Tapped Apple Winery Valentines, Chocolates, Flowers ...and Why Adam Bit

18Tapped Apple Winery

Valentines,Chocolates,Flowers, ...andWhyAdamBit

By Jan Tormay

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It’s February, it’s cold, but love is in the air...and so is the delicious smell of apples.

Celebrate Cupid’s magical arrow on Valentine’s Day, February 14th and all month long when you show the “apple of your eye” the depth of your love with flowers, chocolates, dinner, and maybe even a ring. Finish the evening with a mouthwatering apple dessert such as a tart, cake, cobbler, or pie; or perhaps cap the night with apple wine or cider from the Tapped Apple Winery & Cidery in Downtown Westerly, Rhode Island. This is the

brain child and pride and joy of partners, John Wiedenheft, III, his son, John Wiedenheft, IV, and Adam Mercer.

You’ll know you’ve reached the winery at 37 High Street when you see a colorful wooden sign of a tapped apple above it - hand carved by Vic Marolda and designed and painted by John III’s son, Artist Matt Wiedenheft.

Upon entering this unique little spot right in the heart of downtown, you will discover a beautifully renovated space with white-and-reddish-brown painted brick,

bamboo and tile flooring, new lighting, a constantly changing art gallery, game filled bookcase, and a 20-foot, red-mahogany curved bar and facade, replicating a wine barrel. It’s a stark contrast to the previous zumba studio décor with fluorescent green and

From left to right: John Wiedenheft, IV, Adam Mercer, and John Wiedenheft, III. Photo by Jan Tormay

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blue walls. Toward the back of the winery, shiny 400-gallon fermentation tanks flank the right and left sides of the room. Behind them are a single metal tank and 19 plastic holding tanks, capable of storing between 52 and 300 gallons of pressed cider.

Completing each other’s thoughts, the partners said they “created this inviting space for you and your friends and family to hang out, relax, play a game, talk, have food, and fix the world’s problems.”

“Even with the logo, customers and other winemakers still ask where our business name

came from, where our vineyard is, and where we make the wine,” said Adam, 38, who met John IV when they were both juniors at Norwich Free Academy in 1997. Formerly a photography sales representative, Adam is now responsible for marketing the winery.

All three partners came up with the “Tapped Apple” name during one of their brainstorming sessions. Their pressed cider comes between October and February from Sunset Orchard in North Scituate, Rhode Island, while the rest of the process takes place right at the winery. John IV periodically drives a truck to the orchard and either drops off sanitized tanks, or picks up freshly pressed cider.

“It’s a better juicing process if you hold them for at least three weeks (in cold storage),” said John III, 62. “It’s like the cells of

Photo by Jan Tormay

the apples kind of relax, and you get a better squeezing. So there’s a certain amount of starches in the apple, and as it sits there, more of those starches get converted into sugars.”

Hard cider and apple wine go through a fermenting process as well as a racking procedure to remove the lees (yeast residue). Some hard cider is ready after three months, while their wines require one to two years before they are at their prime. On a weekly basis, “I test the wine to make sure it smells and tastes fresh, and has a safe level of pH and sulfites in it, which help to keep it fresh,” said John IV, 38, the official winemaker and former casino dealer. For a woody bouquet, he drops in sanitized wood chips. According to the federal government, if the alcohol content is below 8.5 percent, it is hard cider. Above that percentage, it is wine.

Adam emphasized that they are changing the profile of apple wine from being thought of as a sweet, low alcohol beverage, to a more sophisticated wine with 12.5 percent alcohol, where one can enjoy the bouquet. “Look at the

Photos by Jan Tormay

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legs of it, and feel the gravity on the tongue.”

Currently, their most popular wines include “Respect the Elder” (a red wine), “Hoposite Attraction,” and “Light My Fire” (both white wines). Not sure which one to try? Order a flight – a one-ounce sampling of six different wines served on a wooden board, or try a three-ounce portion of their extremely popular “First Bite” hard cider, which tastes a lot like champagne.

Those who wish to take the flavors of the Tapped Apple home, may purchase a half gallon of hard cider for $25 or 32 ounces for $16. The reusable glass bottle costs an additional $5.

As the public face of the winery, Adam often works the tasting room and many of the charitable events in Rhode Island. When he is tending bar and it’s slow, he sometimes attaches labels to the front and back of their wine bottles, lining them up by eye.

Arriving daily at about 8:30AM, long before the Tapped Apple opens, John IV periodically takes winemaking classes and is responsible for banking and maintenance. However, if a tankful of wine is ready, then pouring it into bottles becomes the top priority.

After selling 4,000 bottles of wine at prices between $22 and $24, the partners recently purchased a pneumatic corking machine. Up until then, they used a manual Italian floor corker.

Still, they’ve come a long way from experimenting with kits and making five gallon batches of wine from grapes as a basement hobby 12 years ago. Later, they graduated to a 500-pound bin of grapes. “Unfortunately, the quality wasn’t always there,” John III said. “Finally, we began thinking,

‘Can we find a locally-sourced fruit that we can make some good wine out of? Well, what’s more New England than apples?’ So we started experimenting with apples and making apple wine and developed some really good recipes.”

He added that their friends couldn’t believe their wines were made from apples and wanted to buy from them. “Of course, without the proper licensing, that is illegal, so we gave the wine away and made bigger and bigger batches every year.” Finally, after much prodding from friends five years ago, John III said, “they wondered, ‘Should we open a winery?’ The answer was, ‘Yes, let’s go for it.’”

After marketing their wine, receiving feedback from businesses, and finding the right location, John IV and Adam designed and spent a year

and a half remodeling the space before the Tapped Apple opened on August 17, 2017.

Knowing that it takes time to build a business, John III continues to work as a draftsman. He retired from the federal government in 2014 after 32 years and now works as a contractor for the same employer. He also helps out at the Tapped Apple paying bills, managing payroll and paperwork, and serving as chief wine taster.

Offering a family friendly environment, nonalcoholic beverages include sweet cider, Yacht Club sodas, seltzer waters, hot tea, and French-press coffee. Appetizers and Hauser Chocolatiers’ truffles are available for a nominal fee.

The partners said their future goals include possibly selling their wines to one or two restaurants, finding an offsite location for additional hard cider and winemaking tanks, opening a Tapped Apple II, gradually changing over to as many locally made products as possible, and maintaining their current location.

“Westerly is perfect for many reasons,” John III said. “There are a lot of great restaurants, bars, and quaint shops in Westerly…it is picturesque, historic, and close to Watch Hill and Misquamicut Beach, so we get a lot of vacationers.”

Summer is still a few months away, but right now it’s the “locals” who continue to enjoy a bite of the Apple. You can too.

For information about hours of operation, weekly social events, and musical entertainment, go online to www.tappedapple.com, or call (401) 637-4946.