Tasting & touring at Gemeny Winery and Vineyards

Entrance to the tast­ing room.

On Sun­day after­noon, March 19, 2017, we drove 3.1 miles over to the win­ery clos­est to us — Geme­ny Win­ery and Vine­yards (click here to see their list­ing in our Food & Drink Busi­ness Direc­to­ry, with address and dri­ving direc­tions)— to taste their wares and see what the neigh­bors were up to. To com­pare dis­tances, for us it is 9.6 miles to Jane­mark Win­ery and Vine­yard and 10.1 miles to Romano Vine­yard and Win­ery. Geme­ny first opened in August of last year. Get­ting there can seem a bit daunt­ing giv­en you have to go through a bar­ri­cade on Cedarville Road with a big sign that says “Road Closed. Local Traf­fic Only.” For­tu­nate­ly, the road isn’t tru­ly closed until just beyond the turn-off for the win­ery a lit­tle far­ther along. The clo­sure is due to work being done to replace the bridge over Mat­ta­woman Creek — a project long over­due (the Mat­ta­woman were a group of native Amer­i­cans who lived in this area when the Eng­lish colonists arrived).

We used Google Maps to guide us there, and it brought us right to the front door of the tast­ing room, which looked to be in a quite-mod­ern two-sto­ry barn-like struc­ture. Park­ing was ample, and as we entered we saw there was only one oth­er cou­ple vis­it­ing. The tast­ing room was warm and wel­com­ing with dark wood pan­el­ing, door­ways, and ceil­ing-beams, a light yel­low ceil­ing, with bright yel­low-orange walls dec­o­rat­ed with pho­tographs, ban­ners, and light-sconces.

The Geme­ny tast­ing room.

From behind the bar, we were greet­ed by Bill Liv­ingston, who is in charge of the front of the house, who was being helped-out by a friend of the Gemenys, Jen­ny Wright (her son was in the fer­men­ta­tion room, play­ing with his toy trucks). Liv­ingston is the hus­band of Mike Geme­ny, the soft-spo­ken engi­neer who main­ly works behind the scenes over­see­ing the wine-mak­ing equip­ment, along with Sean Hen­der­son, who (if my under­stand­ing is cor­rect), han­dles the chem­istry side of things. Those three, Geme­ny, Liv­ingston, and Hen­der­son are the pri­ma­ry folks involved in Geme­ny Win­ery and Vine­yards, which is on 200 acres of a farm that has been in the Geme­ny fam­i­ly since 1897. At the moment, only two acres are plant­ed with grapes, but they plan to devote more acreage to grapes over time.

Liv­ingston and Wright pre­sent­ed us with a tast­ing menu, which offered four options (the reserve wine, or the whites, or the reds, or all of them), of which we select­ed “all of them” for $10 each. That option pro­vid­ed us with sips of:

A few bot­tles of Geme­ny wine and a tast­ing menu. The black foils indi­cate the “Naked” wine, the gold the “Oaked.”

Whites

• 2014 Vidal Blanc
• 2o14 Pinot Gris
• 2014 Chardon­nay Naked
• 2014 Chardon­nay Oaked
• 2014 Trem­inette Naked
• 2014 Trem­inette Oaked
• 2015 Jouster’s Jubilee, Reserve

Reds

• 2014 Caber­net Sauvi­gnon
• 2014 Rougeon
• 2014 Nor­ton

All the whites were made with juice from New York State. Of the red wines, the Rougeon was made from New York grape juice, and the oth­er two were made from grapes grown on the Geme­ny farm. Unlike the oth­er South­ern Mary­land winer­ies we’ve vis­it­ed, there was no Cham­bourcin on offer. Appar­ent­ly these folks like to be dif­fer­ent. In addi­tion to the items on the menu, we also got to taste a 2015 Caber­net Franc, and a pre­view of their 2015 Caber­net Sauvi­gnon (to be avail­able for pur­chase in a cou­ple weeks). Our favorite wines of the after­noon proved to be the 2014 Chardon­nay Naked (“naked” in this instance mean­ing un-oaked) and the 2014 Chardon­nary Oaked. We bought two bot­tles of the Naked and one bot­tle of the Oaked.

Fer­men­ta­tion vats.

A Tour of Gemeny

Fol­low­ing the tast­ing, we asked them if they gave tours. They said “Sure, would you like one?” “Of course,” we said. Liv­ingston and Wright hand­ed-us off to Mike Geme­ny, who escort­ed us into the wine mak­ing room, where we got to see the huge steel vats where the wine is made (that’s where we also got to meet Sean Hen­der­son). From those vats, we were giv­en a taste of some of their estate whites (that is, wine from grapes grown on the farm and not brought in from New York):

• 2015 Pin­to Gris
• 2015 Traminette
• 2014 Traminette

Sparkling wine keg with tap. The black bot­tled on the side con­tains the car­bon diox­ide for car­bon­a­tion.

Next we were off to the “Lab” where they exper­i­ment with var­i­ous new types and mix­tures of wines. It was also the garage for the house behind the big barn where the cur­rent oper­a­tions take place. The garage is where they got their start in wine-mak­ing, a not unusu­al place to begin for many start-up busi­ness­es. The rea­son we got to go to the Lab was because we had asked if they make any sparkling wines (which are a favorite of my wife Cindy), and that is the one place they had some.

It turned out to be stored in a dorm-size refrig­er­a­tor in a keg with a tap. A dream come true — bub­bly on tap! It was a Chardon­nay that had gone a bit south on them, which they had worked to save by adding car­bon­a­tion. From what we tast­ed, they made a pret­ty good save.

Conclusion

If you decide to vis­it, note that they do sell some pack­aged cheeses, crack­ers, and sausages to nib­ble on while you enjoy your wine, but you’re also wel­come to bring your own food — there are tables and chairs inside and there’s a pic­nic table out­side. They’re also hap­py to share their WiFi con­nec­tion with you if you want to go online while tast­ing. You just need to ask for the pass­word.

Oh… and about the name. The orig­i­nal spelling of the name was Gem­i­ni (of Ital­ian ori­gin), but folks tend­ed to pro­nounce it as Jem-En-Eye, but the fam­i­ly want­ed it pro­nounced Jem-En-Eee, so changed the spelling to achieve the desired pro­nun­ci­a­tion. In places, such as the embroi­dered logos and names you see on the staff’s shirts, you may see it spelled both ways. Note that the logo on the menu and above the the tast­ing-room entrance spells it Gem­i­ni. ♦