Woodbury Vineyards
3215 S. Roberts Rd., Fredonia, NY 14063
Web: Woodbury Vineyards
Phone: 716.679.9463
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Alcohol Beer Drinks Fredonia Hinsdale Westfield Wine

"Americans generally know only one Budweiser - the one with the catchy commercials - but as it turns out, there are two others; all were inspired by the Czech town Budweis."

Every week or so, our Bubbly column looks at a mix of locally produced and locally available beverages, spotlighting everything from wines to beers to teas and sodas. This week's Bubbly looks at four wines from three area wineries we haven't covered before, as well as an internationally famous beer called either Budweiser Budvar or Czechvar depending on where it's being sold, and a blueberry beer from Long Island. Read on for all the details!

All of this week's wines were purchased as 750ml bottles from Prestige Wines in Orchard Park, New York, another Premier Group member that we visited out of pure curiosity: we wanted to find out how different its selection was from the Group's other locations. Not surprisingly, while there's a lot of similarity between the stores, particularly the Williamsville and Orchard Park locations, each has items that the others don't. We went out of our way to choose wines that we hadn't seen at the Williamsville location.

The best of this week's picks hailed from Fredonia, NY's Woodbury Vineyards, which produces a Blueberry Wine ($10) that we liked. Hitting the right general combination of blueberry flavor and alcohol content, this light, sweet, and slightly tart wine uses its 10% alcohol content to offer a little bit of spicy punch, though we initially thought that it finished harshly. But on subsequent sips, and on another glass a day later, that harshness disappeared, and it came across as a decidedly good, authentic blueberry beverage with no hint of artificial flavor. It's worthy of 2.5 stars, and a good buy for the $10 price.

Far less impressive was Hinsdale, NY's Tan Childs Winery Mountain Grown Blueberry Wine ($15), which is offered in semi-sweet and semi-dry versions, the distinction amusing; the bottle we bought was the subtly marked semi-sweet, and we suppose that the semi-dry is a little less sugary. Though its alcohol content wasn't outrageous - Tan Childs lists it as 10-12.5% - we initially found this wine to be very close to drinking nothing but alcohol, thanks more to its absence of a competing flavor than anything else. Despite the interesting name and the old-fashioned, "oriental-style" labeling, our first tasting suggested that it had very little blueberry flavor and no depth; it was like drinking a thin, slightly sweetened wine with a bitter finish. However, when we weren't comparing it directly against the superior Woodbury version, it wasn't as bad: the blueberry flavor was very light and Maneschewitz-like, but there. We ultimately felt that it deserved 1.5 stars, though we were initially leaning lower.

Based on a sip of its nice blueberry wine at the Broadway Market last week, and the description on the bottle, we were excited to try the Vetter Vineyards Sweet Cherry ($12), produced in Westfield, NY. We clearly picked the wrong flavor at Prestige and were in for a real shock: though Vetter has come up with a wine here that has a very strong and tart cherry flavor, we didn't find it pleasant to drink at all - contrary to the label, it wasn't sweet at all, and tasted like a cup of pure cherry juice mixed with 11% alcohol. Part of the drinking experience was dealing with its thick and almost syrupy body, which one of us liked, but the other didn't. We both agreed that it was in the 1 to 1.5-star range, and settled on the latter. It's not a wine we'd drink again.

The better of the two cherry wines wasn't great, but it wasn't awful, either. We liked Woodbury's Blueberry Wine ($10), and similarly found its Cherry Wine to be close to what a cherry wine should be: it was sweeter and less tart than the Vetter, but neither too sweet nor so lacking in tartness or cherry flavor as to fall short of tasting like a real cherry beverage. Though it wasn't strong in any particular way, it had enough essence of both cherry and alcohol - 11% - to satisfy but not really floor us on either count. We felt that it was worthy of 2 stars, and a better buy for the dollar than the Vetter.

Though we tend to favor the Premier stores when we're looking for interesting sweet wines, we always seem to come across good beer picks at Consumer Beverage and Wegmans. It was the latter that yielded this week's beers, and though none is directly tied to Western New York, we wanted to share them with those of you who might be looking for a good beer or a good beer story. In keeping with the blueberry theme, we grabbed a six-pack of Blue Point Brewing Company's Blueberry Ale ($10), which we wanted to compare against the locally made EBC Blueberry Wheat Beer and very heavily blueberry Wild Blue from Blue Dawg Brewing that we've previously covered. Amazingly, even though we thought EBC's version was very mildly flavored, the Blue Point version redefined blueberry subtleness, possessing far more of a fine wheat ale flavor than the name and label would have indicated. While there's nothing bad about this drink whatsoever, purchasers expecting the blueberry taste to be anything but subtle will be disappointed; the fruit becomes evident mostly as the beer leaves your tongue. It's worthy of 2.5 stars.

Our real surprise at Wegmans was the discovery of Czechvar, which both beer and trademark law enthusiasts may recognize as "the other Budweiser," one of the beers at the center of the famous international Budweiser Trademark Dispute. Americans generally know only one Budweiser - the one with the catchy commercials - but as it turns out, there are two others, and all were inspired by a Czech town called Budweis.

We know it as a brand name, but in the Czech Republic, Budweiser is a geographic reference akin to calling someone from Buffalo a Buffalonian: to be a Budweiser is to be from the city of Budweis. More interestingly, the city of Budweis has been inspiring beers for over 200 years, as Budějovický Měšťanský Pivovar A.S. has been producing a beer called Budweiser Bürgerbräu since 1802, with the arguably more famous version Budweiser Budvar appearing in 1875. That makes Anheuser-Busch's version - the only one not actually made in Budweis - third, as it appeared in 1876. Yet Anheuser-Busch won U.S. trademark rights to the Budweiser name, and prevented the earlier companies from selling their beer in the United States under their original names; Europe is another, and more complicated story.

Recently, in an interesting twist, Anheuser-Busch secured rights to import the Budvar version and sell it in the United States as Czechvar - the version now at Wegmans. If you're interested in giving the Budvar version a try, we'd recommend it: it has a stronger, spicier flavor than the Anheuser version, but you'll also pay about twice as much for six bottles, as the U.S. Budweiser is highly affordable compared with the import. We won't rate either, but after comparing them both side by side, our preference is definitely for the Czechvar. You can find it in the Wegmans beer section with gold foil covering its cap, and the word "original" all over the foil.