A romantic view that sits atop the North Carolina mountains

ROAD TO 100 NORTH CAROLINA WINERIES ... 

#83 – Point Lookout Vineyards

The latest winery to open in North Carolina is located less than 10 miles from downtown Hendersonville and about 25 minutes southwest of Lake Lure. Point Lookout opened its doors in June, 2018. Sitting at an elevation of 3,000 feet, it’s the perfect location to share a bottle of wine as you take in a 30-mile panoramic view of the Blue Ridge Mountains on a crisp, cool, Fall day. The winery is located on Point Lookout Mountain for which it is named. In addition to a winery, Point Lookout also offers up mead under the name World's Edge Meadery, in an open-air pavilion with a stone fireplace. The winery is a perfect place to host events such as weddings, private events, live music, dinners and more.

While visiting the Asheville area for our 10-year wedding anniversary in November, we decided we had to pay Point Lookout a visit to see what all the buzz was all about. We first stumbled upon them when reviewing the winning wines from the 2018 Fine Wines competition where their 2016 Off-Dry Riesling won for Best White Vinifera. Then we began hearing rave reviews from fellow bloggers and knew we had to go check them out.

Point Lookout offers two tasting options – 5 wines and 1 mead, or, 5 meads and 1 wine. The choice was simple. We chose one of each to maximize our tasting adventure! There were a total of 10 wines to sample and 7 meads. We really enjoyed the meads and while Jen’s favorite was Calm, a chamomile mead, Dathan gravitated more towards the Orange Blossom mead.

As for the wines, we found them to be young yet well-balanced and definitely a winery to keep your eye on. Between the two of us, our favorites were the Cabernet Sauvignon, the Cliffield Red Blend and the Javine Mocha Red Wine … but in different order of preference. We decided to bring home a bottle of the Beguile, a raspberry mead, which we could both agree on. 

This estate vineyard is owned and operated by Mike and Sabrina Jackson. They began planting grapes in 2008 and the wine is made at Windsor Run Cellars in Hamptonville. Following our tasting, we took a stroll around and took in the serenity of the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

Triangle Around Town's top 🍷choice: World's Edge Meadery "Beguile" Raspberry Mead

Hours: Sun. - Th. – 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.; Fri. - Sat. – 12 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Tastings are $10 for 5 wines and 1 mead, or, $10 for 5 meads and 1 wine

Visit the web page at http://pointlookoutvineyards.com/ for Facebook for upcoming events.

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By Jennifer Primrose

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Pepper Festival returned to Chapel Hill for 11th annual event

By Dathan Kazsuk

It was all about the peppers. Spicy peppers. Mild peppers. There’s the Jalapeno peppers for that nice heat. Serrano peppers are great when cooking. Poblano peppers are for fixing up a batch of Chile Rellenos. And you’ll always have someone go crazy with Habanero heat. Or downright insane with Carolina Reapers. I tend to like the heat and flavor that stems from peppers such as the Fresno or Hatch. It really comes down to your palate and where you like your Scoville scale to lean towards.

Peppers are something I enjoy in my food – spice it up – kick it up a notch – all of that. However, at home, I have to be mindful of the better half of Triangle Around Town, who doesn’t prefer intense heat. So, when we got the invite to be two-thirds of the judges in the beverage department for the 11^th annual Pepper Festival in Chapel Hill on September 23 – we were thrilled.

It was an afternoon of sampling pepper-themed drinks and food crafted by dozens of local chefs, brewers, distillers and artisans. All of this brought to life by Abundance North Carolina – an organization that brings people together to cultivate and celebrate community resilience in our Piedmont-region of our state. We were anxious to begin.

Once signed in, we made our way around to the vendors. After a quick pass around the lot to get our bearings and away we go! As soon as they started letting people in, it was just like an old ‘60s movie where flocks of men would surround a beautiful girl – that’s how it was with long lines starting to grow around some of the more popular restaurants and breweries. On the south side of the lawn you’d think that Mystery Brewing, The Brothers Vilglays and Heirloom were the Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot of the festival. But instead of blowing kisses and batting an eyelash, they were serving up pepper beers, spicy mojitos and pulled chicken sliders with homemade pickles.

Tracking our way slowly, so we’d have time to take in all the vendors, we made a pit stop at Chatham Cider Works to taste the guava pepper mimosa, which was brilliant – as well as buy a full pour of the bourbon barrel-aged dry cider. The cider, which had just a hint of sweet wood and peaty aroma paired well with some of the other pepper treats we tried. Come to think of it, a lot of the chefs that afternoon were keen on blended soup-based elements as well as experimenting on various forms of succotash.

Around the north side of the lawn, we found Diane Currier, owner of Honeygirl Mead in Durham. We were happy to see her at the pepper festival, knowing the last time we visited her meadery we sampled a few meads that weren’t quite ready at the time – but thought would be perfect for this festival. “I made those meads just for this event,” she said as she poured her first mead for us to try. So now we got to try the finished products – a mango habanero and a strawberry habanero mead.

Bidding adieu, we continued on our journey – to judge. And by God, judge is what we were going to do. But with just about an hour to hit up 10 different places, it was going to be a drink and dash sort of afternoon – at least until we were done tallying up our scores. Jen points out the first of my list of vendors, and that was Chapel Hill’s TOPO Distillery. Pulling up to the tent, TOPO was quick to see the clipboard in hand and started pouring samples of all three drinks they were offering that afternoon. From there between the two of us we hit up local-area businesses such as Brothers Vilglays, Vencino Brewing, Fair Game Beverage and Fullsteam Brewing to name a few.

