Wine in New England
Inn Wines

by Jeff Massimino
(Northampton, Ma)

A bottle of Chocolate Raspberry Wine from Inn Wines

Most people don't think of Massachusetts or New England in general as 'Wine Country". Although it is true the New England does not produce nearly the volume of wine as places such as France or California, tucked within the hills of the country are some small wine producers who produce some fabulous wines. One of my personal favorites was Inn Wines.
Inn Wines was located in a small town called Hatfield in Massachusetts. Its proprietor, Dick Phaneuf, produced some great wines, included the bottle of Chocolate Raspberry wine that is sitting beside me. I say produced because unfortunately, Inn Wines went out of business as a winery roughly 6 years ago.
The winery was run out of a room off of an old colonial era house. When you walked into it was like stepping back 200 years in time. Wooden walls, wooden displays and bottles of locally produced, hand crafted wines everywhere! Along with the traditional red and white wine were such creations as "Apple pie wine" and my personal favorite, the fore mentioned Chocolate Raspberry Wine.
The vineyard was located behind the house and was roughly and acre or so in size. I'm not completely sure, but I think that Dick still lives there. Although no more wines are produced from this location, their is still a garden behind the house which grows crops that are sold at the farm stand that resides in the front of the house from roughly June to October.
Maybe some day Inn Wines will make a comeback. Until then, I'm holding on to my last two bottles of Wine from them for a very special occasion, whatever that may be.