NORTHFIELD — Inside the rustic tasting room of Cameron’s Winery on Millers Falls Road sit 10 wines lined up on a table, each adorned with medals like athletes on a podium.
Hanging from the necks of the wine bottles are 10 awards from the Big E’s Northeast Gold Wine Competition. The pomegranate wine, “Someone’s Garden,” earned the title of Best Massachusetts Wine and a gold medal, and the “Orange Wine” earned Best Fruit Wine and a gold medal. The remaining wines on the table showcase four silver medals and two bronze medals.
“It makes me very proud,” Leslie Cameron said standing next to the roster of award-winning wines. With her husband Paul Cameron, Leslie Cameron owns the winery, brewery and cidery. Upon receiving the email on Aug. 25 notifying her of their business’ success in the Big E competition, Cameron recalls hearing her husband’s car pull into the driveway and running outside to tell him the news.
Although they served their creations at the Big E in West Springfield in 2023, the couple will not bring the award-winning wines to the Big E this year.
The couple surprises customers with unlikely wines and beers. Their bottles begin with plants from every season, including pomegranates, oranges, peaches, apricots, blueberries, black currants, elderberries, strawberries, pears, apples, rhubarb, dandelions, lemongrass, hibiscus and even chocolate.
“All of our decisions that we make regarding making the beer, making the wine or making cider is all based on what’s in front of us,” she said. “It’s never the same and I love that.”
Inspiration for a new alcoholic concoction often strikes Cameron when she cooks jams and pies. When she bites into the filling, like a strawberry rhubarb pie, Cameron said she can taste a new wine. “I know how a cider will come out if I use it in a pie first.”
Other times, Cameron must fill the breathing room in a bucket with another fruit or flower for the best fermentation, and another combination like a citrus and dark berry wine forms.
Concoctions like the dandelion wine’s lemongrass and grapefruit zest grow from playing around with different flavor combinations.
“Everything we do, every time we do it is different,” Cameron said. “Every single wine has its own personality.”
Cameron said the sweetness, dryness and overall taste of the wines depend on details like the farm that the fruit comes from and the point in the season it was picked. For example, “fire engine red” strawberries in June produce a tart wine, but sweeter strawberries are available in July, according to Cameron.
While other wineries focus on mastering the craft’s tradition, Cameron said creativity guides their winemaking.
“We get our inspiration from the fruit,” Cameron said. “How boring would it be if you were just making the same thing all the time?”
With each fruit comes a different fermentation process. According to Cameron, citrus ferments faster after berries and grapes. To coax out the fruit’s flavor so customers can sip the ingredients, Cameron said she and her husband reduce the alcohol in many fruit wines .
“They’re fruit-forward and that’s the difference,” Cameron said.
Cameron and her husband share a thirst for wine, beer and cider adventure.
“What we have in common is that we can imagine how something can be, and then we just want to see how it turns out,” Cameron said. “Maybe someday we’ll get to a point where it’s just not fun anymore, but I don’t see that happening.”
But without customers willing to taste their experiments, Cameron said she and Paul’s hobby would have never become a business in 2012, when they opened their first location in Swanzey, New Hampshire before moving to Northfield in 2015.
“I could classify [our customers] as adventurous because they’re willing to try all the crazy stuff we make,” Cameron said with a cackle.
The list of winners in the Big E’s Northeast Gold Wine Competition can be found at thebige.com/p/competitions/pre-fair-contests/wine-competition. The winners of silver medals from Cameron’s Winery are Lemon Blueberry, Une Brise Fraiche, Winterscapes and Peach Wine, and the winners of bronze medals are Apricot and Sour Apple.
