NEWRY, Maine ??” Honig Vineyard and Winery from the heart of the Napa Valley in California will be hosting a wine dinner at Sunday River Saturday, Feb. 18. The Honig Vineyard and Winery is devoted to using environmentally sustainable agricultural methods. Michael Honig, President and Managing Partner of the winery will attend the holiday weekend event.

One wine featured at the dinner will be a 2004 Sauvignon Blanc. To create the Sauvignon Blanc, the Honig winery uses two methods to process the fruit: whole cluster pressing and cold soaking. The former method is used to preserve the tropical fruit flavors by putting most of the fruit into the press in whole clusters, while the latter calls for selected grape lots to be crushed in a tank so that the juice is left in contact with the skin for several hours before processing, enhancing the grapefruit/citrus components.

A 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon will also be offered available at the dinner. The processing of this wine is more time intensive than the Sauvignon Blanc. Each vineyard block was harvested and made into individual lots. The wines were then pressed off the skins anywhere from 10 to 27 days after crushing. Blending generally takes place between January and April of the year following harvest and the wine is aged for 18 months in American oak barrels.

The company began using sustainable farming methods after consulting with a maverick agriculturalist named “Amigo Bob” about ways to eliminate the use of herbicides for weed control in the vineyards. Herbicides have many undesirable side effects aside from their intention, and they can often kill beneficial microorganisms in the soil in addition to depleting its nutrients, making the soil inert. Since 1998 Amigo Bob has helped the Honig family to implement many aspects of sustainable agriculture with similar results, trading conventional farming practices for more efficient and eco-friendly methods

Michael Honig took over the management of his family’s Honig Vineyard and Winery in 1984 at the age of 22 years old. In the spirit of entrepreneurship, Michael modestly began marketing the company by holding tastings at restaurants and wine shops around San Francisco while selling the wine from his own Subaru wagon. Twenty years later, Honig still manages and promotes the winery, traveling extensively all over the United States to sell his wines.

The Honig Vineyards Wine Tasting Dinner at the Grand Avenue restaurant will be held on President’s Day Weekend, Saturday, Feb. 18 at 7:00 p.m. For more information guests can refer to the events calendar at www.sundayriver.com and reservations can be made with Gary Savage at (207) 824-5821.