Frederick County September 2012

The car I brought in for repair has a bashed-in passenger door from a zoned-out student backing into me in a parking garage, Pink is slumming as a receptionist behind the counter checking her talons for chips and her spikes for maximum hairspray hold, the stumpy vending machines hold sticky- and antique-looking M&Ms, and the service is brusque and indifferent, but the weather is fine and my ride will be here soon to whisk us off to wineries in Frederick County. I escape into the sunny Monday afternoon for wine, two women friends, and whatever song is made up from our constant talking on the way.

We hit the road towards Frederick County. Route 40 is historic itself; the Baltimore-St. Louis line was called the “National Road” back when Thomas Jefferson commissioned it. It turns into Route 70 and that’s where the speed picks up on the highway. The speed limit signs say 65, but everyone seems to go 70 on 70. Fortunately, it’s usually like a large country road, except for the occasional truck. Once we get off the beaten path, the drive into northwest Maryland ends up on country roads, with cornstalks, black eyed susans, orchards, antique shops, and the remnants of farms that have seen better days. Frederick is close to Gettysburg, Antietam, and Harper’s Ferry, so there is also a whiff of Civil War battles and prohibition-era raids in the air.

We drove into the city of Frederick, parked on the street, dug around in our collective spare change for quarters for the parking meter, and walked around, taking notes of the options on each restaurant’s window menu. Walked around past the Candy Kitchen, a rock shop, an oil and vinegar emporium, and various crafters of organic/artisan/crunchy products. We ended up at the Tasting Room (http://www.thetastingroomrestaurant.com/), a buttoned-down, pin-striped-window-blind kind of place. All of the small plates and salads would go well with wine, or even the champagne by the glass: mussels, carpaccio, calamari, lobster chowder, and foie gras. Across the street, a convincing trompe l'oeil had been painted on the side of the building of an angel in the window. It kept startling me when I would look up out the window and think it was an actual person looking out the window.

After lunch, we went to Linganore (http://www.linganorewines.com/) and Frederick Cellars (which closed its business December 2012). Touring the winery gets you outside in the grape vines and shows you behind the scenes of winemaking, but the best stuff are the throwaway bits they tell you, such as the process of winemaking creates a residue that is used in cream of tartar, and that they donate any misprinted or overrun wine labels to day care centers for the kids to color in.

The wine tastings are pretty straightforward. Generally, they let you try around five wines for $5, sometimes including the wineglass. You get a list of choices, usually on a long card like a brunch menu. If you want to keep track of your visits, you can get a wine passport and fill in each winery’s code. Later, you go online to http://www.marylandwines.com and log your trip.

Once you’ve tried the wine, you can buy full bottles of the ones you liked (12 bottles or more gets you a good discount, and also a wine box, which is great for storing Christmas decorations).  While you are waiting for them to box up your wine, you can look through all the brochures for wine festivals, grape festivals, harvest festivals, how to join the American Wine Society, the map of wineries along the Mason-Dixon wine trail, and a recipe for baked chicken using one of this winery’s blush wines, and wonder what you’ve been doing with your time.

On the way back, we looked for an farm stand that was open, but we were too far out in the weeds, so we stopped at Frank’s (http://www.franksproduceandgreenhouse.com/live/) back in our neighborhood to buy tomatoes and corn. Everything, including the chrysanthemum plants on sale at Franks, goes with wine.