June 25, 2020 / News
Links Bridge Wine Club
We have just announced the July Links Bridge Wine Club selection to club members (more details below), and we’re sending this message to our general mailing list just in case some of you might want to join the club.
This post includes a summary of how the club works, a description of the July selection, and instructions on how to join.
We hope to see you soon at Links Bridge Vineyards!
Best wishes, and stay well.
Bob & Joan
Here’s how the club generally works:
- If you join the Links Bridge Wine Club, we will provide you with four selected bottles of wine three times each year. These selections may include current wines that we think are especially good, wines reserved for club members, and/or new wines that have not yet been released.
- About a month in advance of the pickup period for a given selection, we will send you an email that describes the selection, the pickup date or period, and a deadline date for making adjustments to the selection.
- The price of each selection will be our normal retail price for the wine less a 15% discount, plus Maryland alcohol tax. For club members we will extend this discount to any additional wines you order along with the announced selection, and to wines you purchase at other times of the year).
- If you wish to substitute a different wine for one or more of the selected wines, you can let us know by the deadline date. We will make those adjustments, and then on the day after the deadline date we will charge your credit or debit card for the adjusted amount due.
- If you wish to opt out of a selection entirely, no problem—just let us know by the deadline date and we will not charge you for that selection.
- If you have not requested substitutions and have not indicated that you wish to opt out, we will charge your credit or debit card for the current selection on the day after the deadline date.
- We hope you will come by Links Bridge during the pickup period for each selection, as we enjoy your company and will often have members-only events on these dates that feature the selected wines, wines still to come, or both, and keep you informed about what’s going on at Links Bridge Vineyards.
- If you’re unable to be here during the pickup period, we’ll hold the wine for you until you can come by. Or, should you instruct us to do so, we will ship the selection to you at your expense.
- Finally, with each selection, we will also include certificates for two of our normal sit-down wine tastings that you can use yourself or transfer to a friend.
The July Selection
Our July selection, which we call “Four Wonderful Whites Plus a Bonus,” will include one bottle each of 2019 Vichard, 2019 Muscat Blanc “Dry,” 2019 Muscat Blanc “Slightly Sweet,” and 2019 Chardonnay. (Plus a Bonus—more on that below.)
The pickup weekend for this selection is July 18-19 (11am-6pm). Come on by, taste some wine, and chat with us for a while!
The deadline date for requesting substitutions, etc. is Saturday July 11.
Here is some information about the four wonderful whites. One is on our current tasting menu, but we have not yet formally released the other three.
2019 Vichard. This very slightly off-dry wine is a blend of 82% Vidal Blanc and 18% Chardonnay. Some of you may remember our very popular 2016 Vichard, which was a bit less “Vi” and a bit more “Chard.” We liked that wine very much, but this one is better! Its combination of fresh acidity, fruity flavor, and a tad of residual sugar makes it perfect for summer garden drinking and a great complement for spicy dishes of all kinds.
2019 Muscat Blanc. In May we planted this varietal (among many others) at our new Chestnut Hill Vineyard. Muscat has been around a long time—it is possibly the earliest grape to appear in the European written record. It is most often made into a sweet wine (think Muscat Canelli , Moscato, Asti Spumante), but we learned from Howard and Susan Wilson at Newmarket Plains that it also makes a delicious dry wine. We hope to be making Muscat Blanc wines from our own grapes in three years or so (we are knocking on wood here), but we decided to experiment in the meantime with juice from Washington State. Our experiment has produced a dry version and a slightly sweet version for you to try, and we hope you will enjoy comparing them.
Chardonnay 2019. This is a classic Links Bridge unoaked Chardonnay, and we think it might be our best to date. We harvested the fruit a little earlier than normal to preserve acid, then fermented the juice and aged the new wine for seven months in stainless steel at the lowest temperatures we could manage. The resulting wine is crisp, steely, and refreshing.
The Bonus, which we are adding at no charge, is a bottle of Four Trees Apple Wine, so called because it combines Honey Crisp, Enterprise, Goldrush, and Fuji apples. We hope you’ll like it, but we’d also like to hear your opinion of it, as this is totally new territory for us.
After the Links Bridge Wine Club 15% discount and Maryland’s 9% alcohol tax, the price of this selection for club members is $89.87.
As always, you may substitute other wines for those in the selection, add extra wines (also at the member discount), or both. Just email us at linksbridgevineyards@gmail.com by the deadline date, Saturday July 11, and let us know what you would like to do.
How to Join the Links Bridge Wine Club
We invite you to join the wine club simply by purchasing our July selection.
To get this started, send us an email before the deadline date (Saturday, July 11) at linksbridgevineyards@gmail.com. Use WINE CLUB as the subject line. Please include in your email:
- Your name, mailing address, email address, and phone number.
- Whether you would like to make any substitutions. (For information about our other wines, look at the “Our Wines” page in our website—just click here.)
On the day following the deadline date, we will send an invoice to your email address that bills you for the July selection, adjusted for any substitutions you requested. This invoice will come to you from Square, the same well-known point-of-sale system that we use for transactions at our tasting room. You will be invited to pay this invoice online with a credit or debit card.
At the same time, Square will also present you with the option to save your card details in order to facilitate subsequent wine club transactions. We will need you to do this in order to make our wine club system work. Please note, however, that your card information will be housed securely with Square rather than at Links Bridge Vineyards.
Once you’ve purchased the July selection and placed your card information on file with Square, you are officially a Links Bridge Wine Club member. (And our communications about subsequent wine club selections will be a lot shorter!)
Continued …
June 18, 2020 / News
Closed Again.
We learned yesterday that we may have been exposed to the Covid-19 virus over the weekend just past. While we think the probability of exposure was small, we have decided to close Links Bridge Vineyards for the next two weekends (June 19-21 and June 26-28), which will give us time to learn more about the situation.
