SHELTON, Conn. — The wine season is always a welcome time of the year at Jones Family Farm in Shelton.
This year, as the calendar turned to fall, head wine maker Joe Patrick at Jones Winery was busy working on around 18 different varieties of Connecticut-made wine.
Patrick said, “we are currently in harvest season – it usually starts around Labor Day and it will run until about the first week in November.”
With a tasting room, a full production facility and acres that the Jones Family Farm has dedicated to growing grapes, Patrick said the production project is up and running.
“[The grapes] are being crushed, pressed, the juice is being produced and fermented," Patrick said. "There are about 100 factors that determine how that wine turns out but we always say it starts with the vineyard and starts with the agriculture.”
Patrick is passionate about his product with the awards to prove it and is one of the youngest wine makers in the country at just 24.
"We grow it here, we bottle it here, we make it here – it comes from the land and it’s sold here,” Patrick said.
Brandie Yerzak, the marketing coordinator at Jones Family Farm, is looking forward to a vibrant wine season.
“I think wine gives you that Connecticut autumn feeling – the pumpkins are going, the apple picking is going, the leaves are changing so this is definitely a time to see the beautiful vineyards that Connecticut produces, like the one we have at Jones," Yerzak said from the tasting room.
Jimmy Altman is a reporter at FOX61 News. He can be reached at jaltman@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook, X and Instagram.
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