Boordy

I was about to sit down and write a column about cabernet sauvignon and merlot when I got the phone call telling me Philip Wagner was dead.Cabernet and Merlot can wait.Wagner, who died Dec. 29 at the age of 92, was a most remarkable man. It would be difficult to overstate how important a figure this Baltimore newspaperman was in the world of wine.This was a man who reinvented the wine industry in the United States east of the Rockies. He accomplished this in his spare time, while pursuing a distinguished journalistic career that ended in 1964, when he retired as editor of The Sun.Wagner was also the man who taught America how to make wine at home, inspiring generations of amateur vintners.

Philip M. Wagner, a former editor at The Sun who founded Boordy Vineyards, wrote a classic book on winemaking and became an international authority on domestic wines and grapes, died early yesterday of emphysema and heart failure at his home in Riderwood. He was 92."He's a legendary figure. He was the first to plant French hybrids in the United States," said Robert Parker, publisher of The Wine Advocate magazine.He was "one of the most important figures in the 20th century in wine education, and for his contributions to viticulture" -- the cultivation of grapes.

It's sad to see this perennial value in dry white wine creep toward the $10 mark, but it's still a great value at the price. vTC There's nothing here longtime fans of the Sur Lie Reserve aren't accustomed to: full body, hints of honey, some lightly herbal notes and a judicious touch of oak. As a hybrid wine grape, seyval doesn't get much respect, but in this rendition it resembles a fine semillon-sauvignon blanc blend.Pub date: 10/27/96

Books offer basics of Tex-Mex fareThe "foundation foods" of Texas border cooking are the subjects of three new cookbooks from author and specialty foods entrepreneur W. Parr Kerr. In "Chiles," "Beans," and "Tortillas" (Morrow, $15 each), Kerr, head of the Old El Paso Chile Co., offers recipes such as red chili-cheese bread, creamy poblano succotash, and chocolate-Kahlua sundaes in tortilla cups.State Fair competitionsThere's still time to enter the annual product-based Maryland State Fair cooking contests.

Philip and Jocelyn Wagner never set out to create an internationally renowned winery that would survive half a century and spawn hundreds of imitators.They were just trying to get rid of a grape glut.Nevertheless, 50 years after the Wagners founded their winery in the Baltimore suburb of Riderwood, Boordy Vineyards not only continues to use up grapes, it thrives. Its wines have never been better.Later this month (Oct. 28-29), Boordy will celebrate that milestone with a two-day festival at its present home in the Long Green Valley of northeastern Baltimore County.

Italian deli newly openedWhen Kathy Jestes realized there were few places near Ellicott City to buy good Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, or Parma prosciutto, or freshly baked Italian bread, she did something about it: She and her husband, Don, opened Serafino, an Italian delicatessen on Baltimore National Pike across from Chatham Mall.Besides imported meats and cheeses, the shop offers pasta, imported and domestic olive oils, imported balsamic vinegars, Savona pasta, cookies and cannoli. There are deli-style sandwiches for lunch, including the "Italian Stallion" with roasted red-pepper sauce.

The tiny but hardy Maryland wine industry is much like one of those rare desert flowers that blooms for about a day or two each year then goes back into a dormant state.The bloom always comes on the third weekend in September, when the state's wineries get together and hold a festival in Westminster.It's an inspired idea, because there's no better time of year to be in Maryland, outdoors and have a glass of wine in your hand than early fall. Each year thousands of people -- it's up to about 25,000 now -- make the pilgrimage and it's rare that you spot anyone who isn't having a good time.

It's the kind of day God created for malls and old movies, a misty, gray Saturday where inertia seems the only reasonable response to the humidity.Unless, of course, your name is Rob Deford.In that case you've been up since 4 a.m. You drove to Western Maryland, returned with 10,000 pounds of grapes, unpacked half from the truck and now feed them into a crushing machine you call the Mechanical Human Foot.There's also much you ignore on this afternoon: threatening clouds, hovering bees and the flood in your office from the rain last night.

It was a strange sort of day at the Maryland Wine Festival in Westminster last weekend. The weather seemed unable to make up its mind whether to be cloudy and cold or sunny and warm, so it alternated between the two in irregular intervals.In a way, it might have been a metaphor for the state of the Maryland wine industry. After a sustained period in the sun, the state's winemakers are finding some gloomy clouds darkening their skies, but rays of light keep shining through, promising better days ahead.