We are sorry to close, particularly as we have enjoyed meeting so many of you again over the past two weekends. But under the circumstances it seems the safest thing to do.
Please watch for further news, and stay well.
Best wishes,
Bob and Joan
Continued …
May 31, 2020 / News
Open Again!
After 70 days of being closed for on-premises wine drinking, we are pleased—really pleased—to announce that we will re-open on Friday June 5. We hope that all of you have stayed well over the past weeks, and that we will have the further pleasure of seeing you here again sometime soon!
New Hours
From now through Labor Day, we will be open Fridays 2-7 pm, Saturdays and Sundays 11 am – 6 pm. After Labor Day we will revert to our older Saturday and Sunday schedule—see the “Visit” tab on our website for full details. Weather permitting, we will offer both wine tastings and wine by the glass or bottle.
New Rules
Upon reopening, we will follow Governor Hogan’s Executive Order of May 27. For the time being, complying with this order will place some limitations on what we can do. Here is the gist:
1. Wine may only be consumed in outdoor seating areas. For us, these include the patio area outside the tasting room, which we have expanded, and certain areas along the riverbank.
2. Customers may enter the tasting room to purchase wine or to use the restrooms, provided that social distancing conventions are followed. By the governor’s order, customers must wear face coverings when in the tasting room. Face coverings are not required when sitting at your outdoor table.
3. Staff (that’s us) must wear face coverings at all times, must wear gloves when serving and change these for each new group of customers, and must disinfect tables with each change of customers.
4. No more than 6 persons may be seated together unless they are members of the same household.
5. No more than 10 persons may be seated together even if all are members of the same household.
New Developments
Though closed for the last 70 days, we have been busy. At the beginning of May, we bottled our 2019 whites and 2017 reds. We have some great new wines for you to try, and will be releasing these as soon as we can. Shortly after bottling, we (and Benchmark Custom Vineyard Planters from upstate New York) planted 7200 vines at our new Chestnut Hill property. These are growing nicely and hopefully will be producing new wines for us in about three years. Finally, throughout March, April and May Will Young & Associates have been working on an extension of our patio area, together with new landscaping, and that will be ready to use by June 5. So we’ll have lots to tell you about when you next visit us!
Best wishes!
Joan & Bob
Continued …
March 19, 2020 / News
Closed for a While
Hello everyone,
Governor Hogan has ordered, and we agree with him, that on-premise consumption of food and beverages at restaurants, bars, wineries, breweries, and distilleries should stop until the coronavirus/Covid-19 situation becomes considerably less dangerous. We will therefore be closed for on-premise consumption until further notice.
We will, however, continue to sell wine “to-go” for off-premise consumption. If you would like to buy wine to take home, just give us a call or send us an email to make sure we will be here when you want to come by. Alternatively, for customers in our local area, we can arrange free delivery for orders of $75 or more.
Call: 301-466-2413 or 301-602-5733
Email: linksbridgevineyards@gmail.com.
We will miss seeing you during this period of restricted operations, but please know that much as we would enjoy your company at Links Bridge Vineyards, we would rather have you stay home and stay well.
Best wishes,
Bob & Joan
Sonnet on an Empty Tasting Room
Our tasting room is sadly empty now.
But that is how it should be, on this day
When all our efforts focus on the way
To slow a virus down and keep it low.
And to this end we can but freely vow
To sell “to go” or “by delivery”
Until the virus has no more to say,
And we are confident about the “how.”
And when that end eventually we reach,
We’ll welcome you inside once more to share
Our wine, both new and old, and tasty food,
And possibly a short but grateful speech
To mark our new release from daily care
And wish that from then on things will be good!
Continued …
March 13, 2020 / News
We Remain Open this Weekend
Hello all,
Amid the coronavirus turmoil, which we take very seriously, we are writing to let you know of our tasting room policies for the weekend about to begin:
- We will be open both Saturday March 14 and Sunday March 15, 11am-6pm. (For subsequent weekends, we will be re-evaluating our decision to stay open as conditions evolve, so stay tuned!)
- We will work to create a “social distancing” atmosphere, reducing the number of tables inside the tasting room. If the weather is fine, we will encourage guests to sit outside, either on the tasting room patio or on our riverside patio.
- As is always our policy, we invite you to bring a picnic or snacks with you to enjoy with our wine.
- We will keep tabletops, countertops, door hardware, and restrooms disinfected throughout the course of each day in as timely a manner as possible.
- As usual, our wine glasses will be washed and sanitized in our high-temperature dishwasher before (and after) every use.
- All of us who work in the tasting room will be washing our hands thoroughly before delivering wine to any customer.
- As usual, soap, water, and hands-free towel dispensers will be available in the restrooms, and hand sanitizer will be available at our check-out counter.
If all is well at your end, we encourage you to come by for a visit this weekend!
Best wishes,
Bob & Joan
Continued …
February 28, 2020 / News
Hello all,
As the sign says, March is Maryland Wine Month! In March, the weather will be warming, the sun will be shining (on at least some days!), and it will be a perfect time to visit some Maryland wineries. There are lots to choose from, as you can see by looking here. March is also a great time to ask for Maryland wines at your favorite restaurants.
At Links Bridge Vineyards, March is also the time for our Dog Days of March Wine and Dog-Cookie Tasting. Bring your discriminating dog friend when you visit our tasting room. While you enjoy a seven-wine tasting at your table, your dog can assess the aroma, taste, and finish of seven different dog-cookies. And the two of you can top this experience off with a stroll on our path along the Monocacy River.
Wine and dog-cookie tastings will be offered all afternoon each weekend during March.
Bring a leash!
Best wishes,
Joan & Bob
Continued …
