Eighteen Twenty (website, facebook) has leased space at 219 Anderson St in East Bayside. Co-owners Pete Dubuc and Amanda O’Brien hope to open their rhubarb winery and tasting room sometimes this fall.
Read Joe Appel’s recent article in the Press Herald for more information on the Eighteen Twenty.
It’s the eighteen twenty wine’s “mystery,” as Dubuc puts it, that is so compelling. The flavors are at once intense and other, hinting at sweetness but not presenting it outright, offering substantial mass on the palate without weighing you down, combining a vegetal leafiness with the bright drive and vividness of a well-made cocktail. It’s tasty, savory, refreshing, with balanced sweetness, but the best thing about it is that it doesn’t taste like grape wine yet you can’t pin it down. It invites repeated inquiry.
Can’t wait to taste this wine. As a boy, I knew rhubarb as a name for a fight in baseball but I knew rhubarb as a wonderfully tart dessert item. I find it hard to believe that I haven’t had rhubarb wine in my 50 years of drinking. Good luck, save me a few sips and swigs.
Sow’s Ear Winery up in Brooksville makes a wonderful rhubarb wine – it drinks like a rose. Also a choke cherry wine….and several other well-crafted fruit varietals. Really interesting.