No Snobbery Here

Enjoy Applewood Winery’s lack of pretention and natural sensibilities on this year’s Pour Tour Saturday, June 22nd. Hosted by Dirt Magazine, the Pour Tour shuttles revelers to six different locations in the black dirt region to sample local wines, ciders, and beers.
Applewood Winery in Warwick is an established local hub where you can stop by and listen to live music, grab something to eat at the café all while sampling Applewood’s local wines and ciders.
After living in New York City for quite awhile, Jonathan Hull and wife Michele Hull decided they wanted to move back to Orange County. Michele had previously been in the food and wine business and they thought opening a winery sounded like “a lot of fun.” They moved back to the area and, with some help, in 1915 opened what is now Applewood Winery.
Demystifying Wine
Applewood Winery’s mission? to “demystify wine” for customers who simply want to have a good time. They know what people like, offering softer and sweeter wines compared to other wineries. “We’re not a bunch of cork dorks or wine snobs,” laughed Jonathan. His personal favorite wine is Riesling and his experiments with Riesling have included mixing it with cider. As the cidermaker of Applewood, he came up with the name of their signature cider: Naked Flock.
Naked Flock
So why is there a naked goose on the cover of their cider? Hull tells the story of how he came up with the name.
It all began with an article he saw in an old Warwick newspaper. It featured a local folklore about a pastor who received poppy seeds as a gift from a friend, Herman Melville, who had just returned from what was then the “Orient”. The seeds were spread and planted, but a flock of geese came and ate the seeds. What no one realized was that these were the special kind of poppy seeds.
“The poor birds became so stoned, they passed out and people thought they were dead,” chuckled Hull. So the townspeople began plucking out their feathers. When the featherless geese awoke, they absolutely terrified the people who then went to the pastor demanding that he kill the revived geese. The pastor refused and said he would not put down his “naked flock”.
Make sure to sample Applewood’s Naked Flock on the Pour Tour on Saturday, June 22nd. Applewood Winery will be one of six stops on the tour. Get your tickets today at pour-tour.com.