MARSHALL – Chuck Blethen traveled more than 5 million international miles conducting business during his time in the technical instrumentation industry. Throughout his time traveling overseas, Blethen – the owner of Marshall’s Jewel of the Blue Ridge Vineyard – further developed an affinity for trying all sorts of wine, […]
Click here to view original web page at www.citizen-times.com
MARSHALL - Chuck Blethen traveled more than 5 million international miles conducting business during his time in the technical instrumentation industry. Throughout his time traveling overseas, Blethen - the owner of Marshall's Jewel of the Blue Ridge Vineyard - further developed an affinity for trying all sorts of wine, beer and spirits in every country he visited.
Now, he's published his third book on the subject, "The World's Largest Collection of Country Wine Recipes."
Blethen's first book, "The Wine Etiquette Guide" was published in 2007, while his next book, "Entertaining With Wine" followed that.
His latest book was his most enjoyable one to research, the author joked.
"It was my favorite, from all the experiences and places I'd been tasting and testing and making wines," Blethen said. "I've had a lot of interest in it. It was certainly the most fun one - getting the information to write the book. I have to laugh because everybody asks me, 'What's your favorite wine?' I tell them it depends on what country you're in."
The book contains 195 country wine recipes and 240 versions total, as some of the recipes have more than one way to make it.
Blethen and his wife, Jeannie, who edited the book, founded the vineyard 12 years ago, Blethen said.
"We bought it with a specific idea in mind of planting grapes," he said. "Along the way, we discovered the cold-hardy Muscadine (plant) out here. So I spent three years figuring out how to propagate them so I could populate my whole vineyard with them. The last several years, we've been able to get commercial quantities out to make preserves and some other things."
According to the Jewel of the Blue Ridge website, "the grapes make a great steep slope, cold-hardy crop that can be grown naturally, organically, or biodynamically from which important phytochemicals can be derived for the Neutraceutical industry as well as other traditional grape products."
The vineyard also hosts virtual classes at its Mountain Grape School, with classes on grape-based products and processing and Katuah Muscadine propagation, among others, set for March and April.
For Blethen, he gained experience in winemaking and foraging early on while growing up near Bald Knob, West Virginia.
"My mom taught me how to do mushrooming and how to find berries in the woods," he said. "My dad, once or twice in the summer, he'd always have a five-gallon crock of beer brewing behind the wood stove in the corner of the kitchen. So I grew up with that. My uncle was a moonshiner, and I worked with him when I was 12 years old. I didn't know it was against the law."
Blethen joked that his family "was so far up the holler, we had to pipe in sunshine as well as moonshine," adding that he still lives by the values instilled in him by his family and his neighbors.
"I had two pairs of pants and two T-shirts. You'd wear one, and wash one. That's the way it was," Blethen said. "My dad was a coal miner for 42 years. He got me a job for two summers in there, and I'd do anything to keep from having to do it again. But he taught me the value of honesty and hard work, and if you told somebody you were going to do something, you'd move heaven and earth to make sure it happened exactly as you said it was going to happen."
Some of those neighbors taught Blethen a great deal about winemaking. Now, instead of a "hillbilly," those friends refer to him as a "mountain William" because he's an "educated hillbilly" he said.
"Along the way, we'd start running into these people up there who were making dandelion wines, and it was just what they did. These old people from the country that came over here brought all that capability and know-how with them, and it's all been lost now," Blethen said.
In writing his books, Blethen said he hopes to shed light on the many different ingredients from which wine can be made.
"Everybody thinks you say 'wine' and you think grapes," he said. "You can make wonderful wines out of things like mushrooms, oak leaves, marigolds and different kinds of vegetables, and so forth. It's astounding. When I was doing some research on some of the recipes, some people I had met in Australia and New Zealand informed that those countries have clubs with more than 450 people in it, such as the Sydney Club. All they do is make country wines - they don't make grape wines. England has four or five major country winemaking organizations. So it's not a rare thing, but it is in this country."
“The World’s Largest Collection of Country Wines Recipes” is now for sale on the Jewel of the Blue Ridge website and in their farm store for $34.
To view Mountain Grape School's class schedule, visit the organization's website.
