agriculture Extension viticulture specialist who is mapping the state to show the best wine-grape growing areas, says the premier sites are in the northern counties, including Frederick. And Black Ankle is among the best of the best.
‘‘You couldn’t ask for a better site,” Fiola said of the 23-acre vineyard.
It has the drainage, elevation and poor soil necessary to keep wine grapes alive and packed with sugar, not water. ‘‘What’s good for corn is not good for grapes,” Boyce said. ‘‘You want the grapes to be right on the edge of survival.”
