Pa. winery gives customers a new can to raise in honor of America’s 250th birthday

Shade Mountain Winery & Vineyard is calling its new release a “canned convenience.” Its canned Hard Lemonade was released on July 3, and available at the Middletown, Pennsylvania farm winery and its satellite sites at The Old Train Station in Danville/Riverside and Heimbach's Country Store in Selinsgrove. Jennifer Zimmerman, the Shade Mountain Winery manager, said that they were encouraged enough by market research and customer trends to experiment with their first canned product, and build it around the July 4 holiday and the country’s 250th celebration. They are packaged as four-packs, allowing customers to take them along to their cabins and beach gatherings without the worry of a glass bottle or corkscrew. “Our canned Hard Lemonade [nothing screams Americana like Lemonade] was crafted using our sweet Cayuga wine. The label was crafted by Jim Dumas, of Fat Basset Design, based out Scituate, Massachusetts, and it’s outstanding,” she wrote. This canned wine joins several other “convenience products” that are new this year on the market from Pennsylvania producers: a carbonated peach wine from Adams County Winery and a collection of Wayvine Winery & Vineyards’ dry wines that were packaged in smaller bottles. Three other notes from one of the state’s oldest wineries: As part of a series of stories entitled “PA’s Most Interesting Bottles of Wine,” PA Eats profiled Shade Mountain’s Witch's Titmouse Ice Wine. Per the story, “This rare, honey-sweet “Eiswein” from Snyder County only comes around a few times per decade, so enjoy it while it’s here!” You can view the Facebook post at this link. Speaking of links, here’s one that Shade Mountain recently posted that provided a bird’s-eye view of part of the vineyard and the winery/tasting room. One of the winery’s unique events, the annual vineyard and sunflower walk, is scheduled from noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 9. Per the description on the Shade Mountain website, “We will walk you through our vineyard as it enters near harvest phase…. ending up in our “secret vineyard” where you will find a beautiful sunflower field lined with butterfly bushes! Take some photos of you and your friends in the vines and flowers!” Tickets are $12/person and can be purchased at this link. ALSO READ Another Pa. winery set to release Saperavi For ex-Pa. winery owner, enough was enough when it came to issues with alcohol Founder of Pa. tasting room, wine lounge calls recent awards ‘incredibly meaningful’ Winery and country store in central Pa., already familiar with each other, have a new venture