Delaware Beer, Wine & Spirits Trail: what's new?

In August 2016, we took you on a tour of the beaches-area stops on Delaware’s Beer, Wine and Spirits Trail.

This trail is changing, though, as breweries, wineries and even a meadery spring up.

We’ll take a look at three new stops on the trail.

As always, trail-goers are invited to make it official by downloading a passport from Visit Delaware, the state’s tourism office, with details on each of the 28 breweries, wineries and distilleries on the trail. If you visit 10 of them, you can receive a glass Beer, Wine & Spirits Trail mug from Visit Delaware.

A long-promised trail app is slated to launch in the near future.

We’ll end with a trail of a different sort, offered by the biggest name in Delaware brews.

Salted Vines Vineyard & Winery

Technically more of a rebranding than an addition to the tour, Salted Vines was called Fenwick Wine Cellars until the end of 2015. The company, seeking more space to hold events and grow grapes, left the West Fenwick storefront that had been its home for six years.

It spent most of 2016 constructing a building on a 26-acre farm site about five miles west of Bethany Beach (it has a Frankford address) and opened just after Thanksgiving. They’ve planted two acres of grapes so far at the front of the property, and plan to add more each year.

Tastings are $10, and customers can sample as many wines from the current list as they like. For our visit, there were five whites, two blushes (also called rosé) and six reds. They also offer Vin-O-Slush (frozen wine slushy), a sort of adult slurpy that is often a hit with non-wine drinkers. They also sell local cheeses and chocolate.

Salted Vines has a busy event listing, led by its summer concert series. During one recent Saturday, the empty back lot was converted into a obstacle course for big-wheeled trucks to play in the mud. Many a Vin-O-Slush was sold to the truck drivers, not normally a demographic associated with wine.

As long as they’re not too busy, they’ll likely agree to let customers tour the small wine-making warehouse in back. They may add more formal tours in the future.

All in all, this winery, one of only four in Delaware and two in the beaches region (Nassau Valley Vineyards being the other), is worth a visit.

More: http://www.fenwickwinecellars.com.

Brimming Horn Meadery

Located along Route 9 about seven miles southeast of Lewes, Brimming Horn is Delaware’s second meadery, and the only one in the beaches region. The first thing to know about this meadery is just what the heck mead is.

Just as wine is made from grapes and beer from barley, mead is an ancient drink made from fermented honey, said Brimming Horn co-owner Jon Talkington. Acting on the advice of a high school science teacher, he made his first batch at the age of 16 and never looked back. Well, he looked back a bit — Talkington and co-owner JR Walker cut their teeth at Dogfish Head, where they still work.

The building is non-descript, and if you’re not looking for it, you may miss it. But the inside, decorated in Viking decor, is distinctive. There are Viking shields on the bar, carvings of Norse gods above the tables and Talkington, with a ponytail, full beard and tattoos, looks a bit Viking himself.

Mead tastings are 4 for $6 or 6 for $10 with an ounce per serving.

The owners have plans to improve the site, including adding outdoor seating and a garden to grow some of the herbs and berries they use in the mead. There are already a handful of bee hives, though they can’t begin to supply the meadery, which will go through thousands of pounds of honey in a year.

If fermented honey sounds sweet-tasting, it can be. For example, Bloody Hoof, made with cherries, is quite sweet, yet robust. Mead can be versatile, and the honey taste comes through quite clearly in Golden Tears, a drier (but still somewhat sweet to my taste) mead. Blushing Goddess, with a color like hummingbird feed, represents a good medium.

Brimming Horn’s mead ranges from 8 percent to 14 percent alcohol by volume.

More: http://brimminghornmeadery.com.

Revelation Craft Brewing Company

Revelation Craft Brewing Company, which opened in Rehoboth Beach in July 2016, is a bit off the beaten path, brewmaster and part owner Patrick Staggs said.

But it turned out to be near enough to another important path — a bike trail.

You’ve heard of a “growler,” the jug used to carry craft beers. Revelation has created a bike-friendly alternative it calls a “browler,” and gives them away free to bicyclists. They’ve given away an astounding 9,000 of them in their first year, Staggs said.

The brewery has created 14 varieties in its first year, including the best-selling Mother-In-Law IPA, which Staggs says avoids the bitterness of some IPAs.

For lighter beers, he recommends the Berliner Weisse, which he calls a refreshing and light sour beer that’s 3.7 percent alcohol by volume.

Revelation is already outgrowing its first location, which has a production capacity of about 700 barrels a year. Locations are being scouted for a brewpub and a larger production facility, one of which he says may be in the beaches area and one farther north.

Despite the recent growth of microbreweries, Staggs said he’s not worried about the competition. The bigger concern is if newcomers lower the bar on quality, which hurts everyone, he said.

“I think it’s great as long as everyone stays unique to what their experience is and what they’re providing the customers and as long as the beers are solid it helps the area,” he said. “We’re trying to make this area more of a beer destination, which it is becoming.”

The brewery's success this year came largely through word-of-mouth, as it has advertised little beyond social media.

“Everyone’s got a unique story of how they found us,” he said “People kind of feel like they have a hidden treasure when they find it.”

More: http://www.revbeer.com/.

Off-Centered Ale Trail

The folks at Dogfish Head have partnered with Atlas Obscura, the publishers of a website and a book about strange and interesting places. 

They went big — the trail includes spots from Delaware and a dozen other places. The locations are clearly Atlas Obscura-inspired, such as the Turtle Park in St. Louis, Missouri, which is comprised only of over-sized concrete reptiles.

The Delaware portion of the trail is a mix of Dogfish Head destinations and historical sites, like the Hidden Bunkers of Cape Henlopen State Park.

The trail is an effort to promote three popular summertime ales: the SeaQuench Ale, Flesh & Blood IPA and 60 Minute IPA.

More: https://www.dogfish.com/aletrail