History of Watermelon Wine

From the very beginning, we wanted our wines to be the flavor of the Eastern Shore. When looking at what fruit wines to make, Watermelon was the first thing that came to my mind. Watermelons are prevalent in Dorchester, and very easy to come by. In fact, the first year, the watermelons were donated from excess that one of our neighboring farmers had. We made our first watermelon wine in 2010, the first year we were open.

 

When we needed to come up with a name for our new wine, our 7 year old daughter, Alison, suggested that we call it “Alison’s Wonderful Watermelon Wine”. It was not an instant hit with us, but over the next few months, we didn’t come up with anything better, and decided to go with it.

The first several years, the Watermelon wine was a hit, but was known for it’s foul smell. We would recommend that you not smell the wine first, as you normally would. Over time, I have worked on the smell, and it has improved greatly.

 

The 2020 Watermelon wine has been a challenge. For some reason, it had more pectins than normal. I could not get the pectins through the filter when it came time to filter for the March bottling, and we missed that bottling. I added enzymes to dissolve the pectins. This worked, however, in the meantime, another fermentation started. That means that the 2020 watermelon has a little more alcohol than normal. It is still only about 11%, but it is higher than normal for watermelon, and you can definitely taste the difference. 

 

We hope to see you enjoy the release of this new wine on Friday with our release party!

-William