Brandywine Valley WeekendFine Wines, Gardens and Dining just outside of PhiladelphiaBy Richard FrisbiePhiladelphia is a tourist Mecca with museums, food, and attractions of its own, but within a half hour of Philadelphia are several major tourist destinations you don’t have to drive through the city to see. Longwood Gardens, Brandywine River Museum, Brandywine Battlefield, and the Chaddsford Winery, one of six wineries that make up the Brandywine Valley wine trail, were all on our itinerary one weekend last Summer.
 What better way to start a vacation than with a wine tasting? Especially when it turns out to be with an old neighbor from the Hudson Valley? Host and vineyard founder Eric Miller moved with his family to Chadds Ford 25 years ago from the Benmarl Winery in Marlboro, New York. They started the first winery in not only Chadds Ford, but in all of Pennsylvania. Today they are one of 113 wineries in the whole state. This visionary pioneer creates great wines in what he believes is the best wine growing region of the US. When Eric’s son graduates from U C Davis, where he is studying oenology and viticulture, he’ll be one of the rare third generation winemakers on the East coast.
 In Chaddsford Winery’s handsome tasting room, Eric poured us glasses of Naked Chardonnay, which he described as “no oak - just the bare essentials of the Chardonnay grape.” It was clean, lively and full of fruit, not the traditional buttery Chardonnay aged in barrels. In keeping with the “bare essentials” theme, Eric appears nude on the label, maintaining some little dignity behind an enormous and much needed grape cluster. He gets a lot of good-natured kidding about that! His sense of humor and brilliant marketing are evident here and everywhere in the winery, and are behind the growing popular and critical acclaim Chaddsford wine enjoys.
 We also tasted a dry red Due Rossi (translates as two reds) which is a master blend in the Italian style described as bursting “ in the mouth with sweet vanillans, a big bouquet of flowers, ripe jammy fruit and licorice.” It is a full-bodied and very satisfying red. We took the open bottle with us when we left (Pennsylvania is so civilized about that) and enjoyed the complex flavors again later that day. No wonder Chaddsford Wines consistently medal in national and international wine competitions. They know how to make wine!
 To explore the Brandywine Valley Wine Trail further, sign up for Wine Camp. If you love to drink wine, you’ll enjoy going behind the scenes in six different wineries to learn first hand and up close how the process works. The four day, three night “camp” includes personal experiences with the proprietors of the area wineries, lodging, seven meals and complimentary admission to Longwood Gardens. From Barrel Tastings to a hands-on exploration of the wine making process, and even a dramatic fountain symphony at Longwood Gardens, Wine Camp will awaken your palates to the incredible wines of the Brandywine Valley.
Part of the beauty of spending a few days in the Chadds Ford section of the Brandywine Valley is that all our destinations are within fifteen miles of each other, with a great hotel and restaurant in the middle of the whole bunch. The Brandywine River Hotel is on the corner of Routes 1 and 100, within sight of the Brandywine River Museum, Studio Tour and Kuerner Farm tour that is the whole Andrew Wyeth experience, and just behind the parking lot for Brandywine Prime. It was easy to roll out of bed in the morning, enjoy the complimentary buffet breakfast this charming hotel provides, and walk across the street in time for the Brandywine River Museum’s 9:30 AM studio tour.
 We visited there the week after Andrew Wyeth’s 90th birthday. The Museum celebrated the event by hanging his newest painting, a rare self portrait of him painting an old water mill in a snow storm. The story goes that he left his coat on the chair to step back and look at the whole composition, and realized that the blue of his coat completed it. On a whim he painted himself in his blue coat painting the mill. The result is truly spectacular! The Museum itself is an architectural marvel, filled with magnificent works of art. It enjoys a pastoral setting on a bend of the Brandywine River with a courtyard and a wildflower garden dotted with sculptures. A life-size bronze cow lying on the riverbank invited us to linger by the shore, as a flotilla of young boys in tubes floated past. I could have enjoyed that bucolic setting all day.
 From there we took a bus to Andrew Wyeth’s studio, and also one to Kuerner Farm, both nearby. Wyeth had an unusual relationship with the Kuerners. He had a key and complete access to the house and barn, and would be there for hours a day quietly painting. Sometimes they would be posing for him, sometimes not. I took a photograph of the milk pail in the milk room, the same one used for the cover of his book “Kuerner Farm”. He painted the Helga series there too. It was an incredible experience to be standing where he stood, seeing a virtually unchanged still life or landscape looking just like the famous paintings I grew up enjoying. Definitely make a point to take the whole tour the next time you are in the area.
