Published: May 19, 2007 10:22 pm      

Winery bottling sweet success

ELMWOOD — You might say success has come fresh off the vine for Mike and Sandra Pell.

Their Honey Raspberry flavored wine recently earned a silver medal in The Finger Lakes International Wine Competition, a prestigious contest based in New York State for professional wine-makers, topping entries from well-known and long-established wineries.

A year earlier, the Pells won a gold medal for their Blackberry Grape wine in an amateur international contest.

Unlike most of their competition in the professional contest, the Pells’ Sweet Dreams Winery isn’t based in Napa Valley, Calif., France or other regions considered wine country by connoisseurs and they don’t use recipes handed down by

generations of family vintners.

Sweet Dreams Winery rests on several acres on CR 441 in Elmwood in an area known in years past for housing moonshine stills near a spring-fed creek.

Neither Mike nor Sandra claim a wine-making background.

Sandra teaches social studies at Westwood High School while Mike has been a professional firefighter for 25 years, and they briefly partnered with another couple in MR and MS Christmas Tree Farm.

According to Sandra, her husband had suffered from bad knees for years which would disrupt his sleep, but he discovered that a bottle of homemade wine purchased in an auction eased the soreness enough to let him sleep well, hence the winery’s name.

When the vintner stopped bottling the wine, Pell decided to try making some of his own, first using a recipe provided by Palestine Fire Chief Henry York and Pell’s knowledge of chemistry gleaned from firefighting.

Friends and family members liked the taste so much that they would send glass soft drink bottles over to be filled and refilled.

“It just blew up from there,” Pell said. “We already had the property and we grew blackberries. It just kind of mushroomed.”

When Hurricane Rita hit the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast two years ago, grown daughters and their families living in its path retreated north to Palestine to bunk with the Pells while they waited to return home.

With little else to do, the extended family erected the building which houses the winery and finished out the interior, which includes a small kitchen and shop upstairs and the wine-making room down a small flight of stairs. A large locked walk-in freezer just outside holds fresh frozen fruit. A covered porch provides guests with a shady spot to relax, sip a glass of wine and enjoy the scenery.

Now family members, fellow firefighters, retired teachers and other friends continue to help out, whether with picking and preparing fresh fruit, labeling bottles or assisting customers on the weekends when the winery is open.

“It’s a pretty good family affair,” Sandra Pell said.

As word spread through their network of family, friends and co-workers, more people wanted to try Pell’s wine, some even suggesting that it be sold in local stores, she said.

“People are wanting us to put some in the stores but we can’t keep up. All summer we’re in fruit-picking mode,” she said, explaining that they jump from one season into another. “Blueberries, blackberries, peaches. The wild grapes come off in July, then the tame grapes, then the pears. It makes for a hectic summer.”

Pell estimated that he, Sandra and others helping put up some 3,000 pounds of fruit last summer and still ran out, forcing them to look to local produce suppliers for quality fruit grown as close to home as possible.

When they began offering the Honey Raspberry wine, called “Bumblebee’s Kiss,” people wanted it faster than they could ferment more.

“When we first made the honey wine, we ran out in four weekends, open one day a week,” Sandra Pell said.

The recipes vary depending on the ingredients but they have in common natural ingredients — fruit, yeast, honey, pectin, potassium — with no added flavorings.

“When you start out, what you have is extra sweet fruit juice,” Pell said. “The yeast turns to alcohol. As the alcohol goes up, the sweetness goes down. When it gets to a certain point on my taste buds, I stop it.

“I put potassium in. That stops the yeast and I move it to another bottle, then add another teaspoon of potassium to make sure the yeast doesn’t start again.”

By the time the process finishes, a month may have passed, Pell said, which can be tricky when demand exceeds the supply on hand, particularly since both he and Sandra have continued to work full-time with the fire department and the school district.

But the experience has been rewarding, they said.

“We’ve had a lot of fun,” Sandra Pell said. “People have come from Ireland and England. We had people from Washington, D.C. who were going to take a Sprite bottle (of wine) to President Bush in the White House.

“It’s just been interesting.”

Sweet Dreams Winery is located approximately 10 miles north of Palestine. To get there, take FM 315 north past FM 321 and turn right on CR 444. When CR 444 ends at CR 441, turn right on CR 441 and the winery is a few hundred yards down on the left.

The winery is open on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. For more information, call 903-549-2027.

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Beth Foley may contacted via e-mail at bfoley@palestineherald.com