Schuylkill County is well known for being the home of America’s oldest brewery and its residents’ homemade Boilo, the champagne of the coal region. But the county is also home to a number of wineries that are making Schuylkill County a place to visit for oenophiles as well as those who are still searching for the right wine to meet the approval of their taste buds.
A cluster of wineries in southern Schuylkill County offer something for everyone, from the typical dry red and white wines to the sweeter fruit wines and everything in between, as well as unique flavors that have become customer favorites.
“Somebody likes every one of our wines,” said Rick Watt, co-owner of Fieldwood Winery in South Manheim Township just outside of Schuylkill Haven. “We sell all of them, but probably nobody would like everything from our banana wine to our Cabernet Franc.”
Watt, a dry red lover, added that sweeter wines tend to be more popular in the area.
Stone Mountain Wine Cellars, in Wayne Township between Schuylkill Haven and Pine Grove, also has a range of flavors.
“There’s definitely something here for everybody,” said Kyle Heffner, whose family owns and runs Jersey Acres Farms and Stone Mountain Wine Cellars in Pine Grove. “We try to suit all taste buds here. We run everything from the driest of the dry to the very sweet. I can pretty much fill in any palate.”
Gerry and Chuck Cole, owners of King Cole Winery in Wayne Township just outside of Schuylkill Haven, offer a few dry wines but focus mostly on the sweeter wines and flavors not often found at other wineries.
“We’re not a typical winery,” Chuck said. “We kind of go off in a different tangent with our flavors. You try to think of things to be different from the next guy.”
The three wineries, all within a short driving distance of each other, share many similarities, including a passion for making wine and being family owned and operated. While there is some overlap in flavors among the three wineries and others in the area, each winery has its own unique story and flavors to draw visitors to their tasting rooms.
King Cole Winery
Gerry and Chuck describe their winery as “a very unique winery with very different flavors, all handmade.”
King Cole Winery is just off of Route 443 at 152 Kiehner Road, Schuylkill Haven.
“We’re definitely unique,” Gerry said. “We are not your typical winery because we’re not your reds and your whites. We have fruit and we have a lot of different flavors.”
The winery’s newest flavors include sangria summer, pineapple coconut, Lambrusco and lavender lemon drop. Wine slushies are another more recent addition to the winery’s offerings.
“The summer sangria is basically six different white wines,” Chuck said. “We’ve got a peach apricot, which is a good combination. I also have a mango jalapeno, but it’s not hot. It’s just the flavor of the jalapeno. I put enough of the pepper in there just to give you the taste, not the heat.”
The winery also has cherry habanero, lime mint mojito, caramel apple, blood orange, plum, strawberry rhubarb wines and more.
One of King Cole’s unique flavors is its coffee winem which can be mixed with non-dairy creamers to match each customer’s perfect cup of coffee in a wine glass.
“He comes up with the ideas,” Gerry said of Chuck. “Before we got the winery started, he made coffee wine. He comes out and says, ‘Try this.’ I said, ‘You’re crazy,’ and now I don’t say that anymore. He comes up with many different ideas and they all taste good.”
While the couple has always enjoyed wine and Chuck would experiment with making his own as a hobby, it was not until 2017 that the couple started the process of creating King Cole Winery. It was Gerry’s jewelry making business that led to the couple deciding to start their own winery.
Gerry would attend to craft fairs as a way to sell her jewelry. As the couple enjoy wine, she decided to also look into finding vendor spots to sell her jewelry at wine festivals. At the wine festivals, Gerry would bring wine sample back to her booth for Chuck to try. Often, Chuck would comment that his wine was better.
“He said, ‘You know, we should do this.’” Gerry said. “It was kind of almost a joke. We mentioned it to the kids, and they said, ‘Go ahead, do it.’ It was going to be our retirement hobby. That’s kind of how it got rolling. It just snowballed.”
King Cole Winery officially opened for business around August 2018. Shortly after, Gerry left her career as a nurse to join Chuck full time with the winery. Gerry continues to make jewelry as well.
The couple receives help from family and friends if they’re in need of some extra hands in the winery, taste-testers of new flavors or volunteers at the various festival and vendor events.
More information on King Cole Winery, including a full list of wines and tasting room hours, is available at kingcolewinery.org and facebook.com/kingcolewinery.
Fieldwood Winery
On a back road between routes 183 and 443 is a small batch winery at 1083 Schuylkill Mountain Road, Schuylkill Haven, owned by Watt and Bethann Czarnecki. The winery features a variety of wines from dry to sweet, as well as some fruit wines.
