Reinventing the Small Family Farm

Buddy Savage believes a vineyard and winery might be the answer

— by Georgeanne Davis

It’s a perfect, sunny, August day in Maine , and a hawk rides  thermals in a cloudless sky over Savage Oakes Vineyard and Winery in Union . Owner Elmer “Buddy” Savage, walking the farm track that leads to his vines, likes the sound of the hawk’s piercing cry. “It keeps the birds away,” he says. Birds love to eat ripening grapes, and Savage recently invested in a bird guard that broadcasts predator calls across the vineyard in an attempt to keep the feathered predators from the crop, which he’ll begin harvesting the third week in September.

Grape-eating birds are just another one of the challenges faced by anyone who’s determined to have a cold-climate winery. What Savage and his wife Holly see in their three-and-a-half-acre vineyard and handcrafted wines — augmented with a crop of wild blueberries and sale of meat from pigs and Belted Galloway cows — is a way to continue working on a farm that’s belonged to family members since the 1790s.

Buddy’s parents — State Senator Christine Savage and the late Elmer Savage —  bought Barrett Hill Farm from distant relatives in 1985, and Buddy bought it from his parents in 2000. With a degree from UMaine Orono in agricultural mechanization systems, he wasn’t a complete stranger to farming in Maine , but at the time of the purchase, he worked for the U.S. Postal Service. The 95-acre property was a former dairy farm, and the old barn still remains across the street from the farmhouse, but its major source of income in recent years had come from 15 acres of blueberries, sold to a large processor. For a short time the farm was also home to a flock of sheep, which has now been replaced by a herd of Belted Galloway cows. The farm’s blueberry fields are steep and rough and have to be burned and hand-picked. In these days of mechanical mowing and harvesting, getting a crop is labor-intensive and, says Savage, “break-even at best.”

After buying the farm, Savage figured it was either work full-time and pay someone to maintain the farm, or work the farm full-time himself, which he much preferred. So he and his wife, thinking of a value-added use for the berries, started looking at and researching small wineries, planning to make blueberry wine. At that time Cellardoor Winery in Lincolnville had just started up, and, seeing that it was possible to grow wine grapes in Maine , in 2002 the Savages planted their first varieties of cold-hardy grapes.

A winery, they reasoned, would give them a retail operation that would draw people to the farm for tastings, turning a wholesale operation into a retail one and one that was more profitable to them. When they were looking all around planning the future of their farm, it became clear that the future is “agritourism.” There’s a great small agritourism industry all over the upper Midwest , says Savage. When this year’s statewide Open Farm Day was held in July, Savage Oakes had its first visitors waiting at the tasting room at 10 a.m. Savage thought he’d take them up to the vineyard, which is a short hike from the road, then come back to the tasting room, but the stream of visitors was so constant that he was still up in the vineyard leading tours at 4 p.m.

As we head up to the vineyard, Savage talks a bit about his self-education in the art of both growing grapes and making wine. Grapes, he explains, are temperamental; they want a sloping field with southern exposure, no fog, and a good breeze— all of which they have on Barett Hill Farm. “Heat would be nice, too,” Savage says, but the most important factor is the breeze and drier air. Mildew and fungus are the grape-grower’s worst enemy, and the longer grape leaves stay wet, the faster fungus will grow; so Savage’s vines are summer-pruned to allow breezes to sweep under them and keep the air circulating. Drip irrigation is in place beneath the rows, with a well at the top of the slope that uses solar panels to pump into tanks that can then gravity feed the irrigation system. Savage has to water his grapes early in the season, but he very seldom needs to water once they’re flourishing.

Caleb (left) and Jacob with mom and dad, Holly and Buddy Savage, in the winery. (The Oakes in Savage Oakes is Holly’s maiden name.)

Savage Oakes’ vineyard right now is evenly matched with the size of the winery; it can make wine from all of the grapes and blueberries and not have to buy any. It would actually be cheaper to buy grapes, says Savage; the same varieties of grapes that he grows could be delivered to his door from New York and mixed with his own, which is a good fallback option in case of a crop failure, or is a way to have a bigger operation, but is not what Savage wants. “I’d lose what I like, being involved from beginning to end.”

“We want to show what wines can be made from grapes we can grow here.” Researching cold-hardy grapes, putting the grapes in the ground, pruning, mowing, harvesting and producing the wine is all labor intensive, but, he says, “I love the work.”

Savage Oakes is currently growing nine varieties of grapes, roughly half red and half white. His newest variety is a white Lacross grape, planted a year ago. Two years ago he planted the white St. Pepin. His oldest white varietal is Seyval, which, says Savage, “makes great wine, but is on the edge of hardiness” here in Maine — it’s only good to 20° below zero. He’s on the verge of pulling up most of the Seyval vines, limiting them to one row that he’ll prune hard. Savage Oakes’ Seyval Blanc wine is their answer to Chardonnay, fermented to be very dry and then aged in American oak barrels.

Cayuga white grapes, now in their sixth year, hang in big clusters, awaiting their mid-October harvest. One of the most  productive and disease-resistant varieties, it is what Savage Oakes uses in their Daybreak Blush, blending in some of their red Maréchal Foch. The Maréchal Foch is also used in a blend with a sister variety, Leon Millet, to make Savage Oakes’ Barn Red, their signature dry red, aged in American oak.

Their classic American Concord is also one of the varieties grown in the vineyard and it makes a wine that hits the nose with the sent of fresh grape juice, but is made in a style much drier than other Concord-grape wines. It’s a surprise to most who taste it and expect a sweet wine, not one with a scant 1.0% residual sugar. That’s the nice thing about being a winemaker; you get to make what you want, and Savage likes his wines dry.

