Keeping It Real at Villa Milagro

Ready for Sampling...

As regular readers of this blog are perhaps already aware, I bang the drum on a fairly regular basis on behalf of  food security and healthier living via home growing your own foodstuffs and by calling attention to some or our local agricultural producers who have fallen off the corn/soybean cash-cropping bandwagon to produce value added finished food items.  This past weekend presented a good opportunity to do some catching up with our local scene as Villa Milagro was showcasing some of our near by cheese makers alongside their usual weekend wine tastings.

Audrey and Steve Gambino have been pressing grapes at their vineyard since 2003 and now bottle 5 different varieties of wine.  Admirably, they avoid the use of herbicides in their vineyards which helps preserve the soil as nature intended. (To help with the onerous and ongoing task of weeding, Steve has even built a very cool flame thrower attachment onto his tractor-check this out on their website). Along with sampling some of the fine Villa Milagro wines, I was able to try some of the artisan cheeses being produced by Central Valley Farm (Asbury) and Cherry Grove Farm (Lawrenceville).  These are not you're garden variety farmers cheeses that you may encounter here and there but very fanciful stuff that can arouse even the most sophisticated of palates.

So if you want to give yourself a break one fine spring weekend from the big box corridor on Route 22 and see a different side commerce in your town then stop by Steve and Audrey's "House of Miracles"-Villa Milagro. Great vistas too, by the way.

Congenial Vigeronne Audrey Gambino Pours For a Visitor