While pulling up shop at a wooden table, sampling around 6 different beverages on the table, we were greeted by Dave Tollefson of NC Beer Guys fame. He, along with his wife, Linda, thought it was funny that the ‘beer guy’ didn’t have any beers to judge this time around. Which was quite funny, I have to admit. However, he raved about Honeygirl’s habanero meads, as I told him about some of our favorites that afternoon.

So let’s mention the judges for this year’s Pepper Festival. Judging the food were Nancy Thapa (Yelp NC Triangle); Ashley Freeman and Andrew Keravuor (Raleigh Food Pics); Lisa Jeffries (Raleighwood Media Group). Judging the beverages were Dave Tollefson (NC Beer Guys); Dathan Kazsuk and Jennifer Primrose (Triangle Around Town).

And without further ado, we present to you, the winners of the 11^th annual Pepper Festival.

• Feeling Spirited, Best Spirit: Fairgame Distillery
• Ale Drink to That, Best Beer/Cider/Mead: Honeygirl Meadery
• Most Loved Libation, Best in Show Drink: HomeBucha
• The Savory Stunner, Best Savory Dish: Little River Eco Farm
• My Sweet Heat, Best Sweet Dish: Big Spoon Roasters
• The Double Take, Most Creative Dish: Fusion Fish
• The Platinum Pepper, Best in Show: The Food Fairy
• The Staff Sweetheart, Most Local: Angelina’s Kitchen

Mead Maker: Interview with Starrlight Mead's Ben Starr

We continue on with our exploration of mead, aka honey wine, during our own personal #meadmonth. After talking to many mead makers around North Carolina and Virginia, we have decided that we might try making our own mead sometime in the near future.

Until that time, you can read up on our interview with Starrlight Mead co-owner and head mead maker, Ben Starr. He was kind enough to chat with us on a busy Sunday afternoon inside the production facility. Check out some excerpts from our conversation below.

Related story: What you need to know about this popular honey wine!

Seems like a lot of mead makers got their start in home brewing. Is that how you got your start as well? Actually, no. I’m one of the odd ones. My first batch of alcohol was mead.

When did you get your first sample of mead? Becky and I first tried mead at a renaissance festival. When I was 12 years old, I was a bee keeper, so I always loved honey. So when I had the mead at the renaissance festival – you know honey and booze – it was very hard to go wrong with that combo. I had friends at home that were making mead, and of course, this is over the years, I wasn’t 12 anymore.

Oh, we just thought you had some very cool parents or something like that.

Yeah. Ha-ha. But Becky bought me a mead kit, and then I read this book about wine making, and it told you everything you can do to screw it up. And that’s the way they presented it. And it scared me. So I set aside the equipment for about a year, before I got Ken Schramm’s book, “The Compleat Meadmaker.” I started reading that, and he explains the ‘why’s’ and the ‘not just do this,’ and then it started making more sense to me, and we decided to just go for it. So we made our first batch of mead, and that was around 14 years ago.

Related story: Interview with Ken Schramm of Schamm's Mead in Michigan

So at that time, what were you making as far as gallons? Somewhere between 1 to 5 gallons? Yeah, we started out with a 5 gallon batch, but we’ve also made some 3 gallon batches, and I had some 1 gallon carboys to try some different things.

What type of honey were you using back then? We used all different types of honey. We used mesquite honey, actually the very first batch we used, we did a clover honey. This is not my favorite honey to use, but I didn’t know any better at that point.

And how did all these lead to eventually coming up with Starrlight Mead? We were making so much mead that we ended up giving it away. After about two years we entered a competition with the International Mead Festival in Boulder, Colorado in 2006. We ended up taking the gold medal in our category and the best in show trophy out of the 212 meads.

And that was the point when we decided that we shouldn’t be giving it away, and we started playing around with a business plan. Shortly after, Becky got laid off and then she got a job at Chatham Hill Winery. She worked there for a few years, and shortly after that is when we opened up this place.

When did Starrlight Mead come into the world? We opened up in 2010. In September will be our 8-year anniversary. And that’s when we’re hoping to move to the new place.

You’ll be in the same area as Fair Game Beverage and Chatham Cider Works, right? Yeah. We’ll be right off Lorax Lane. Before you get to them you’ll see a huge industrial looking building. That’s where I’ll be make the mead. Actually, the square footage of that is the same square footage of our entire building here. And then right behind that, you’ll see a beautiful, huge, blue building. That will be our tasting room. And that is a little bit larger than this building.

Related story: Interview with Williamsburg's Silver Hand Meadery

Being in that compound with Fair Game and Chatham Cider Works, we can probably look forward to some collaborations in the near future, right? Some barrel-aged meads, and some cysers? There may be a fortified mead in our future. Using some of the distilled product from Fair Game and adding that to the mead. And with Chatham Cider Works, there’s some collaborations in the works with them as well.  Honey and apples go well together, as you know.

There are so many different mead styles – from cysers to melomels, and metheglins to the basic traditional. Do you have a favorite? I really don’t. I enjoy complexity. Especially when I can take something like our spiced apple – where it’s not just a melomel. It’s not just a cyser. It’s not just a metheglin. It’s a combination of all them together.

We’ve talked to other people making mead here in North Carolina. We recently talked to Diane Currier at Honeygirl Meadery in Durham and Dana Acker at Windsor Run Cellars in Hamptonville. Both had very kind words to say about you. It’s a testament to what you’ve done for mead here in N.C. Is that in part to you being the first meadery here? Actually, we’re the third. Fox Hill Meadery was before us, and so was Desi Dew, but they closed before we opened. Fox Hill is near Asheville and they distribute, and they make some great stuff.

Thanks for spending a few moments with us. We hope to see you and Becky when  you open up your brand new location.