Blueberry Wine for the Wine Connoisseur

I never gave wines made from anything other than grapes a second thought – until I moved to Florida and was forced to face them head-on! Some of these wines have been absolutely horrid but a recent visit to a winery that makes only blueberry wines challenged my biases and made me think twice about these alternative wines. Here’s what happened when I visited Whispering Oaks Winery in Oxford, FL!

I’m suspicious of most wines not made from grapes. I make an exception for hard ciders, which are essentially wines made from apples, because they are oftentimes variety specific, quite complex, and are produced using methods similar to traditional wine-making techniques. That said, they don’t pretend to compete with grape-based wines and are packaged and marketed differently as well.

Wineries are few and far between in Florida, so when Laurie and I took a road trip up north this past summer for a weekend visit with Laurie’s brother and his wife, we stopped at a winery on the way that specializes in blueberry wine. Made in a style identical to grape-based wines, Whispering Oaks Winery takes their wines seriously. All of the blueberries used in their wines are grown on their farm. Also, they only make blueberry wine, so they are specialized and focused which usually speaks well to the quality of the product. Similarly, they only make eight wines which means they are a low production winery – this allows them to spend more time working to perfect a small number of wines instead of stretching themselves thin with a larger offering of different wines.

Whispering Oaks Winery in Oxford, FL

Also, blueberry wines have lots of polyphenols which are known for preventing diseases like cancer, heart disease, and dementia to name a few, so there are quite a few health benefits to drinking these wines when compared their red wine grape-based counterparts.

But most importantly, how did these blueberry wines taste? The answer is, they were good, solid wines, a pleasant surprise! First, they tasted like blueberries which might strike you as being obvious until you realize that traditional wines rarely taste like grapes. All the wines we tasted were extremely fruit-forward wines that tasted of dark berry fruit with a hint of spice and pepper. In fact, they were so fruity that they all tasted somewhat sweet even if they didn’t have any residual sugar. In some ways, they are similar to medium-bodied red wines such as Merlot and Gamay – the wines were quite dark in color but were refreshing with light tannins. Also, the offerings spanned the range, from dry oak-aged wines to sparkling wines to semi-sweet wines to a sweet blueberry port wine (but again, all the wines were quite fruity, even the dry wines).

The best wines were the Oak Reserve (with blackberry and cherry notes along with a bit of oak as well), the Sassy Sangria (a semi-sweet wine that serves as the perfect base for a red sangria with some bourbon added to give it a kick!), and the Sparkling Sangria (which drank like a demi-sec sparkling wine). That said, the Oak Reserve Red was $50 a bottle so I definitely decided to pass – the wine wasn’t even close to being THAT good. Also, their blueberry Port, which they call Tango, was also good but again, $60 a bottle was too rich for my blood – I’d rather use that money to buy a nice vintage port from the Douro Valley of Portugal. The average cost of a bottle of their blueberry wine was about $20, a hefty price for a good but definitely not great wine. If they were $10 to $15 a bottle, I’d be more inclined to buy more of them.

In the end, we did buy a bottle each of the Delightfully Dry and the Sassy Sangria with the plan to use both of them as the base for a nice red Sangria vice drinking them on their own.

This tasting taught me that there are some solid, and even good fruit-based wines out there, but they are fundamentally different from traditional grape-based wines in terms of quality, and you will likely pay more for a lower quality wine (since they are generally very low production wines and thus quite expensive to make). Also, you will have to search a bit to find wineries that strive to produce good-quality fruit wines – but they are out there if you look hard enough! So, if you live in a state that doesn’t have a robust grape-growing industry, it’s worth checking out some of the alternatives like cider houses, or wineries that specialize in fruit-based wines. And if you find a good one, let me know – I’d love to hear about it!

Blueberry wine tasting