Our History
Our Roots remind us where we are from
How It All Began
“We were wine drinkers and wine lovers before we decided to give grape growing and wine making a try.”
For Ed, it started with a special bottle of wine one Thanksgiving: a 1979 Mouton Rothschild (incidentally, the critics consider this vintage very disappointing for Mouton!); for Sarah, it evolved as she grew up in a family where drinking wine was part of every special occasion.
After years of simply appreciating wine, we began to wonder about the differences in the wines we were drinking. We were fascinated by the questions of why certain wines made foods taste better, while others seemed to overwhelm the drinker, why some wines revealed layers of subtlety and nuance, while others seemed to show all their stuff in the first sip, and what went into making wines of different styles and character.
The more we learned about what goes into making a bottle of wine, the more fascinating the whole process became to us. Perhaps it was after one taste-test to many that we decided we should try our hands at making the kinds we liked to drink here in Maryland.
New Vineyards Begin to be Well-Established
In late 2000 and early 2001 we got serious about exploring the possibility that world-class wines could be made close to home. We started out by obsessively researching and reading every article that we could get our hands on about who was making wine, attending innumerable conferences and seminars, and inevitably making several tasting and study trips to the great wine regions of the world – not all bad duty, as it turned out.
In May of 2002, after over a year of driving the back roads of Maryland looking for perfect vineyard land, often with our young baby Sean in tow, we found and bought the farm on Black Ankle Road. Suddenly our vague dream of starting a vineyard and winery got a lot closer to reality! Grape growing and winemaking are not for the impatient, however, and there was still a long road ahead before we could taste the first glass of our own wine.
First Plantings
In 2003 and 2004, we planted our first 22 acres of grapes and spent the next few years cultivating the vines, using this period to learn as much as possible about creating great wine. As time went on, we put that knowledge into practice in all aspects of our vineyard.
First Harvest
In 2006, we finally had our first harvest, and it was with a combination of terror and glee that we set about making wine from our own grapes for the first time. The 2006 wines rested in barrels until they were ready for bottling in early 2008. It was definitely a thrill to see those first few bottles rolling off the bottling line!
We let the wines settle in bottles for a few months while we completed construction on our tasting room and opened for business in October 2008.
Fast Forward
We have expanded our Tasting Room to accomadate for outdoor seating and are so happy to welcome more and more customers each and every year. While our Black Ankle Family has grown, we continue to hold true to our values of handmaking great wines and doing so in a sustainable and ethical manner.
Our Name
When we found a promising vineyard site on Black Ankle Road, we were immediately intrigued by the name. Our consultations with local historians and long-time residents led us toward two likely theories about how the road got its name.
- The road remained a dirt and mud track long after other nearby roads were more rigorously maintained, so the name may simply stem from the muddy feet and boots that passerbys were left with on rainy days.
- Local lore also holds that an old Native American trail called the Black Ankle Trail passed through the area not far from our road on the way to what is now Rockville.
While muddy roads and old trails have very little to do with making wine, the name Black Ankle sent our minds towards imagining what thousands of years of winemakers must have looked like after stomping grapes during harvest each year. While we take advantage of some modern advances like grape crushers and presses to take the place of stomping feet, we make our wines in the old traditional style in order to allow the grapes to develop into wines that express the soil and climate in which they are grown.
In our minds, the name Black Ankle Vineyards is a reminder of the generations of traditional winegrowers who have come before us, and our way of expressing our appreciation for all they have taught us about how wines should be made.
