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BOORDY VINEYARDS
(est. 1945)
Discovering the quality of local wines in
neighboring states sparked a new project
for Boordy Vineyards.
Boordy Vineyards—Maryland’s oldest
winery—opened in 1945 by PhilipWagner
and his wife, Jocelyn. The vineyard was
first opened as an experiment stemming
from his recently published book,
AmericanWines and How toMake Them.
Wagner started out simply, with just a few
classic table wines (a red, a white, and a
rosé), produced from French-American
hybrid grapes. His goal was to make
affordable wine for people who drank it
regularly with meals. Boordy’s first large-
scale order and customer was Haussner’s
Restaurant, in which Boordy was the
house wine.
B Y B R I A N N A MA C K I E
In 1980, Boordy was
purchased by the R. B.
Deford family—who had
been grape growers for
the winery since 1965—
and was relocated to their
historic 240-acre farm in
the Long Green Valley of
northeastern Baltimore
County. Beyond being
the oldest in the business,
Boordy has recently
undergone some major
improvements. In 2013,
Boordy invested nearly $3 million to
revamp their facilities and plant new
vines (45 acres worth). The goal of
this overhaul was not only to allow
for an increase in production, but also
to improve the quality of their wine.
New technology has allowed Boordy
to control temperatures throughout
the year. Phineas Deford, Director of
Operations at Boordy, credits technology
for helping the winery blast through the
quality ceiling they were stuck under
before 2013, when they didn’t have the
technology needed to improve control
over the fermentation process. While
Boordy is the oldest winery in Maryland,
new technology has ensured that it will
not be out of date any time soon.
Boordy parallels other Maryland
aryland wines: What do you really
know? Your local Maryland wineries
are not what you might think. Thanks
to improved technologies, and more
years of knowledge of the growing and winemaking
process in our state, the quality of Maryland wines
continues to drastically improve, winning awards in
multiple competitions. Winemakers are constantly
pushing for higher quality, while also offering a wider
variety of wines to appeal to a larger consumer base.
The range of offerings varies from sweet to dry, red
to white, and still to sparkling. Let’s take a look into
the history and future of Maryland vines and wines
.
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M A R Y L A N D W I N E P R E S S