EDUCATION
Spilling the Juice Art, technology and craft come together at Silver Coast Winery in Ocean Isle Beach. STORY & PHOTOS BY ED BECKLEY
Silver Coast Winery’s Dana Keeler and Mary Ann Azzato toast to their newest batch of American Oak Chardonnay.
I
It takes up to 15 months to gently age a fine Chardonnay in American oak barrels. How fortunate I am to arrive at Ocean Isle Beach’s Silver Coast Winery just in time for the uncorking of this year’s new batch in May. The bottle chosen from the cellar has not even been labeled yet, and I am blessed to share in the first tasting. What an honor! Before that first sip, however, Silver Coast Owner Mary Ann Azzato and Vintner Dana Keeler explain to me the many steps that took place over the past year and a half to bring this glorious libation to life. The first thing I discern is that “boutique” winemaking, as Keeler calls it, is not a chemistry experiment. It’s more like gourmet cooking. “It is a blending of art, technology and craft,” Keeler says.
Silver Coast Winery is an award-winning business that features around a dozen reds, whites and pinks, starring, among others, honeysuckle-hued Seyval Blanc, salmoncolored White Merlot and dark cherry-colored Touriga. The beginning of winemaking for all of them is the last week of August to the first week of September — the autumn harvest. Although the winery has acres of thriving Muscadine vines on site, Azzato sells them to eat and doesn’t use them in her wines. She prefers grapes that provide for drier and variably fruitier outcomes. She imports them primarily from the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina and Dahlonega, Georgia. Keeler has spent most of his adult life in the wine industry. His expertise is the product of an array of hands-on work in the fields and the cellars of Bully Hill Vineyard in upstate
Summer 2021
61
