While the family was enjoying Legoland, in Winter Haven Florida, I snuck out to visit the nearest winery,
Keel And Curley Winery. The winery is just outside of Tampa Bay and provides residents and tourists an opportunity to taste local fruit wine as well as live music on occasion. Blueberry farmer, Joe Keel, started the winery in 2003 as a way to utilize unharvested fruit. In the blueberry industry, many blueberries remain on the bush when the cost of picking additional units is equal or less than the wholesale price received. Keel didn't want to mess with jams or pies, so he started making wine at home. As he learned and defined his craft - Keel And Curley Winery was born.
Blueberry wine is still central to their operation as they produce three styles: dry, semi-dry, and sweet. And last year they introduced two blackberry wines, dry and sweet. All these wines are made from 100%. Although the sweeter wines are their best sellers, I preferred the dry versions of
both wines. They retained the fruit characters of the blueberry and blackberry and could easily pass for a medium bodied red wine such as Chambourcin.
Keel and Curley Winery also produces a series of fusion wines where grape juice sourced on the open market is co-fermented with different fruit juices. These wines are all semi-sweet to sweet, and to me are basically gimmicks marketed to tourists. And I've fallen and purchased the Key West – Key Lime in the past. Best used as a Margarita base. And my traveling partner fell for the Tangerine Zinfandel. Yes, gimmicks sell. But if you come across their wines at Publix or at the winery - I recommend the dry 100% Blueberry or Blackberry.
You know you may have a problem when on the day your son is flying home from Florida you frantically call his host to include two bottles of your favorite Florida wine, the Keel And Curley Winery Dry Blueberry. Now the original The United Grapes of America StarChefs.com article mentions wines from Schnebly Redland's Winery, but these tropical fruit based wines are generally too sweet for my tastes. On the other hand, the K&C blueberry is completely dry with a big nose and can be mistaken for a medium-full bodied malbec if one was tasting blind. The wine is made from High-Bush
Blueberries grown in their
Plant City farm about 20 miles east of Tampa Bay. The blueberries are fermented on the skins which helps retain the key benefits of this super fruit: vitamin C and antioxidants. In fact a new University of Florida study fund that "wine made from southern highbush berries had more antioxidants than
white wine and all but 20 percent of the reported values for red wines..." That could be why in 2011, 300,000 bottles of blueberry wine were sold throughout the Sunshine state. Glad I scored my two bottles. Cheers.
