The "Roseto Effect"

Living forever, everyone wants to, but no one has. But what if you could live about 8 to 10 years longer than the average American? What if it was in your blood, what if it was part of your family's history? Well for some it is...

Just recently the oldest living Roseto native, Carmen Ruggiero passed away, just a month shy of 104 years of age. We had a chance to meet him at the "Centi Anni" or 100 yr celebration of Roseto's history and he was a charming man with a great knack for humor.

There is a tiny hill town in Pennsylvania called Roseto. It was established in 1912 by a small Italian community that moved to America from Roseto Valfatore, Italy and it is part of our family's rich heritage. It's a town where everyone's related, you're always meeting another new cousin, and everyone knows everyone. 

What was amazing about this town and these people was their incredible history of longevity. They had low heart disease rates and cancer, especially among the men. Because of this they were outliving the average American in upwards of 8 to 10 years. So a 10 year study was done to figure out why. It was called the "ROSETO EFFECT".

Our heritage is in our wine.  

Everything they ate and drank was tracked daily, and the final result was that it wasn't their gardening and homemade foods that helped them to live longer.

Everyone in town made wine, and wine is good for you right? Well, it wasn't the wine either. The answer is quite beautiful, it was the tight-knit community, that sense of well-being and love that everyone felt, that made them live longer, happier and healthier lives. You see, everyone took care of their own and their neighbor. Even the town bum who was lovingly called "mangiare e bere" or "eat and drink", I was told that he never slept on the street and never missed a meal. I wish times were still like that.

So that is why we decided to honor our family as well as the community of Roseto, Pennsylvania for their remarkable history because they knew how to live right. That is why we called our Italian red wine the "Roseto Effect".

Members of the study: my great-grandfather Domenico Finelli (bottom left) and my great great grandfather Pasqualli Finelli (center with white beard) 

We honor their tradition of winemaking by blending Sangiovese, Chianti, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon to make a beautiful Italian Red Wine just like our forefathers did, perfect for pasta Sundays.

Perhaps having a glass or more a day may make the "Roseto Effect" rub off on us too. We may never know if it will work...

...pass me the wine please... 

*to read more about the Roseto Effect, visit our "Wines" page and select "Roseto Effect"

Seed to Sip

Driving home tonight from a workshop on fermentation and chemistry in making hard apple cider, I found the demographics of the classroom to be quite interesting. Being in the wine industry for some time, there is a certain stereotype among my fellow wine makers and enthusiasts, however the demographics of today's workshop was quite different from that. I found myself feeling quite honored to be around these men and farmers that I respect so much for their years of valuable experience working the land, having sleepless nights during the snowy season hoping their crops would survive and how poetically they spoke of the beautiful infrastructure of their orchards.

Can't you just taste them, the fresh produce of summer? 

Having only green eyes and not green thumbs, we source our fresh pressed apple cider from a local farmer in our community and I am quite emamored by these strong knowledgeable men. I'm sure we all respect farmers for what they produce for us on a daily basis, when we remember to. But overall I think we may take them for granted.

Think of the summer farmers markets full of green luxurious produce that makes us feel wholesome and healthy just by looking at it, sweet apple cider and pumpkin pies that magically appear just in time for the fall harvest, do we forget to thank the tireless effort of our local farmers? I'm sure we all do, I for one know that I am guilty of it. But a wealth of knowledge is available from these dear ones who don't ask for glory, yet provide to us the sustenance we need to feed our little children and ourselves. Beautiful "farm to table" meals are grown by our local farmers. 

Farm to table, poached pears

These were the men I was surrounded by tonight. Many of them, like myself, have begun creating a new genre among the craft beverage industry and that is what has united myself with these respected men.

They really know what it means to go from seed to sip. 

A special thank you to Mary from Dish-LLC.com and Denise, Carla and Erin from Penn State Extention, also Eric Shatt from Redbyrd Cider for your instruction at the "Seed to Sip" workshop. 

Then he said "let there be cider..."

In the beginning…

Everything we do has one, that spark, that flash of inspiration, that thought that feels so crazy or exciting that you're almost afraid to say it out loud. 

I have found that sharing those thoughts are what brings it to birth. By throwing them out into the universe it reverberates back to your own ears along with the thoughts of others, both the negative and the positive until we figure out just what we want from it. 
That's how we got started on this new adventure of ours, as hard cider makers born from winemakers. 

After making wine with my husband for just under 20 years and now looking to open our first winery, I was looking for something new and different that allowed more expansive creativity to add to our business. I have been a painter of modern abstract for many years and feel inspired and excited to sit in front of a blank canvas and share with others what I see because it takes them on my journey with me. I felt that the art of fermenting this new fruit was again that blank canvas full of possibilities in a new experimental and growing culture. 

Our new limited winery license allowed us to also make hard ciders, something that I have tried in the past in bottles at restaurants, but they were so sweet that I couldn't even taste the alcohol, bubbly sweet apple juice is how I referred to it. Not my favorite, but what if it could be made differently? To be fair, homemade products are usually far better than anything commercially produced. So what if I was not properly introduced to hard apple cider's true qualities? What if perhaps I met the imposter and not the real thing?

Thus began the experiment, to see just what was possible in the world of hard apple cider. I chatted with my brother-in-law, an avid beer maker and as a gift he helped us make our first batch. At first it had such a crazy funk to it, making me think that it was a failure, so we pushed to the side in our warehouse and forgot about it. But I still wanted to give it a shot, so I purchased my own fresh pressed apple cider, 30+ gallons of it and went to work, reading as much as I can get my hands on about the process, scouring YouTube and researching the ancient art of fermenting apples. To my surprise, there wasn't a lot of solid information out there, just jumbled blogs and differing ideas, so I figured I'm kind of on my own with this.

After years of backpacking the Appalachian Trail, Yosemite, Europe and the wild Alaska frontier, I had always traveled with a journal and a small book about how to identify edible plants so that I could TASTE the earth around me. So the one thing that kept ringing true was that the earth provided such an abundance of plentiful herbs and flowers, why not share some of my favorite tastes with others via my hard apple cider and take them on my journey that way.

  Resting in the muskeg and low cranberry  patches on the Dixie Pass in Wrangle St. Elias, Alaska 

So the compass was set that day, pointing north with those thoughts of inspiration and direction on a new trail that lay in front of me, so with a jump in my step and a bit of nervousness in my gut, I took a running leap down that path, but it was just the begining...