First Official Meeting of High Country Winegrowers Association Saturday

Story by Sam Calhoun

The newly formed High Country Winegrowers Association will host its first official meeting this Saturday, March 21, at 10:00 a.m. at the Appalachian Center for Mountain Winegrowing at ASU, located in Room 014 in ASU’s Old Belk Library. The meeting is free, open to the public and includes a post-meeting grape pruning workshop at Creston Vineyards.

Norm Oches, director of the Appalachian Center for Mountain Winegrowing, will be the lead speaker of the event and will cover the history of mountain wine, how to start a vineyard, varieties of wine grapes, springtime vineyard preparations and the future of growing grapes at high altitudes. Both people who are interested in growing grapes for fun and people who are interested in growing grapes for profit are invited to attend.

“This represents our first educational meeting, which is the primary objective of the High Country Winegrowers Association—to educate people on growing grapes at high altitudes on steep slopes so we can one day make the best wines in the state,” said Dr. Lucien Wilkins, owner of Spencer Mountain Vineyards, located off Isaac’s Home Road in Cove Creek, and founding member of the High Country Winegrowers Association. “The whole idea is to teach people how to grow grapes up here and then make terrific wine. We want to introduce people to the process,” he added.

After the meeting concludes, light refreshments will be served and then attendees are invited to travel to Creston Vineyards, where owner Jimmy Coan will lead a free grape pruning seminar that will include information on where to find grapevines, how to plant the vines, how to prune the vines and how to know when they need to be picked from the vine. Attendees should plan on providing their own transportation from ASU to Creston Vineyards, but ride sharing is a possibility.

The High Country Winegrowers Association is for winegrowers and those interested in viticulture who live in the five counties of western North Carolina and one county in eastern Tennessee that have mountain peaks exceeding 4,000 feet. The mission of the High Country Winegrowers Association is to serve the needs of winegrowers, wineries and wine enthusiasts through education, information sharing, promotion of public awareness and fostering collaborative efforts in the western North Carolina mountain counties of Watauga, Ashe, Avery, Alleghany and Caldwell.