When Bert and Lynne Basignani opened the doors to their tasting room in Baltimore County, about 10 minutes off I-83 and around 15 miles north of Towson, Maryland, in 1986, they became the state’s 13th winery.
Two had already come and gone, Bert Basignani said Tuesday during a Maryland Wineries Association (MWA)/Maryland Department of Agriculture recognition event, the first of six being held this week and next to recognize the families who helped pioneer an industry that now features 75 producers across the state. At the start of his remarks, he named each of the other wineries that preceded their arrival.
He talked about growing up with wine on the dinner table (“watered wine,” as he called it), about visiting spots in Maryland every Sunday looking for a place to settle and in 1969 purchasing the 10 acres of farmland that would ultimately provide the place where he and his wife would start their family, plant a vineyard, and take what he called a “hobby run amok” into something that would become their passion and livelihood.
In 1974, he married Lynne and together they planted 60 vines, 10 each of six different varieties, according to the summary on their website. Ten years later, he would plant another 6 acres on adjoining land that he and Lynne had acquired. By November 1986, after winning many amateur winemaking judgings, and urged friends who had sampled and enjoyed his wines, they opened Basignani Winery.
Kevin Atticks, the Maryland Secretary of Agriculture who previously was the MWA president, noted that when the Basignanis and the other legacy families opened their wineries, “there was no road map, there was no guide. You had to make your way to another winery to see if they would share their information with you.”
But the Basignanis, like the other winery families from that era, survived the roller-coaster ride that combines farming and science and retail and helped shape an industry that today features some of the East Coast’s top wineries.
Janna Howley, who for years worked alongside Atticks in directing and shaping the MWA and currently serves as the organization’s executive director in addition to co-owning Cultivate + Craft, a firm that supports craft alcohol and value added agriculture producers, told the Wine Classroom that the idea for the recognition tour came from a legacy winery that “suggested getting everyone together before it was too late.”
She added, “Kevin and I then talked about doing it as a joint MWA-MDA effort where we went to wineries instead, making it easier for them to be involved, versus trying to find a central location where everyone could get to.”
Melissa Aellen from Linganore, one of the legacy families who is also president of the MWA and also has created her own label called Simple Theory Wines, also helped to fine-tune the concept.
“These wineries have not only been critical to the growth of the industry, they’ve also been great stewards of agricultural land for decades,” Howley said.
Three more wineries will be part of this initiative on Wednesday, July 22 — Elk Run Vineyards, Loew Vineyards and Linganore Winecellars — and the other two — Fiore Winery and Boordy Vineyards — will be recognized on Tuesday, July 28.
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David, hello and thanks for checking in. Actually, it was Provenza and Bon Spuronza that had opened and closed by the time Basignani opened, according to Bert's speech. The other 12 he named were Montbray Wine Cellars (Ham Mowbray's), Byrd, Boordy, Fiore, Catoctin, Elk Run, Loew, Linganore, Woodhall, Whitemarsh Cellars, Chesapeake Cider Company, and Ziem. That number, he noted, fell to 9 at one point, but increased from there. Appreciate your input and comment. And thanks to Regina McCarthy for your "Maryland Wine" book so I could double check the spellings of a few of those wineries.
You don't indicate which two late lamented predecessors Bert named. But I presume these were Byrd and Montbray, whose best wines (Cabernet in the case of Byrd; Seyval in the case of Montbray) were among the most exciting to have emerged from any U.S. State outside the West Coast.