What comes to mind when you think of Cundy’s Harbor?
Fishing and lobstering? A quaint village? What about vineyards and a winery?
Maybe not.
Joe Monthey is trying to change that and already has had one successful season of growing grapes. These are not the “table grapes” bought at the grocery store; these grapes will make wine for his new Island Wine Co. in Cundy’s Harbor.
It may take several years to accomplish his goal of opening a tasting room where visitors can sample the wines. But to start, Joe has planted multiple small vineyards. He hopes to add “a couple thousand” vines next year.
“Others in Maine are growing grapes commercially, like Cellardoor, Oyster River Winegrowers, and lots of small, independent growers, but none that I know of in Harpswell,” Joe said.
He plans to combine his experience as a farmer, chef and wine expert with the horticulture expertise of his wife, Syretha Brooks.
When he’s not tending his infant vineyards, Joe is growing vegetables and helping Syretha as office manager for her Bee Balm Design Co., which offers “fine gardening and design.”
Flowers, shrubs, herbs and vegetables are one thing for the couple to grow for themselves or for Syretha’s clients. But the first question most people ask Joe is, “With our winters, how can you have a commercial winery in Maine?”
Joe is confident he can. “We’re in the (planting) zone for grape growing, but the climate has always been too cold,” Joe said. Now, the climate is warming. “The goal is to find these little pockets of land in Harpswell to plant smaller vineyards to utilize the climate.”
Some of his grapes are growing on the couple’s property on ledges. The ledges and hollows can protect vineyards in the winter.
All 40 of Joe’s vines from last winter survived, and this year there are a total of 125 vines waiting to produce grapes.
“Ideally, within the next two to three years, we’ll have sellable wines,” Joe said. “It’s a farm and they can all die tomorrow. I don’t think that will happen. If they don’t make it, (I’ll) buy more. It’s all an experiment.”
Joe and Syretha live on 3 acres off Catlin Shore Road. Her parents, artists and longtime residents Nancy Marstaller and David Brooks, live next door. A path behind Joe and Syretha’s home meanders down to Quahog Bay. Small vineyards have been planted on the path’s ledges and in different types of soils around the house and path, including clay. Joe is looking for small parcels of land to lease from Harpswell residents to plant additional vineyards.
Down the hill from their home is Joe’s largest vineyard, about 100 feet by 100 feet. Vine cuttings are planted in 10 rows with tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables doing nicely between the lanes.
The newly planted grape vines are shrouded with beige-colored plastic tubes that act like “little greenhouses,” Joe said. No fertilizer is used.
Three ducks live in a fenced area a pebble’s throw from the vineyard. They prefer to gobble up Japanese beetles instead of duck food, keeping the insects off the vines.
When the grapes are ready to be turned into wine, don’t expect Joe and Syretha to crush grapes in a barrel with their feet.
“We have a bladder press with a big balloon in the middle that’s filled with water and will gently press the grapes. It’s a cleaner way of making white wines,” Joe said. The first product might be sparkling wine, but Joe plans to make a variety of types and styles of wine.
Syretha, 38, launched her own gardening company this past March. She fostered her love of horticulture by helping Sharon Whitney, a South Harpswell iris breeder, and she has tended local gardens since she was 16.
A graduate of Smith College, she worked for the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Wave Hill gardens in the Bronx, the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, and local fine gardening businesses before going off on her own. She has 20-30 clients, including the Harpswell Schoolhouse restaurant.
Joe, 37, has a resume that could fill pages. He is a native of Oregon’s Willamette Valley who grew up in Cumberland, Maine. In high school, he was a youth player with the Boston Bulldogs soccer club.
“It was no longer in the professional leagues, and though I was recruited for a club in England, I never went,” he said.
After high school, he considered attending the Culinary Institute of America in New York before enrolling at American University in Washington, D.C. He transferred to Boston’s Northeastern University to play soccer, then returned to American University, graduating with a degree in international studies.
While a student at American University, he spent six months living in Senegal, West Africa, where his plan was to write a cookbook. He was told that women do all the cooking and would be hesitant to share their workspaces. Instead, he pivoted to creating bronze sculptures.
After college, he worked for an African agricultural nonprofit and then was the Fulbright Scholar Program administrator for sub-Saharan Africa. Alas, office jobs were not for him. He worked on a small, organic livestock farm in Vermont and also was a butcher’s apprentice. “The farm struggled and eventually went under. That’s when I went to culinary school,” he said.
So he was off to New York City to go to the French Culinary Institute, now the International Culinary Center. He worked in high-end New York restaurants Blue Hill and Jewel Bako. Later, he flipped burgers at a Vermont brewery. After moving to Maine, he was the bakery manager and later the wine director for Rosemont Market & Bakery in Portland. Last summer, he worked on a farm in Bowdoinham.
He is a certified as a wine specialist through the Society of Wine Educators. He’s attended “Pinot camps” in Oregon, visiting vineyards that grow various Pinot wines. And he’s currently studying online through the University of California, Davis, for a certificate in wine making. He said he also does “a little bit of catering here and there.”
The couple married a year ago in August in their backyard meadow, surrounded with flowers and plants — a setting so striking that Decor Maine magazine featured the wedding in its garden issue.
“My business will be the moneymaker for the first few years,” Syretha said.
“My business will spend it,” chimed in Joe. “It’s hard for a small-scale winery to make money.”
In the meantime, Joe will add more vineyards until grapes are ready for wine, Syretha will grow her gardening business, and the couple will uncork and savor their favorite store wine: Champagne.
