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Musings About Music and Wine at Allegro Vineyards

“Wine and music are one,” wrote Emerson.  It’s not a perfect metaphor, but for the founders of Allegro Vineyards in Brogue, Pennsylvania, it certainly rang true that a person captivated by one might be at once captivated by the other, and in similar ways.  Bachelor brothers John and Tim Crouch took a two-decade interlude from their musical lives to grow and make wine here.  John, an oboist but most devotedly a composer, had a year and a half after selling the winery to return to his compositions before his death at 55 in 2003; Tim, a violinist, died in 2000 at the age of sixty.  My husband Carl Helrich and I are now the grateful owners of Allegro, preserving it and moving it forward.

I’ve seen wine writers overdo the links between music and Allegro’s wines, but John and Tim never did.  They sprinkled musical references lightly while naming and I heard John liken some of the wines to particular musical compositions, but it was a natural relationship, not a strained one.

A few of the musical references:

Allegro: The winery, established in 1980, was musically named.  The primary meaning of the word is “lively,” and I like the word’s versatility: it can be a noun, adverb, or adjective; it’s a way of doing something, or being something, with some spirit.  A great term for John’s winemaking (or “wine-sitting,” as he occasionally called it), which was never heavy-handed and was always respectful of the spirit of the grape.

Opus 1: This old story is one of the reasons Allegro is still remembered by wine writers as far away as the planet of California, where hybrid grapes such as Seyval Blanc are foreign matter.  (Upon John’s death Jim Laube posted a very nice tribute on Wine Spectator online which references his coverage of the initial story: Unfiltered, Unfined: The Spirit of Allegro Vineyards)

While known early on for the quality of his Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, John’s first formula (blended fruit) wine in the early 1980’s was a blend of peach and Seyval which he named “Opus 1.”  Well, Robert Mondavi and Baron Philippe de Rothschild had recently sunk a nice bit of cash into the name themselves, and when the media machine started announcing the arrival of THE Opus One, John made his polite “ahem” known.  Mondavi eventually had to settle with John and Tim for exclusive rights to the name, and with the paltry settlement the Crouches purchased a corker which we still use, and a driveway bridge over our stream, which I like to call the “Mondavi Bridge.”  Mondavi himself was supposed to come for a tasting here, a tasting of Allegro’s own Cabernet, but he never showed.  The peach wine is now called “Celeste.”

Cadenza: Allegro’s vineyard site produces Bordeaux-style and Bordeaux-quality Cabernet Sauvignon, earthy wines which age gracefully and have impressed many.  In 1984 John and Tim renamed their Reserve Cabernet “Cadenza”—a solo instrument’s (grape’s) chance to shine.  In 1988 they began to commission original vineyard-inspired artworks for the Cadenza labels, a tradition which has held.  For the 1998 Cadenza John chose a photograph by Tim as his tribute to his brother; it was the last wine Tim helped to make.  Carl and I are waiting for the next great vineyard year, so that we too can pay tribute to an Allegro founder.  We’d like to depict a few notes of John’s dissonant “Elegy” to his brother on a bottle of Cadenza.  Cadenza is the reason Carl and I are at Allegro.  What a perfume, and what a tradition.

Coda: The last red wine John and Tim grew from Allegro, in 1999.  In this year, contemplating retirement, they collected all the vineyard’s red grapes, including Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Nebbiolo, and Cabernet, and made a wine as eclectic and interesting as their partnership here.

Carl and I have introduced two new music wines to Allegro’s list: “Jazz,” our red raspberry dessert wine, and “Aria,” our Eiswein-style wine.

I come from a family of musicians, and Carl from a family of artists.  We gravitated toward this little winery and vineyard site in Brogue because of all of the above: the Cabernet, the brothers, the way John said the word “Mondavi,” their respect for the art of wine, the spirit, and the “Wine which music is.”

- Kris Miller