Church Street Winery
Raynam, Massachusetts

Culture, Environmentalism and Nature
Late September in New England - a gorgeous time to be out motorcycling (environmentally sound), admiring foliage (the glories of nature) and sampling the fine wares of a Massachusetts winery (culture!). We headed out to meet up with our like-minded Mensans at the Church Street Winery in Raynham, Mass.

The winery is set on Church Street across from ... you guessed it ... a church. The winery's name until quite recently was Via Della Chiesa Winery, which is the same thing in Italian. To confuse things a bit more, the winery has decided to market their four wines in a unique way: the same four wines are put out under four entirely different labels. These label sets are: Church Street Winery, Via Della Chiesa Winery, Holiday Collection, and Cape Cod Winery (the last with pretty lighthouse pictures on each one). The wine inside is exactly the same in all four cases.

What kinds of wine do they offer? The only grape they grow on site is a cayuga, although they lay claim to the title of Third Largest Winery in New England (behind Westport and Skonnet). The first wine is Cranberry Blush - made from cranberry concentrate from a local grower, plus their own cayuga. This was lite and sweet, although some tasters found it unplesasant. Second and third were the Coastal Classic pair - one a dry white, the other a semi-dry. Both are made from Cayuga with varying amounts of sugar added to it. The semi-dry is the most popular wine, but both are drinkable. The final wine is the Lighthouse Classic, a red table wine, with the grapes imported from California. This was a dry, fruity wine with a pleasant taste.

As an added bonus, a square dance group was down in the fermentation area demonstrating their square dancing abilities while we tasted.

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