“We’re a small batch winery,” Watt said. “That means that we make everything in basically 60-gallon batches. That allows us to experiment with a lot of different types of wines that we can make. That’s one thing that makes us a little bit different.”
One of the wine flavors that makes Fieldwood Winery unique is its banana wine, named Hide The Banana.
“It’s very difficult to make a banana wine,” Watt said. “We start with bananas, and if you would picture bananas sitting in a fermentation bag for two weeks, you can imagine what that water looks like at the end of two weeks. It’s very hard to get it clear and to make a good wine out of bananas. It’s a very popular wine for us.”
Watt, an electrical engineer by trade, always enjoyed making wine and thought he would give the winery business a go when he wanted to switch gears. He describes it as “a hobby that got out of control.”
The winery officially opened in 2013.
“We’re dry red lovers,” Watt said of he and Czarnecki, his fiancee. “We made mostly dry reds, but we found that in this area, especially Schuylkill County in the northern areas, people drink the sweeter wines. You have to sell what people like, and we found we do much better with the fruit wines.”
The couple does still make dry reds, which Watt is particularly proud of. For those who also enjoy dry reds, Watt suggests the winery’s petite sirah (named Yes Sir-Ahh) and Cabernet Franc (named Cabaret Spank).
The winery also has sweet reds, dry whites, sweet whites and specialty wines, including a sweet blackberry wine, sweet plum wine and the banana wine.
“We really try to go both ways because we really enjoy the dry reds, that’s why we got into it, but the fruit wines, that’s what we sell,” Watt said. “It’s bigger than a hobby. We’re doing it because we enjoy it. That’s what’s important.”
Fieldwood Winery is open every weekend from noon to 5 p.m. and by appointment during the week. More information on the winery, including a full list of wines, is available at fieldwoodwinery.com.
Stone Mountain Wine Cellars
Jersey Acres Farms owners Ralph and Annie Heffner went from growing wine grapes to sell to other wineries in 1999 to creating their own winery, Stone Mountain Wine Cellars, in 2004. The winery’s tasting room, at 1615 Panther Valley Road, Pine Grove, shares its space with Jersey Acres Roadside Market.
Jersey Acres Farms specializes in the dairy and fruit business.
“That’s why we have so many different fruit wines here,” said Kyle Heffner, the grandson of Ralph and Annie. “That also makes us unique because we do have so much fruit around so we make as much fruit wine as we can.”
A few acres of the farm’s hundreds of acres are dedicated to growing Norton variety grapes as well as Vignoles and Cayuga wine grapes. The wine is produced in a converted apple ground cellar and is then added to the fruits and vegetables produced on the farm.
Stone Mountain Wine Cellars features dry, sweet and middle-of-the-road wines, including reds, white and fruit wines, as well as a hard cider line, port style wine and two fruit wines made with hot peppers.
“There’s definitely something here for everybody,” Heffner said. “We have all the fruit wines. I’ve been experimenting with used bourbon barrels that age some of my wines and the one hard cider.”
The idea for a new wine flavor can happen any time, Heffner said.
“I’ll be doing something random, be out with the guys or out in the barn milking my cows, and I’ll get an idea that pops into my head,” he said. “I’ll just run down to the the wine cellar and try to create it. I have fun with it.”
The winery’s best seller is Orchard Blush, which has been one of the wines offered since the winery started, Heffner said. Meanwhile, Heffner’s favorite is the La Crescent.
What also makes Stone Mountain Wine Cellars different from other wineries is the winery’s connection to dairy.
“We get a lot of comments that we’re the winery with a dairy farm,” Heffner said. “Eventually I want to get to the point where I can tell the story of the dairy industry through the wine. We do sell cheese that comes from a local farmer in Middletown. We endorse eating lots of cheese with our wine.”
Stone Mountain Wine Cellars is open on weekdays form 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. More information on the winery, including a list of wines, is available at jerseyacresfarms.com.
More southern Schuylkill wineries
Other wineries in southern Schuylkill County include Long Trout Winery, SpringGate Pottsville and Buddy Boy Winery.
Long Trout Winery is a bohemian wine boutique at 84 Fork Mountain Road, Auburn. More information on the winery is available at longtroutwinery.com/site.
SpringGate Winery, Harrisburg area, has a Pottsville location at 325 South Centre Street, sharing a space with Black Rock Brewing Company. More information is available at springgatepottsville.com.
Buddy Boy Winery, Duncannon, has a location in New Ringgold at 1134 Summer Valley Road in the old bargain barn. More information is available at buddyboywinery.com.
