NEW JERSEY'S WINE AMBASSADOR: FIRST LADY TAMMY MURPHY TALKS WINE

Indignant.

Well, not exactly indignant, as Tammy Murphy seeks to clarify, to find the right word. But surprised. Guests of the State of New Jersey are most definitely surprised by the first lady’s insistence that only Jersey wines be served at Drumthwacket, the governor’s mansion in Princeton.

Only wines from New Jersey?

The move was announced by Murphy last November at the Governor’s Cup, an awards ceremony for Jersey wines [“Garden State Wines Command the Spotlight,” Edible Jersey, Winter 2019]. It was considered radical, and, a year later, still necessitates an explanation. Thus Murphy, at every state function, is now the self-appointed ambassador for Jersey wines.

The emergent New Jersey wine industry couldn’t ask for a more savvy, or more elegant, spokeswoman. Murphy is a former Goldman Sachs banker and founding member of Al Gore’s environmental group The Climate Reality Project. As first lady, she has emphasized a particular commitment to climate change education and to improving the maternal and infant mortality rate in the state, which is alarmingly high and for which the solutions are not simple.

Yet Murphy is humble about her role in promoting Jersey wines. The easiest selling point, she notes, is in the glass itself. Jersey wines are just that good.

Murphy credits the success of the state wine industry to the competitive nature of the business, the increasing maturity of the vineyards in the state and, most significantly, to Jersey attitude—that gritty Jersey attitude, a despite-all-odds attitude, a mentality that says, “Bring it, we’ll figure it out.” Jersey humidity, after all, can be a real bear to a winemaker. Real bears, frankly, also are a problem, as any state winemaker will tell you.

In the past year, Murphy has hosted any number of events at Drumthwacket, with thousands of guests served. Murphy has hosted Seder dinners, and she has organized events for athletes, artists, dancers and special needs groups. The first lady is eager to get as many people into Drumthwacket as possible, especially those who might otherwise not get an invite. For some events, the flower arrangements are done by a group experiencing homelessness, a group that has been taught the art of flower arranging. Always the artwork at Drumthwacket is changing; the first lady showcases pieces from museums all over the state. “It’s all Jersey all the time.”

Inevitably, after each event, a number of guests approach Murphy with a question: “What was the name of that wine again?”

The First Lady met recently with Edible Jersey to talk about Jersey wine in her office on West State Street in Trenton, an office of understated elegance, a showcase for family heirlooms and Jersey artists. The coffee table, quirky but stunning, is handcrafted and its top is decorated with a school of metal fish. The unique piece is particularly sentimental—it comes from the home of Murphy’s parents, both of whom recently died. The walls of the first lady’s office are decorated in works by Jersey artists; a memorable painting is the hauntingly beautiful oil on canvas, Two Girls, by Hughie Lee Smith, who lived and worked in Cranbury. The 1966 painting is part of the New Jersey State Museum Collection.

Murphy also was eager also to talk about the food of Jersey, how she prefers to shop European style, at the fishmonger and the butcher shop and the farmers’ market. She talks about the handful of fresh, fat, organic Jersey blueberries she was given recently by a restaurant friend, blueberries from FullBlue360, a company run by Tiffany A. Bohlin, who has developed a sustainable, environmentally friendly growing method that doesn’t use soil and uses up to 70% less water. Those blueberries, says Murphy, were amazing, the best she’s ever tasted. Murphy talks about supermarkets, and how the dominant blueberries in the supermarket often are not from Jersey even amid blueberry season. We talk about the distribution system, how crazy it is that it’s more efficient and practical to sell big box produce from China or blueberries from Washington State than it is to get fresh fruit and vegetables from one region of New Jersey to another.

Tammy Murphy gets it, says Michael Beneduce of Beneduce Vineyards in Pittstown, a winery that’s produced a number of award-winning wines. “It’s definitely an exciting endorsement by the first lady,” he says. “Committing to only serving NJ wines at the governor’s mansion signals to visiting guests as well as our local consumer that the quality of wines being made in the state is higher than it’s ever been.”

Murphy credits the success of the state wine industry to the competitive nature of the business, the increasing maturity of the vineyards in the state and, most significantly, to Jersey attitude and grit.

In wine years, the modern NJ wine industry is young. Everything changed in 1981 when the state passed the Farm Winery Act, which eliminated Prohibition-era rules and suddenly made it possible for more people to obtain wine-making licenses. Today, 48 wineries in the state produce wine from 90 varieties of grapes. Which means if you still equate Jersey wine with your great-uncle’s bracing annual garage concoction or with a sticky-sweet fruit wine, you’re outdated.

“People who haven’t tried NJ wines in a while owe it to themselves to get out and try the new generation of wines being made it their own back yards,” says Beneduce.

Amalthea Cellars was one of those early wineries, the eighth in NJ, having received its commercial license in 1982. (The vineyards were planted in 1976.) Last year, the winery’s 2015 Legend’s Edition Europa I, a blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc, was declared the state’s best red wine. Amalthea Cellars was founded by Louis Caracciolo, who learned wine-making, as the company name suggests, in the cellar working with his Italian immigrant grandfather. The winery’s website features grainy vintage video of Caracciolo from back in the day, a laid-back yet entirely self-possessed young winemaker in his mustache and jean jacket. In the poetry of a winemaker, Caracciolo attributes the success of his wine to saints and circumstances.

Today Amalthea Cellars encompasses 10 acres in Atco, and it was just last year at that vineyard, over a taste of chardonnay, where Gov. Murphy was asked by the Garden State Wine Growers Association to bestow the wine awards at the annual Governor’s Cup competition. (Despite the name, the governors of NJ rarely attended the events.) The governor did the invitation one better, and promised to host the awards ceremony at Drumthwacket. The first lady’s announcement that evening was not expected.

“It was a wonderful surprise endorsement,” says Tom Cosentino, executive director of the state association. “It gave us nationwide credibility.”

Winemaker Caracciolo is more definitive, calling it a watershed moment, a clarion call in the wine world. “The governor and first lady have made all the difference,” he says. The world wine industry, says Caracciolo, survives on the palates of the area; it’s the wine drinkers of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware who determine a wine’s success. We constitute the largest wine-buying region. And, because wine lovers rely on each other for information, an endorsement from one wine aficionado to another matters most. Suddenly, says Caracciolo, the Wine Spectator wine drinker—a wine lover who previously associated Jersey wines with a style of sweet, traditional East Coast wines (a style that still matters, and which still attracts a significant market)—realizes now that Jersey also produces fine wines. What that means is this: “New Jersey wines are taking on the world.”

A year later, the first lady’s endorsement is not just a public relations boost, but translates, for the wineries, to real sales. Cosentino points to a number of recent awards and accolades— so many industry leaders are discovering Jersey wines—but, as he notes, the truth is always in the glass. That Europa I from Amalthea, for example, is a smooth, elegant wine, hand-crafted, rooted in great European tradition.

As Tammy Murphy reiterates: “We just have to get the word out.”

Not wanting to pit one winemaker against another, we didn’t ask the first lady for her favorite Jersey wine. She did, however, volunteer an answer to that question. It was, as one would expect from the wife of a former ambassador, a diplomatic statement.

“I haven’t tried all the wines in New Jersey.”

GOVERNOR'S CUP
 

Drumthwacket will again host the Governor’s Cup for Wine this fall. The competition among Jersey wines will be judged by Chicago’s Beverage Tasting Group. Tammy Murphy has also announced an event for the state’s craft beer industry, also to be held this fall. Specifics were unavailable at press time.