He made his first wine from kits, and after deciding to become a vintner, took some courses at UC Davis in California , and some online courses. When it comes to growing grapes in Maine or making wine, says Savage, there aren’t a lot of resources. “You can’t call Extension — so you have to learn on your own.” He and Holly visit wineries around the country, concentrating their research on those that have their own vineyards, are small in size, and  grow cold-hardy grapes. The University of Minnesota , says Savage, has done a lot of research on developing native wines, and that state is developing a sustainable wine-making industry. They have a colder winter there, says Savage, but a hotter summer.  He attends seminars and trade shows for cold-climate growers in Minnesota and says they now have about 400 people growing a couple of acres of grapes for the 25 wineries in the area. So they’re beginning to have enough home-grown grapes to supply the wineries. Savage thinks that in the future, Maine farmers could be in the same position, where “wineries in Maine would pay quite a premium for locally grown grapes.”

“Right now the Maine wine industry is so small.” There are only a few wineries in the state making grape wines (as opposed to fruit wines) and only two that have their own vineyards, he says. “ Maine is where Minnesota was 10 or 15 years ago,” and he sees “a lot of opportunity” for an industry to develop in this state.

Barrett Hill Farm in Union is home to Savage Oakes Vineyard and Winery.

The grape-growing and wine-making operations at Savage Oakes are in harmonious balance right now. Because the varieties ripen at different times, most can be harvested in a day and then crushed and put into fermentation. Family members can be called in to help with  the harvest — 6,000 pounds of grapes last year and an estimated 10,000 this year — but Savage is able to keep up with the pruning in spring and mowing and weeding over the summer.

Savage Oakes’ grapes are fermented as varietals and are finished wine before they are blended. One morning in spring Buddy will bring the individual wines to the kitchen early in the morning, so when Holly comes down, they’re lined up on the table for tasting. “Taste buds are best at 9 a.m.,” he explains. Then the blending is done. Now that he’s done it for a few years, “it’s less of a struggle.” At first, he worked with books spread out next to him, scared he’d ruin a whole batch of wine. Now, he’s confident and enjoys “working on the nuances.”

Some of the wines are ready as soon as they’re bottled; others are aged for a year. They’d like to have some of their dry red left over so they’d have a little backlog, says Savage, but over the course of eight months, most of it goes out the door.

“Small batches are what we do,” he says. “One barrel goes a long way for us.” A barrel holds 60 gallons of wine, and they get five bottles per gallon. Some of the wines are aged in stainless steel, others in oak barrels. American oak barrels are harsher, Savage says; the French are mellower, but cost $700, so he buys reconditioned barrels, which have been disassembled, the staves shaved, then reassembled and re-toasted. The toasting process, Savage explains, is what controls the extraction process. Heavier toasting means less oak extraction. The oak barrels are hard to maintain. Stainless tanks can be sanitized but oak barrels, with their small openings, need to be sprayed time after time and then either filled with an acid-based solution or have sulphur burned inside so mold won’t grow.

Heading back to the tasting room, Savage sees a flock of several dozen wild turkeys heading through the field. They, too, love grapes and eat the lower bunches, while the smaller birds devour the higher clusters. Deer also come for their share of grapes, although the worst damage from deer comes when they munch down a whole row of newly planted vines. Coyote hunters have been in the area lately, so there are fewer deer predators, which causes Savage to sigh. “Coyotes don’t eat grapes.”

When Savage Oakes first began its winery plans, they received help from Maine ’s Farms for the Future (FFF) program, a two-phase business assistance program that helps Maine farmers plan for the future of their agricultural enterprise. A program of the Maine Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Resources, it is administered by Coastal Economic Enterprises. Farmers are eligible if they own and operate five or more acres of productive farmland, have an idea for change that will increase the long-term economic viability of their farm, and are willing to commit  time to the research and writing of a good plan. FFF helped the Savages come up with a five-year plan, and they’re now in about year two-and-a-half of the plan. Part of this assistance included advice from Borealis Bread founder Jim Amaral, who was a former winemaker himself.

The tasting room, which was the former shop building on the farm and still has the original nail bins, vise and workbench, now displaying wines and products, was remodeled as part of this year’s plan, and next year will see expansion of the winery, now half of a former two-car garage, into the other half of the structure, so they can use it for storage of the wine. Coming up in the next two years will be a big project: restoration of the old dairy barn.

In addition to these plans, as he walks past the blueberry fields, Savage talks about his plans to turn part of the fields back into pasture and use only the best parts in the harvest, which averages about 35,000 pounds a year right now. This might make it possible to use a small mechanical harvester to bring in the crop. He’s considering other ways to market the berries, such as selling hot-packed blueberry juice to home winemakers. He’ll continue to make his dessert blueberry wine, but also wants to do a dry blueberry, although Savage Oakes’ main focus will remain its grape wines.

Buddy and Holly believe that the retail aspect of their business is the key. Right now, it’s possible for tourists or locals to stop at the farm, visit the vineyard, and taste the wines before taking some home with them. Smart shoppers are also picking up the Savages’ family variety boxes of meat — 30-pound boxes of frozen cuts of beef and pork that contain roasts, chops, sausages and burger.

“Agritourism offers a real future for small farms,” Savage says. He points out the popularity of pick-your-own orchards, berry and pumpkin patches, and corn mazes as examples of creative agritourism. With so many farms lost, children everywhere — not just in urban areas anymore — are growing up not knowing that milk comes from real cows. It’s not just tourists who appreciate a chance to experience a farm, Savage says. And at Savage Oakes, it’s an opportunity to get to know a real Maine farm winery.

Savage Oakes Vineyard and Winery in Union is currently open daily. From Route 17, turn onto Barrett Hill Road and go .3 mile.