Time in a bottle After 30 years of practice — and dreaming — Bangor couple opens Winterport Winery

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It was December 1972. In Bangor, newlyweds Joan and Michael Anderson were getting ready to spend their first Christmas together. Joan wanted to get her husband something unique – something he’d remember for years to come – so she bought him a winemaking kit.

Little did she know that nearly 30 years later, he’d still be making wine. Michael doesn’t use a kit anymore, though. Now, he keeps watch over eight 1,000-liter stainless-steel tanks, a pair of oak barrels from France, and hundreds of bottles of apple, pear, blueberry, strawberry and raspberry wine at the newly opened Winterport Winery.

“I started with that little kit 30 years ago and I’ve been making it in larger amounts ever since,” Michael Anderson, now 51, said. “Wine is a part of our family tradition. We have a glass of wine with dinner, sometimes in tumblers.”

About two years ago, the family decided to share that tradition. Michael Anderson had worked for years as a contractor and later as an accountant for a Searsport company. He and Joan, a nurse in the high-risk obstetrics unit at Eastern Maine Medical Center, had saved enough money to buy the sailboat Michael had always dreamed of owning.

They went to Florida intending to buy the boat, but when they arrived, Michael had a change of heart. He had another dream – to own a business that he could pass along to his children, Kristen and Kurt – and he knew he could do it if he used the money to start a winery instead.

“I said ‘I’d rather put my money into a winery and try it than be sitting on the boat in 10 years, kicking myself,'” he said. “That was the turning point.”

They knew it could be done here – there are four other active wineries in Maine and a handful in other Northeast states. So they started renovating space in the former PenBay Ace Hardware store building, in which the Andersons have a financial interest. They set off, touring small wineries in California and New England. They went to wine seminars and picked up ideas as they went along. They bought all the right equipment. They applied for state and federal licensing. Everything was going well, but they still were worried about one thing.

“As a fruit winemaker, there’s a hurdle you have to get over,” Joan said. “It’s this perception that fruit wines aren’t real, and that’s hard. This is not a grape region. This is blueberry country, strawberry country.”

They realized they’d have to include a tasting room in their plans, so visitors could sample the wines and decide for themselves if they were “real.”

“People’s perception of it is Boone’s Farm,” Joan said, laughing. “By tasting the wine you realize you can have a really good wine and not have it taste like juice. We educate people here.”

The nurse in Joan touts the antioxidant benefits of Winterport Winery’s blueberry wine. But the wine drinker in her describes the deep red variety as a “spaghetti wine” – rich, full-bodied and perfect for pasta with a hearty sauce.

Some say the Dry Blueberry tastes like Chianti. Others swear the Dry Pear is a Chardonnay. One thing’s certain: The wines surprise most everyone who tastes them. One oenophile tried the Dry Blueberry and asked Michael what kind of grapes he used.

“I told him, ‘The tiny little blue ones,'” Michael said.

The Andersons try to use as much locally grown fruit as possible, but because they started making wine last winter, not all of the concentrate they used was from Maine. The apples come from Maine-ly Apples in Dixmont, about half of the blueberries come from Jasper Wyman & Son in Milbridge, and they’re trying to find more local suppliers.

“I have to be very careful with the fruit,” Michael Anderson said. “Wine is such a unique thing – the flavors and the aromas – you have to be right on the money.”

The winery now offers apple, dry pear, demi pear (which is sweetened), strawberry, dry and demi blueberry, and raspberry varieties. Though they had a quiet opening in October, wine lovers and novices alike have already discovered the winery. They’ve even had a few repeat customers.

A couple from Cambridge, Mass., stopped in after hearing about the winery while buying lobsters at McLaughlin’s. Janet Ghattas and her husband, John Hand, were in Bangor to visit Ghattas’ aunt Louise John. Hand and Ghattas fall into the “wine lovers” category. They’re wild about foie gras with sauternes. They just got back from Bordeaux. They know what they’re talking about. And they liked the Dry Pear – a lot.

“Very nice,” Hand said as he swirled the clear, honey-toned wine around in the glass.

“Gosh, that’s nice,” Ghattas agreed.

The Dry Blueberry got similar reviews.

“Oh, isn’t that interesting?” Ghattas asked. “Ooh, that’s nice.”

“They’re all fun,” Joan told them.

The couple left with a bottle of dry pear, a bottle of dry blueberry, and a bag full of Maine-made dip mixes and jellies.

A little while earlier, Becky Hayes Boober left with six bottles. Boober, who splits her time between Beech Hill Pond and Winterport, says she doesn’t know much about wine, but she knows what she likes, and she liked the Raspberry Rain and Dry Pear.

“That’s nice,” she said as she sipped the pear. “It’s not at all what I anticipated … I expected it to be much sweeter. I was really pleased to have it be a true dry wine.”

While she plans to include the bottles she bought in Christmas gift baskets, Boober said she’ll be back to buy more so she’ll have some on hand when company comes. And this is just what the Andersons want to hear. They love it when local people stop by and pick up a bottle of wine, for dinner, for company, for any reason.

“The people of Winterport have been absolutely phenomenal,” Michael Anderson said. “This has been so much fun. We’re so excited.”

The Andersons have tried to make Winterport Winery a place where people feel comfortable. Handmade wooden wine racks line the walls, which are painted in warm ivory and deep crimson. The floors are covered with cork, in keeping with the wine theme. Vines line the ceiling. An array of Maine-made products and wine-related items covers big farmhouse tables. The tasting room has a shiny oak bar and cork floors and the tasting glasses are etched with a tree logo drawn by the Andersons’ daughter-in-law, Rachael. She also created the paintings that grace the winery’s striking red labels.

When you enter Winterport Winery, it’s clear that the Andersons have taken great care to make it a place even people who don’t drink wine will like.

“I want people to come back here because they like the place and because the wine was good, too,” Michael said. “We’re not a bar. Wine is a food. It’s part of life.”

The tasting room at Winterport Winery is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday or by appointment April through December. It is located at 279 South Main St. (at the junction of Routes 1A and 69). Tastings are free and open to the public, though proper ID is required. In addition, Winterport Winery’s wines are sold at Bangor Wine and Cheese Co. in Bangor, Ampersand in Orono and The Vineyard in Bucksport. Through the month of December, the winery will offer mulled wine and cookies. For information, call 223-4500.