Farmers, state officials tout $2 million wine investment amid farmland pressures

CHADDS FORD — Pennsylvania shone a light on Brandywine Valley vintners as dignitaries gathered at Penns Woods on Friday.

Penns Woods Winery President Carley Razzi stood alongside her father, Gino Razzi, at the crescent of a hillside spanning roughly a dozen acres of grapevines.

She said the commonwealth has provided essential support to farmers who grow crops while navigating severe weather, labor shortages, and an influx of emerging  tasting rooms featuring wines produced outside of America.

“Twenty-five years ago, my father believed Pennsylvania could produce world-class wines. And we did it. Through the land we work, the families who work here, and the community that we’ve built,” Carley Razzi said.

“When we invest in Pennsylvania agriculture, we are investing in the next generation of farmers, families, and small businesses. Wineries like ours are proving that Pennsylvania belongs on the worldwide map,” she said.

For her father, a native of Abruzzo, Italy, the Chadds Ford vineyard is the culmination of generational craft. A retired U.S. Marine, Gino Razzi  entered the wine business in 1971 and ran a major Pennsylvania-based importing company for four decades that he recently sold.

Gino Razzi explained with a smile that he decided to hand over the reins after his daughter. It is nearly impossible to say no to such a heartfelt request, he further reflected, especially when even the family dog answers to the name Vino.

He noted that Penns Woods is also fortunate to lease land within First State National Historical Park, working cooperatively with the National Park Service.

“We have a legacy,” he said.

Reaching into the vineyard rows to examine tight clusters of grapes alongside Penns Woods farmer  Davide Creato, Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding toured the property.

Asked about threats to prime farmland in Chester County, such as proposed warehouse development on historic family farmland near the rare serpentine barrens in East Nottingham, Redding acknowledged the tension between conservation and private property rights.

“I will always be an advocate for the land and believe strongly that the land in its current productive state is the highest and best use of that land. Long play, highest and best use. It’s not about another warehouse or solar field or whatever,” Redding said.

While the state lacks a single emergency reserve fund to buy threatened parcels outright, Redding noted the department partners with counties and 25 land trusts to structure preservation deals.

“If you come together, there’s always some way to try to convene and help, if at all possible,” Redding said.

State Rep. Craig Williams, R-160th District of Chadds Ford, commended the area’s wine producers and added legislative efforts put “Pennsylvania first” by protecting prime farmland from power-hungry data centers.

“There’s a world of difference in making a grape, in making wine in Delaware and Chester counties than bringing it from somewhere else and claiming that it was made in Pennsylvania,” Williams said. “This is hard work, a labor of love.”

Davide Creato emphasized the unique characteristics of the fertile farmland along the Brandywine, marveling that the soil in Delco and Chesco have distinct tones: quartzite, gneiss, mica schist, sandstone, among other rich elements.

For Creato, who followed a lifelong passion from his childhood in Abruzzo, Italy, to a thriving career in Pennsylvania viticulture, the journey fulfills a lifelong aspiration.

“It was a dream of mine since I was a little kid,” Creato noted on why he wanted to become an American citizen — achieving this dream after two years of being here. “I told my English teacher that I wanted to move here and live here. Since then, wine brought me here.”

And his wife and their little ones kept him here. “Everything is great. I couldn’t imagine anything different,” the American said.

‘Save the Ridge’

In other news, Williams said he is categorically opposed to a proposed shopping center at Route 202 and Ridge Road in Concord Township within the Beaver Creek watershed.

“We don’t need half of what they’re building,” Williams said.

He said commercial properties up and down Baltimore Pike and Route 202 are “sitting empty.”

Williams said he will voice his concerns in public directly to Concord Township as soon as the evidentiary hearings conclude.

“We’re not to a point of public hearings yet. And when we get there, I will be at the microphone. And I don’t think that part’s been made clear in the press,” Williams said.