Baker-Bird Winery: Tasting the History of American Wines

By Nan McCreary

Most people assume that California is the birthplace of American wine. In fact, in the 1870’s — when California was just establishing commercial winemaking — tiny Bracken County, on the banks of the Ohio River in Kentucky Bluegrass Country, was the leading wine-producing county of the U.S., supplying over 30,000 gallons of wine annually. At the center of this production was Baker-Bird Winery, the oldest commercial winery in America that is still operating on its original land.

“At the time, the Ohio River Valley was the place to grow grapes in the U.S.,” according to Dinah Bird, who purchased the winery in 2003 with the intention of bringing the property back to its glory days. “The German immigrants who settled here said the hilly area reminded them of their homeland and they called it ‘America’s Rhineland.’ With their heritage of wine, grape production flourished. I want to restore that history, and create wines that reflect our culture and our terroir.”

The Baker-Bird Winery was established by ancestors of John Baker, a German immigrant and early settler of Augusta, Kentucky. Baker’s son Abraham purchased land where the winery stands today, and his son, Abraham Baker, Jr., built the winery in the 1850s. During this era, a Cincinnati entrepreneur named Nicholas Longworth planted hundreds of acres of grapes in the Ohio River Valley and became internationally famous for his sparkling wine made from the native Catawba grape. Longworth helped put the area on the wine map, creating a market for the growing number of German immigrants who wanted an affordable, drinkable table wine to continue with the traditions of their homeland.

The “Golden Age” of wine in Northern Kentucky, however, was short-lived. “After the Civil War, there was a labor crunch when the slaves were freed,” Bird told The Grapevine Magazine. “Also, there were wet summers in the late 1860s and early 1870s, and grapes succumbed to black rot and powdery mildew. The nail in the coffin was the discovery of a mutant strain of tobacco in the area — white burley — which was extremely popular. As farmers were losing grapevines to fungus, they started growing tobacco. Soon, the area was the premier tobacco producing region in the U.S.”

The Baker-Bird winery, like so many, sat dormant until Bird purchased it in 2003. She named the historic wine cellar in the German tradition, Baker-Bird Winery, combining the names of the founder and the current owner. “My goal is to restore a lost piece of history, and to help people have a positive agricultural wine experience,” Bird said.

For Bird, with a background in chemistry and a passion for history, the purchase was serendipity. “I love the ‘magic’ of the winemaking process,” she said. “This is where my background and my love of winemaking and history intersect.”

The Baker-Bird Winery is one of 22 wineries in the U.S. National History Registry, and the vineyard land is on its own National Historic Registry. It is the only winery in the country that was in a Civil War Battle, where it served as a refuge for women and children during the Battle of Augusta in 1862. Because of that rich history, the winery is also on the Civil War Heritage Trail and the Freedom Trail.

Today, under Bird’s direction, the Baker-Bird Winery is poised to make a comeback. “While we have done a lot of restoration, we have left the building as it was as much as possible,” Bird said.

The original winery, mostly intact, is a three-story structure built into a hillside, with the vineyard on top of the hill. The cellar is 90 feet long by 40 feet wide and 40 feet high. The room is cavernous, with stone walls and a dirt floor. Bird has added drainage tiles and gravel to keep the floor dry. The cellar is a popular venue for special events, particularly wedding-related events such as bridal showers, rehearsal dinners and receptions. The second story, the original pressing room, is now the tasting room, with a bar, fire pits and tables and chairs. Bird installed decking and a bathroom and upgraded the electricity (from the 1930s), so it would meet code. The third level is an attic, which serves as a storage room. “The people who owned the property before me used the attic for hanging tobacco and they’d auction off the leaves,” Bird said. “The room still smells like tobacco.”

To one side of the building is a small winery, required for a Kentucky Small Farm Winery License. In 2009, Bird opened the cellar and the tasting room to the public. Currently, Bird outsources her grapes from local growers, producing 400 to 500 cases per year, all premium wines. Bird’s goal is to replant the vineyard and add a much-larger wine-making facility.” In 2006 we had the soils tested, and determined that it’s the perfect place for growing grapes,” she said. “The site is terraced, with good orientation and ventilation. You can still see the stone terraces from the original vineyard. There’s a lot of limestone in the soil, so drainage is excellent.”

Bird’s passion for winemaking — and training in viticulture and winemaking at the University of California Davis — give her a leg up in bringing out the true expression of grapes native to the Ohio Valley. Most are French-American hybrid grapes, including Vidal Blanc, the most popular grape grown in Kentucky for white wine. “Vidal Blanc is planted so much because it can tolerate the freeze/thaw cycles we have in the spring,” Bird said. “It is a very versatile grape. Like Chardonnay in California, it can be made with many expressions.” Bird makes a dry, semi-dry and sweet version of Vidal Blanc.

