Resident Wins His First Award For Wine, Following A Family Recipe

By Shannon Hicks

There are no monthly meetings of Fairfield County Wine Makers, there is no membership fee; it’s big event is its annual wine tasting event. But what an event it is.

Having held two previous events — the first, in 2004, attracted about 70 people, and last year’s grew to just over 100 — the group was able to attract more than 200 people to this year’s friendly competition. Held at Roberto’s Restaurant in Monroe earlier this month, the 2006 Fairfield County Wine Makers Wine Judging & Tasting offered some friendly competition, a dinner paired with regionally produced wines, and sent one Newtown resident home with a second place finish for his efforts.

Bill Pisacreta literally has grown up making wines. His family has a vineyard in Italy, south of Naples, and Mr Pisacreta said he remembers watching his parents work on their wine. His is one of those “I learned it from my father, who learned it from his father, who learned it from his father…” recipes.

“I can remember sitting on a blanket, just watching my mother work,” he said. Mr Pisacreta has been making his own wine for years, sharing it with family and friends, but only this year decided to enter it into competition.

His winning wine is called Old Vine Zinfandel. Very smooth and fruity, it’s a nice red wine. It goes well with venison, which Mr Pisacreta served it with a few weekends ago.

“This is pure grape, no chemicals, and that’s why I’m really proud of it,” he said while sitting in the kitchen of the Newtown home where he, his wife Barb, and their children live. He spoke with The Bee a few days after Mr Pisacreta learned about his wine’s winning status, and he was still absolutely thrilled to have been noticed for his efforts.

“This was a nice, pleasant surprise,” he said. “This was the first time I went to this event, and this year’s placement really tells me where I am.

“It goes beyond the paper and the medal they sent me home with,” Mr Pisacreta said. “I was able to gauge the quality of my wine against other winemakers in the region.”

Last year Mr Pisacreta made a point of tasting each of the winning wines and remembered thinking, he said, “My wine is as good as this.”

This year he took a chance and was pleasantly surprised at not only how well he did, but also by the response from one of the judges.

“One of the guys asked me about my wine and he was kind of surprised that I didn’t do anything to my wine [other than crush the grapes and let them ferment],” Mr Pisacreta said. “It was a very professional evening. They were very organized. I was extremely impressed with it.

“Most of my competitors probably used yeast, sugar, and other ingredients to make their wine taste as good as it does, but I never have,” Mr Pisacreta continued. “For me, it’s always been natural fermentation. That’s it. Because of this, there is some variation in the flavor from year to year.”

Help From Some Friends

On the Saturday of Columbus Day weekend, Mr Pisacreta was joined by some of the men who have helped him in past years to start the winemaking process at his home.

Thom Bach, Jim Haman, Craig Knop, John Rice, and John Derosa are right there when it’s time to unpack the crates and begin making wine. Mr Knop was unable to make it to the Columbus Day weekend ritual of destemming and crushing the grapes this year due to a family commitment, but his friends expect he’ll be right there with them when it’s time to press the grapes in a few weeks.

Mr Pisacreta had briefly toyed with the idea of building his own vineyard when he and his wife moved into Newtown, but not for too long.

“It’s hard to cut down 50-year old oak trees,” he said. Without his own grape-growing vines, he relies on a local supplier. Maltose Express, the Monroe business owned by Mark and Tess Szamatulski, is the beacon for many local wine and beermakers.

“Tess always gets good grapes for me,” Mr Pisacreta said, pulling the tops off crates while his friends continued to feed the grapes into their destemming machine. For a few years, the men pulled the grapes off their stems by hand. A few years ago they decided to pool their money and invest in a motorized crusher and destemmer that has saved them a lot of time, and probably has already paid for itself.

Knowing that he will not rely on chemicals to balance the flavors of his wine, Mr Pisacreta is willing to spend a little more money on his grapes. When they come out of their crate they are sweet to the taste and firm — not rock hard, and certainly not mushy — to the feel. This year’s grapes, he said, “are superb.”

One of the biggest “ingredients” to Mr Pisacreta’s wine is weather. More specifically, it’s the outside temperature.

When he received his grapes this year, Mr Pisacreta left them in their crates outdoors for one night. Columbus Day weekend was sunny and bright, crisp without being too cold.

“Temperature has a lot to do with it,” he said. “This is the perfect weather.”

Gravity also plays a role in his family’s winemaking.

“We’ll rack the wine on or near a full moon,” he shared. “Gravity has a lot to do with everything.”

Mr Pisacreta is hoping that his son, Joe, now 18, will follow in his winemaking footsteps. He knows that he can’t force it, however.

“This is a custom, a family tradition,” he said. “I’d like Joe to learn what I do and appreciate it, but he has to come around in his own time. For me, this isn’t a hobby. It’s in my blood.

“Getting together like this, it’s a lot more than working on wine,” Mr Pisacreta said, looking around at his friends. “It’s fun. It’s about friendship.

“We cook. We laugh. Our families get together and it’s a great time,” he added. “Friends, good food, and good wine… that’s what it’s all about.”

 And if he can pour some of the award-winning wine for his friends, that probably helps the wine taste even better for Bill Pisacreta.