Page 52 - The Hunt - Fall 2021

Well-bundled against the 30-degree chill and ready for
a day’s work, Anthony Vietri emerges from the pre-dawn darkness through the small orchard that separates his family farmhouse from the glow of the parking lot. His signature working fedora traded for a hoodie, Vietri pauses, turns around and gives a sharp whistle. Suddenly, his calico cat comes out of the shadows and into view. “Cali must have gotten distracted by a mouse or something,” he laughs. “She’s usually on my heels.”
Vietri unlocks a door to what had once
been his grandparents’ barn and lets himself into a room full of oak barrels, steel tanks and the welcoming aromas of young wine in the making. Grape harvesting typically happens between August and October in this part of the country, but winemaking doesn’t pause for seasons. Here inside the barrel room, winter is a quiet time mainly interrupted only by the need for occasional racking to remove unwanted sediment that’s drifted down to the sides of
the barrels.
Outside, rows of dormant grape vines draped over cordon wires need pruning. It’s reset time in the vineyard. Everything that can be done in preparation for the 2021 vintage at Avondale’s Va La Vineyards begins in the early light of January. “Actually, I kind of look forward to pruning every year,” says the 58-year-old Vietri.
And that’s comforting, because he’s been doing it for now for more than 20 years. In France, “vintner” is a term used to describe someone like Vietri, a solitary grower who works a small farm with its few acres of vines while also making the wine—perhaps only with family help or that of a hired hand. Among the about two dozen Chester County winery owners, no one is more devoted to his craft than Vietri. His mother’s family had previously owned this small hillside farm along Route 41, just outside Avondale’s east end.
They came from wine country in northern Italy, and Vietri himself began making a homemade version with an uncle as a teenager. Back then, he used grapes picked in California and sent east by refrigerated railroad cars for mainly Italian- American winemakers in Philadelphia and Chester County.
50 THE HUNT MAGAZINE fall 2021
Anthony Vietri and assistant Alberto Acuña handle the fruit pulp left over from the winemaking process.