Big Creek Winery Tasting Room owner Candy Pomeroy. Photo by Laura Lindsay
The Big Creek Winery Tasting Room in Christiana offers varieties of its wide selection of Tennessee wines in various levels of sweetness, so wine lovers can pick a wine to their taste.
The tasting room, located just across from Miller’s Grocery, offers wines from Big Creek Winery including grape wines from white muscadine, red muscadine, Niagara white, Catawba and Concord, and types of fruit wines such as blackberry, peach, pear, blueberry, strawberry, raspberry and cherry.
All of the wines come from Big Creek Winery in Giles County, Tennessee. The vineyard and winery are located about an hour and a half south of Christiana, said Candy Pomeroy, owner of The Big Creek Winery Tasting Room.
“Billy and Ann Brymer own the winery, landscape and nursery, and Billy is the winemaker,” Pomeroy said. “He started out very young in landscaping and along with that he opened up a nursery. He has always had a love for wine and an interest in wine making.
“He started dabbling in wine making a little bit, then he and his wife were having a dinner in a local restaurant, where you can take your own beverage in, and a gentleman walked in with what looked like homemade wine. It looked gorgeous, and it caught Billy’s eye,” the tasting room proprietor continued. “The man’s name was Sam Duncan, they became very good friends and Billy spent about four years from start to finish with Sam, studying the way Sam makes wine.”
The Brymers’ grow a variety of grapes for their wines that are featured at the tasting room.
Red muscadine grapes can be pinkish, purple or even black in color. The addition of a sugar in the wine-making process frequently transforms the wine into a favored dessert wine. Others like a special dry red table wine made from bronze muscadine grapes.
Most indigenous muscadine vines produce dark grapes—pink, purple or even black. However, the settlers and explorers of what is now North Carolina reported the abundance of the golden muscadine grape. The golden or sometimes green muscadine (scuppernong), known as white muscadine, is similar to the green table grape, but is much rounder and larger.
Concord is the dark blue or purple and a favorite table grape, the one that is loved in jelly, juice and even soft drinks. It makes a sweet wine with a ripe flavor.
The Niagara grape is green in color and is known as the most common grape used for white grape juice. A fragile grape, it is known for its sweet aroma and flavors that taste a little of lemon and flowery jasmine.
The Catawba is a purplish- red grape that is a favorite for wines, juice, jams and jellies Many know the specialty wine for its shades of pink and white and for its musky and earthy flavor.
Other fruits make delicious orchard wines, also known as “country wine.” A harvest of peaches, blueberries, blackberries, apples, cherries, strawberries and pears are the natural bounty of the Big Creek Winery orchard.
What sets Big Creek’s wines apart from many wineries is that they aren’t only available in dry or sweet.
“We make muscadine, we make it dry, we make it sweet, but we also make it a medium, so you don’t have to have a really sweet muscadine,” Pomeroy said. “Almost everything we have is made in more than one sweetness level, and some of them we make in up to four sweetness levels.”
Many wine consumers want a little sweetness, but not something super-sweet. All of the varieties can be sampled at Big Creek Winery Tasting Room.
“Right now, we have 22 wines on our list and that’s pretty much everything. Our wines are seasonal, of course, so come summer, we will probably be out of a few. But then the next batch will be ready by fall,” Pomeroy said. “We grow everything that goes into the wines, which makes a difference because it’s fresh. You get a good smell and taste of the fruit even if it’s dry.
“With dry wines, you get the fruity smell with a little bit of the fruity taste and a dry finish. If you go to our 2% [sugar] which is our medium dry, it has just a little bit of a sugar to it—just a sprinkle, but it brings out the fruit flavor so much more. Our medium sweet has 5% sugar and is pretty sweet, but then we get into our sweetened which is 10%, that’s the really sweet one and the number-one seller.”
Wine tastings are $5 at Big Creek Winery Tasting Room, and this year the special events are back. On Saturday, April 3, the Easter Bunny will visit, families can hang out in the grass and picnic if they like, and Sunday, April 11 is Jeep Day.
For more about The Big Creek Winery Tasting Room and upcoming events, visit bigcreekwinerytennessee.com/big-creek-winery-tasting-room, or find Big Creek Winery Tasting Room on Facebook.
