It may have taken 180 years, but the Vine and
Olive Colony finally has its wine.
Demopolis Ecor Blanc is a native Alabama wine specifically
selected and designed to recognize and honor the unique heritage of
Demopolis.
Fifty cases of the white table wine were bottled for the first
time last week at Perdido Winery in Perdido, owned by Jim Eddins.
Local package stores and restaurants are receiving bottles of the
wine for their customers.
A history buff, Eddins says he greatly appreciates the legacy of
the Vine and Olive Colony. He was a frequent traveler to the city
as he marketed his Perdido Vineyards brand wines to local stores
and was a guest speaker at a Rotary Club luncheon.
The wine has a special label, designed by an Alabama graphics
artist, to capture the significance of Demopolis history. Using an
early photograph as a guide, the label shows the Tombigbee River
flowing past the white chalk bluffs, Ecor Blanc, with the town
above. The familiar Demopolis landmark Bluff Hall stands above the
white chalk bluffs.
The river view is framed with a gold representation of
Napoleon's "Fleur-de-Lis" emblem. The sidebar on the
label briefly outlines the Demopolis wine story from 1817 until
today.
Eddins chuckled when he pointed out that the Demopolis wine
story resulting from the government sponsored Vine and Olive
Colony is balanced with the required government warning on the
opposite side of the label.
This first offering of Demopolis Ecor Blanc is packaged in a
cobalt-blue bottle with a white decorative capsule. Eddins said he
wanted the label to capture a clear blue sky reflecting in the
waters of the Tombigbee with golden flecks of sunlight bouncing on
the wavelets of the water.
The semi-dry white wine has the characteristic golden color of
white muscadine wine. It is a blend of wines made from Alabama
Magnolia grapes and from French Colombard grapes, a vinifera
variety grown in California. |
"We can only imagine what the founders and inhabitants of
Demopolis may have envisioned for the city since the early days of
the Bonapartists cultivating their grapevines and olive trees,"
said Eddins.
"Wine was very much a part of their daily lives, but
unfortunately many factors frustrated their dreams of the good
life in Alabama."
While the Vine and Olive Colony legacy of Demopolis is a story
widely known to people who live here and to visitors to the city,
little is known about the actual cultivation of winegrapes and
efforts to produce wines at Demopolis or the surrounding Marengo
County during those early years.
The later grape-growing and wine-making history of Marengo
County is quite well documented. In 1860, the American Cotton
Planter and Soil of the South published the story on Dr. H. W.
Hackworth and his efforts to form the Marengo Wine Company, based
on a planting of Catawba, Isabella and Herbemont grapes. Not much
is known about any wines resulting from this effort.
Commercial production of winegrapes and wines in Alabama that
are competitive with California and Europe is not a simple matter.
The Bonapartists discovered quickly that the Alabama climate is
very difficult for producing premium wines.
Eddins admires the courage of the Bonapartists and understands
the efforts they made to produce wines, but he also knows and
understands the advantages that he had in actually producing
successful wines in Alabama since 1979.
Graduating upper fourth in the U. S. Naval Academy Class of
1957, Eddins, now 63, was a career Marine Corps officer before
retiring to cultivate grapes and later become a bottler.
He grows native muscadine grapes acclimated to this region, not
the vinifera varieties that the French settlers of Demopolis
attempted to grow.
Perdido Vineyards winery is totally refrigerated, and the grapes
are rapidly picked with a mechanical harvester to overcome the "heat
of summer" problems.
Wine production under the controlled environment of
refrigeration yield wines similar to wines produced in colder
climates such as France. |