 We retrieved our car from the hotel parking lot and drove to Longwood Gardens, about eight miles down the road. It is the premier horticulture destination of Pennsylvania. They have over 350 acres of formal rose gardens, topiary gardens, colorful annual and perennial gardens, natural lake settings (one with a massive waterfall) surrounded by wild gardens, urban gardens, and a wonderful collection of trees, many arranged in formal allees, which help to define the former DuPont property's garden structure.
 There are also two fountain pools. One is an intimate destination below the largest lake, and the other is a huge football-field-sized formal Versailles style where the shows sometimes include symphonic music, colored lights and even fireworks accompaniment. The place is a huge over-the-top extravaganza of gardening. They have a very nice restaurant too. We even had a great lunch there.
 In my youth I ran a prestigious nursery and garden center, so instead of touring the hundreds of acres of magnificently cultivated grounds, I managed to pull some strings to get a close-up and personal adventure. You see, besides all of the above, Longwood Gardens has thousands of plants, (especially orchids) formal gardens and water features, all under acres of 'Crystal Palace' style glass houses. These surround a huge outdoor square with geometrically arranged aquatic plant pools which prominently feature an incredible selection of flowering water lilies and foliage plants, many of them edible. With the kind and long suffering help of their staff, we assisted Timothy Jennings, a Senior Gardener at Longwood, as he pruned and cultivated the water plants. While he was at it he gave us a lesson in propagating Victoria Platters.
Dinner that evening was at Brandywine Prime Seafood & Chops. I’d picked up a menu when we walked past after the museum, admired the beautiful natural gas lighting and then made reservations. The Brandywine Prime is a beautifully appointed and busy restaurant on the site of the old Chadds Ford Inn. Speaking of beauty, someone there has a good eye for more than design. Besides knowing what they were doing, the servers all looked like models! If Keith Rudolf, the Chef de Cuisine, hadn’t prepared such a fantastic meal for us, I would have had difficulty taking my eyes off them to eat my food.
 We shared an appetizer, a tapas plate of serrano ham, chorizo, and a cheese and vegetable balls with bread, whole-seed mustard and the largest capers I’ve ever seen. After all my meals in Spain, it was a real pleasure to relive those experiences here. It was a sumptuous plate of memories and good food.
 For the next course I ran into a problem with the menu and almost had several appetizers instead of an entree. Then our waiter told me about the specials, which included breast of duck. Now, I love duck, but I’m the only one in our household who does, so I never cook it. When I asked how the chef was going to prepare the duck, my answer was: ”However you would like it” with a smile that lit up the room way better than the flickering gaslight. The true measure of a chef, the waitstaff, and - really - the restaurant as a whole is how they reacted to what I said next. I said that I wanted my duck cooked to 128 degrees. There was no waiver, no pause, no fading smile. My duck was cooked to perfection, served with a simple oak leaf lettuce and orange salad. I was in heaven! My companion’s steak with french fries looked fine, but, as far as I was concerned, lacked imagination. He liked it, but what can I say of someone who doesn’t eat duck?
 Where the Brandywine Prime really excelled was with dessert. My friend had a simple, but elegant stemmed glass of ice cream. I settled on a three-way dessert sampler. Appetites must be satisfied, after all. The apple cobbler topped with ice cream, peach upside-down cake and a chocolate dipped baked apple with a artistic pink crystallized sugar decoration on top, all fit the bill nicely.
 We saw more Museums and Historic sites, and ate at more great restaurants, but these are enough to get you started. Once you arrive in the Brandywine Valley you’ll want to add extra days to your visit to enjoy all it has to offer.
Chaddsford Winery www.chaddsford.com
632 Baltimore Pike, Chadds Ford, PA 19317
(610) 388-6221 Fax: (610) 388-0360
Brandywine Prime Seafood & Chops
Corner Rtes 1 & 100 - Chadds Ford, PA 19317
(610) 388-8088
http://www.brandywineprime.com
BRANDYWINE RIVER HOTEL ROUTES 1 AND 100 P.O. BOX 1058 CHADDS FORD,
PA 19317 Guest rooms: 40 Phone: 610-388-1200
Longwood Gardens
http://www.longwoodgardens.org/
US Route 1 South, P.O. Box 501, Kennett Square, PA 19348
Phone: 610-388-1000, Fax: 610-388-2227
Brandywine River Museum
http://www.brandywinemuseum.org/
U.S. Route 1, Chadds Ford, PA 19317
Tel: (610) 388-2700, Fax: (610) 388-1197
Brandywine Valley & Chester County Information
http://www.brandywinevalley.com/
Brandywine Valley Wine Camp
http://www.brandywinevalley.com/winecamp.asp |
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