Ohio
Ohio producer excelling with a pair of wines that couldn’t be more different
Vermilion Valley Vineyards was one of the wineries represented at an East Coast winemakers summit in late June at Boordy Vineyards in Maryland.
Joe Juniper is the winemaker and also managing partner who holds other roles in the Ohio wine industry, including as president of the state’s Wine Producers Association.
The winery is located in Wakeman, Ohio, around 12 miles south of Vermilion, which sits along Lake Erie. It’s grapes grow in the Lake Erie AVA. The winery is located less than an hour’s drive from Cleveland and a two and a half hour’s drive from Pittsburgh.
You can read more on the winery at this link.
Juniper left behind some bottles to try and two in particular got my attention.
The Petit Roja is listed under red wines but drinks like a dark rose and is light, fruity and delicious.
Per the winemaker notes:
- Nose: raspberries, mango, lilacs, cranberries, underripe pineapple
- Palate: watermelon, tangerine, raspberries, low tannin, soft acids.
Juniper in an email said it was a carbonic macerated Pinot Noir.
“I do not ‘cluster thin’ in the typical fashion as I believe the extra crop load through the summer is usually needed to help tame vine vigor and maintain balance,” he said. “However, we do several passes of green dropping at or just post veraison. This allows us to keep the ripest, most advanced fruit.
“Absolute greens go on the ground but the fruit in the middle we usually make ‘fun wine’ with, usually a rosé or ‘White xxx,’ but last year we did our first full carbonic. Whole clusters into a Brite tank — a thick-walled tank used to carbonate wine, beer, cider, etc. with a pressure release valve. The Petit Rioja was wild-fermented and the tank never opened for two weeks. We then drained the tank and whole-cluster pressed. We did minimal fining and finished it with the same ML treatment as our Vino Verde, hence the tiny spritz.”
He said this summer has helped juice sales, with the “fair share of above-average temps and humidity” they have had in that part of Ohio.
It sells for $18.
Here is a link to the complete wine list.
His affordably-priced Cabernet Sauvignon ($36) was also very good. Per its winemaker notes:
- Nose: blueberry compote, tobacco smoke, black pepper, cuiry spice
- Palate: dried cherries, mesquite, twiggy, full-bodied, bitter dark chocolate
“Despite all of our goofy practices in both the vineyard and in the cellar for other varieties, we keep Cabernet Sauvignon pretty straightforward,” he wrote. “It’s very responsive in the field so we target 5.5 tons per acre and usually land around 4-4.5 by harvest. It goes into neutral barrels and sees no new oak aside from some adjuncts from time to time. That same wine goes into our private Tuesday Wine program and is sold retail DTC for $12 per bottle under that label.
“We hope to blow Tuesday Wine up over the next six months to be able to offer it to the public across the country.”
Ohio
Man involved in Monongahela standoff, another suspect charged in Ohio Township homicide
OHIO TOWNSHIP, Pa. (KDKA) — The Allegheny County Magistrate’s Office has filed homicide charges against the man who led police on a chase through two counties before ending in an hours-long stand-off in Monongahela.
Emmanuel Houghton, 19, is now charged with killing 18-year-old Jordan Geiger in Ohio Township. Tyler Stewart, 22, is also charged.
Geiger was found injured in a crashed car on Ben Avon Heights Road and later died of a gunshot wound in the hospital.
State police said earlier this week that Houghton drove away from a traffic stop in a reported stolen car.
Following the pursuit, Houghton later ran into a home in Monongahela, barricaded himself, and threatened to shoot himself and officers.
Stewart is also facing separate charges after Allegheny County deputies say he led them on a chase before crashing on Banksville Road and trying to carjack an elderly man.
Stewart was stopped by two witnesses.
Houghton and Stewart are both charged with criminal homicide, conspiracy, robbery, and firearm violations.
Both men are now in the Allegheny County Jail pending preliminary arraignment.
Ohio
Man hospitalized after shooting near downtown Lexington, police say
LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – Lexington police are investigating a shooting near downtown.
Police say officers responded to a reported shooting with a victim at the 300 block of Ohio Street.
They say an adult victim was transported to a nearby hospital with reported non-life-threatening gunshot wounds.
There is no suspect information at this time.
Officers are working to determine what led to the incident.
The investigation is ongoing.
Copyright 2024 WKYT. All rights reserved.
Ohio
Ohio Republicans approve misleading ballot language to favor gerrymandering
Ohio voters could see an extremely misleading description of a proposal to curb extreme partisan gerrymandering on their November ballots after Republicans approved controversial language on Friday.
At issue is how to describe a proposal that would create a 15-person citizen commission to draw congressional and state legislative districts in Ohio. The commission – five Democrats, five Republicans and five independents – would be prohibited from drawing districts that “that favor one political party and disfavor others”.
But the language approved on Friday by the Republican-controlled Ohio ballot board misrepresents the proposal – instead leading voters to think they have less power in the process. It says the commissioners would be “required to gerrymander the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts to favor the two largest political parties in the state of Ohio”.
The GOP-approved summary also misrepresents how difficult it would be to remove a commissioner from the panel, telling voters the proposal would “prevent a commission member from being removed, except by a vote of their fellow commission members, even for incapacity, willful neglect of duty or gross misconduct”.
But the proposal expressly says that commissioners can be removed from “wanton and willful neglect of duty or gross misconduct or malfeasance in office, incapacity or inability to perform his or her duties, or behavior involving moral turpitude or other acts that undermine the public’s trust in the commission and the redistricting process”. It says that only the commission can remove a commissioner after giving public notice and holding a hearing with public comment.
Supporters of the amendment, a coalition called Citizens not Politicians, said they would sue over the language in the Ohio supreme court next week.
“It’s one grotesque abuse of power after another from politicians desperate to protect the current system that only benefits themselves and their lobbyist friends,” said Maureen O’Connor, a Republican who recently retired from the state supreme court and helped draft the amendment. “Do the politicians not see how angry voters are when they keep breaking the law to protect their own power? Secretary of State Frank LaRose voted seven times for maps that courts ruled were unconstitutional, and this week he violates the constitution with objectively false ballot language. It’s a desperate abuse of power, and it’s not going to work.”
Ohio’s current districts are heavily tilted in favor of the GOP and Republicans defied several rulings from the state supreme court to make the districts more fair. Republicans also unsuccessfully sought to make it nearly impossible to pass a constitutional amendment last summer.
The language approved on Friday, reportedly drafted by Ohio’s secretary of state, Frank LaRose, also says the measure would “repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering approved by nearly three quarters of Ohio electors participating in the statewide elections of 2015 and 2018”. While Ohio voters did approve anti-gerrymandering reforms in those years, Republicans ignored them when they redrew districts after the 2020 census. Organizers drafted the amendment pushing for the independent commission after Republicans were able to keep gerrymandered districts in place in 2022.
“I’ve never seen ballot language this dishonest and so blatantly illegal,” Don McTigue, a lawyer representing the group pushing for the anti-gerrymandering amendment, said in a statement. “Ohio’s constitution and Ohio state law explicitly require the secretary of state and ballot board to provide voters with accurate and fair language about constitutional amendments when they vote. It’s insulting to voters, and I’m embarrassed for the secretary of state.”
This is not the first time the Ohio ballot board has tried to put misleading language on the ballot. Last year, the board tried to distort language on a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights and replace the word “fetus” with “unborn child” and omit forms of reproductive healthcare the amendment would guarantee. The Ohio supreme court ordered the board to rewrite some of the language.
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