By Carol Coultas,Business Writer
A sign saying ‘serve no wine before its time’ hangs on a wall at this winery. For Tanguay vintners, it’s time.

LEWISTON – Jerry Tanguay mulls the characteristics carefully.

Rich, full-bodied, complex.

A description of the ideal woman?

No. It’s how Jerry feels about a 2004 meritage, a one-of-a-kind red wine he and his son created in their home winery.

“It’s a gem,” he said of the ruby liquid that his wife, Anita, poured into a glass.

The meritage – a secret blend of pinot noir, barbera and cabernet grapes – was an experiment, one of the dozens he and Dan tried in their six years as vintners. Now the pair has perfected the formula for four varieties of wine. Aged, bottled, labeled and ready for delivery, the wine which started as a hobby is poised for the commercial market.

Tanguay and Son Winery is ready to breathe.

“We just decided to take a shot and see what happens,” said Jerry Tanguay of the decision to sell their wine.

Available since Christmastime, the wines’ early indicators look good. At a December wine tasting at Roopers, five cases of merlot disappeared in about two hours. Customers exhausted 60 cases of Tanguay wine in less than two weeks.

Elaine Roop, co-owner of the local beverage centers, said the wine has been holding its own against better-known brands, without the benefit of national ad campaign. She said once she tried the wine and saw the labels – each a canvas for a local landmark – she knew it would be a hit.

“I told my husband, if we start pushing this wine, it will sell. It will sell,” she said.

They have back orders for the next batch of merlot, which should be ready in early May. And Mac’s Grill and the Blackwatch restaurants are offering Tanguay wine on their menus.

Given that news of their wines has spread mostly by word of mouth, the Tanguays are a little startled at their popularity. Dan and Jerry started making wine as way to spend some time together, an addition to the hunting, fishing and golfing they also enjoy.

On a lark, they brought a bottle of their homemade Chianti and elderberry wine to a wine tasting five years ago and were encouraged when a judge said they “have all the makings” of fine wines.

“We knew we were on the right track,” said Jerry.

The pair experimented with more than 32 varieties of grapes before selecting the four best: the merlot, a table red, a Riesling and a sparkling fragolino. Each took months of tinkering before the vintners thought it was good enough to sell.

“We were always giving it away anyway,” said Anita.

“Yeah, we were afraid the state would think we were bootlegging,” quipped Jerry, who, ironically, only downs about three glasses a week.

Wine making uncorked

The Tanguays order pure grape juice by species from vineyards in California, upstate New York or Washington state. The juice arrives in 6-gallon buckets delivered by 18-wheeler, which the Tanguays unload fire-brigade style into their Scribner Boulevard home.

There, tucked into the basement of their spotless ranch house, their $30,000 winery glistens in a stainless steel-and-tile room. Four 80-gallons tanks are positioned like sentries. Wine that starts in one tank is passed to another for fermenting, clarifying and filtering.

Some varieties then get transferred to French oak barrels for aging. Jerry said the special tight grain of the French oak is what imparts his merlot with a lighter taste than other merlots, which are usually aged in heavier oak casks.

“It’s an easy drinking wine,” he said. “The occasional wine drinker can fall in love with it and the serious wine drinker could enjoy it as well.”

The fragolino has been Jerry’s personal grape holy grail. He fell in love with the light red wine when he and Anita visited Italy a few years ago. Its light effervescence and slight strawberry flavor intrigued him. Rarely available in the U.S., the wine proved a challenge to replicate.

“It took four years to discover what grape I needed to make it,” said Tanguay with a laugh. The strawberries were easy, though. The family picks their own at Stevenson’s farm in Wayne.

A grape deal

Jerry Tanguay does most of the hands-on wine making. Every day he’s in the basement making adjustments, running tests and monitoring the wine.

“He babysits that wine,” said Anita, poking good-natured fun at her husband’s obsessiveness.

Jerry smiles in silent acknowledgment. He credits the popularity of their wines to the intense care given each batch. They choose to buy a better grade of tannins at $113 per pound rather than the cheaper grade for $100 per 50-pound bag. Likewise, they use only 30 grams of sulfite in their wines, versus the 137 to 250 grams commonly found in commercial wines.

The Tanguays know they could produce more if they got bigger tanks, but Jerry said that opens the process to things that can impair the wine’s taste.

For instance, tanks that are 100 gallons or bigger ferment faster. That means the wine has to be chilled, which affects the taste. Bigger tanks also mean pumps are necessary to transfer the wine from one tank to another.

“It beats up the wine, aerating it affects the taste,” he said. Instead, they “siphon gently” the wine from one tank to the next.

“It takes forever, but it makes a difference,” he said.

Dan handles the legal, regulatory and administrative details of the winery. No small task when there are 144 pages of regulations to pore through just to design labels. It took more than a year of paperwork to get their winemaking license from the state.

The family distributes the wine themselves, wholesaling it locally to Roopers, Florian’s and Lisbon Street News. Prices range from $10 to $12 per bottle.

“We want our wines to sell so we’re keeping the prices low,” said Jerry.

Someday, both Jerry and Dan hope to quit their day jobs and dedicate themselves full time to the winery. Right now they have the capacity to make 1,300 to 1,500 cases a year. They’d like to expand the winery and then buy a piece of land to begin their own vineyard.

But if the business doesn’t get any bigger than it is now, that’s OK, too.

“It really is a labor of love,” said Jerry. “We’d be doing it anyway.”