The only Vitis Vinifera on the Baker-Bird menu of nine wines is a Cabernet Franc. Vitis Vinifera grapes cannot survive the cold temperatures of Northern Kentucky, but Cabernet Franc can tolerate temperatures as low as minus-25 F. One of Baker-Bird’s best-selling wines is a Cabernet Franc Blanc, where they remove the skins before fermentation. According to the Baker-Bird website, the Cabernet Franc Blanc ‘releases a burst of exotic aromas’ and is ‘a distinct Kentucky wine produced from a French grape.’

The signature wines at Baker-Bird Winery — and the ones that have received national and international accolades — are the Bourbon Barrel Wines, complex red and white wines that have been aged at least six months in bourbon barrels. “Anyone can make wine,” Bird said, “but the best wines have a story behind them. Bourbon barrels reflect our culture: what wine is to California, bourbon is to Kentucky. This is who we are.”

Baker-Bird’s Black Barrel Wine, a red made from Cabernet Franc, takes 11 years to produce. The Kentucky bourbon ferments in a heavily-charred barrel for nine years. The Cabernet Franc ferments in a white oak bourbon barrel for one year. Then the wine is racked from the oak barrel to the used bourbon barrel for six months to a year. The resulting wine is a very smooth dry red wine with bourbon undertones.

According to Bird, the bourbon barrel wines account for one-third of Baker-Bird’s sales. “I didn’t invent this process,” she said, “but I did commercialize it and make it in quantities, and now I ship it to three states. The wines go great with hushpuppies, a local favorite around here, so it reflects our culture and our climate.”

Bird noted that she was, indeed, the first to make a white wine in bourbon barrels. The wine, called Lightning Strike, is made from Vidal Blanc with a hint of bourbon that comes from the bourbon barrels. Initially, this was slightly problematic. “It was very difficult to make the white wine from a charred bourbon barrel,” Bird said. “All bourbon barrels are charred, and even though the wine tasted good, it did not look good. So, the process had to be perfected.”

As Baker-Bird is aspired to grow, she delights in watching Kentucky viticulture also grow, especially now that tobacco production has moved overseas. In 1990, Kentucky had one winery. In 1994, the State passed legislation to allow small farm wineries. By 2000, there were 10 wineries in Kentucky, and today there are over 70 registered and bonded wineries. While the state’s wine industry is growing, Bird acknowledged that opening a winery is always a challenge.

“It usually takes four or five years to harvest a crop, and farmers have to wait for a paycheck,” she said. “I decided that I was not going to compete against farmers and other wineries, but rather, work with them. The average vineyard is only two acres, and there isn’t a huge market for the wine, so I work in the vineyards gratis, and the farmers give me first choice on the fruit. It’s a win-win for everyone. I do all I can to support the local wine business.”

In a further effort to support the local economy, Bird hires people to help in her tasting room, including a guitarist who has been playing almost every Saturday and Sunday afternoon since the winery opened. She also employs local teenagers to lead tours at the winery and help with special events. “This gives the students something to put on their resumes, plus an opportunity to learn responsibility,” she said.

In the meantime, Bird keeps “plugging away” at her small business. Proceeds from the sale of wine go toward restoring the historic winery and supporting local farm families. Recently she began turning an old tobacco barn on the property into a bar, where visitors can drink beer (from an old claw-foot tub) and, if so inclined, smoke cigars or hang tobacco and roll their own. Bird has purchased a 1953 Pontiac to carry customers to and from the winery and the bar. She is calling the bar Bootlegger’s Barn, in a nod to the history of moonshine flowing along the Ohio River between Kentucky and Ohio.

As Bird looks to the future, she is hoping she can introduce more and more people to Kentucky’s wine country. Currently, she has five to six thousand visitors a year, many who bring pictures of family members that worked on the Baker Winery back in the mid-1800s. Bird expects that number to increase, as a new Bourbon Trail is being added to pass through Bracken County. By stopping at Baker-Bird Winery, and savoring a glass of Black Barrel Wine or Lightning Strike aged in bourbon, visitors on the Trail can enjoy a slice of Kentucky’s architectural past — and experience first-hand the crossroads of Kentucky’s storied wine and bourbon history.

Baker-Bird Winery is located at 4465 Augusta Chatham Rd., Augusta, KY. The winery is open for tastings and tours Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m.

For more information, visit
www.bakerbirdwinery.com

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