R A S

Welcome back @ras_wines to Maine Wild Wine Fest! Dan, Emily, and Joe are committed to making beautiful nuanced wines from Maine wild blueberries and local fruit. Working with small growers in Maine, the team celebrates organic agriculture, strong grower relationships, and a tight knit community. Their wines are inspired—from bubbly and vibrant wild blueberry crushers to savory and fruity wines. We can't wait to see you, friends! 🫐🍎

post make-out makeup with @kjh.brand ft. @ras_wines SPECTACULAR blueberry sparkling top by @pagebreak.nyc

CiderCon just ended! We couldn’t make it! But we spent our time cider-soaked ourselves, moving the 2025 Blu(i)sh vintage along: racking, blending, tasting. (Dan’s vest is a one-off, sorry!) The 2024 vintage is available at your nearest R.A.S.-supporting stockist (+ raswines.com) and like all good rosés it’s ideal two years after production when the weather’s cool. A bottle-conditioned lightly sparkling blend of barrel-fermented Maine Golden Russet apples and wild blueberry wine, it’s vivid, delicate more than funky, and at 5.5% alcohol absolutely gulpable. And in case you’re menu-planning for a certain Sunday evening meal, Blu(i)sh is exceptional alongside wings. Please let us know whether we should bottle some of the 2025 in jeroboams.

Hello to all our pals! We want to take a quick sanctioned moment to thank you for every brush we and our wines have had with you all this past year. After five years making terroir-obsessed wines here in Maine, we now have a stable lineup that makes sense and represents where we live and work with dignity and delight. And given how strange a project this is, there is no way we could have gotten here without all y’all: the folks who buy and drink our wines first/foremost, but no less significantly our grower partners, distributors, runners of restaurants and shops, and everyone else who has taken a chance with some unconventional wines and found ways to tell this special story — to be this special story. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Source Decay is back! And yes waaayy better’n it ever was. Pristine Maine Wild Blueberries from @brodisblueberries , barrel-aged, then into bottles for secondary fermentation, disgorged by hand (and face).

I’m sure you’ve had wine, and blueberries, but have you had blueberry wine?! 🫐 🍷 Well now’s your chance! We have an extra special Friday Tasting this week at the Mill District. Meet winemaker Joe Appel of R.A.S. Wines and try some incredible blueberry wine with us from 4–6PM, with cheese pairings too! It’s free, delicious, and the perfect start to your weekend! 🍷🧀✨ #Wine #Tasting #Provisions #Winetasting #Blueberrywine #Maine #MaineBlueberries #FreeEvent

OK we know this sounds weird but…grapes! We made a wine from some, which we (mostly @emmismi ) tended in @oysterriverwinegrowers vineyards in 2024. Early Light is a delicious, distinctive, deep-diving delight — equal parts electricity and elegance. Only issue is second sentence of second paragraph of the wine label in the second slide: We were only able to make a woefully low quantity. Dibs to Wine Club members (join now join now join now) but there’ll be some left so whoever/wherever you are let us know if you’re in.

Oh, Hi! Dang it's been a while. August was harvest time for Maine wild blueberries, so we've been doing the things one needs to do in order to make wine. Herein: proof! Lots of folks ask us, So, do you make wine the same way that actua--um, I mean, other-- winemakers do? Like, when it's from grapes? Answer: Check first with DRC and Egon Muller, but we're pretty sure that basically, yes. Here's what it looks like: 1 We drive north to get wild blueberries from our grower partners. This was en route to @passamaquoddywildblueberry in Columbia Falls. That's a nice enough looking field, but made for machine-harvesting so keep driving. Rocky barrens hand-harvest-only not pictured. 2 The wild blues go from box to fermenter. Takes a few hours. These guys at Passamaquoddy are super hard-working and helpful and a lot of fun to hang out with. 3 The full fermenters look like this. Peer closely: different leaf colors, different berry forms. That's because each wild blueberry barren has a lot of genetically distinct wild blueberry varieties (diversification as natural survival mechanism), also because this year's drought started prematurely browning leaves and drying berries. 4-5 Back at the winery, we foot-stomp to get fermentation going. These are past photos of Emily getting into it because this year we were solo and too tired to photograph it. But same deal basically. 5 Punchdown. We do this twice daily for 4-5 days while the fruit is macerating, to get more extraction of flavors and aromas, tannins, structure, and also to prevent over-oxidation of the cap (the solid fruit that floats to the top as fermentation takes place). This was the lovely fruit from @brodisblueberries in Hope, Maine. 6 Our new used press works now! Messy, long, tiring, satisfying day(s). 7 Extraordinarily cute child atop a fermenter. Hi Briony! Gotta get you a wild blueberry shirt. Not shown: So much! Including: wine going into barrels and tanks; racking from one vessel to another; us scarfing immense calories; embarrassing and frustrating moments when we had no idea how to fix something or solve a problem; but then we did.

New vintage of Wild is out! It’s a joy bomb! We did a fun vertical tasting. V1 (left, with the soon-to-be-worth-millions misapplied upside-down label) is way more…vinous. It’s still fun, but definitely showing the complexity that comes with maturation. Who knew that could happen in a can? V2 on the right is just fükkin love candy, baby.

Only wine-related thing nearly as good as drinking delicious handmade, small-scale wines of place with friends/fam is representing said activity via t-shirt! Sign up for R.A.S. Wine Club and you’ll get one of these lovely shirts (wrapped ‘round a bottle). Special Advice Just for You and You Alone: Do this now/ish so that you’re sure to receive our upcoming Spring 2025 release. It will be filled with Riches and Wonders.

Hello! We would like you to know that we have a Wine Club. It’s easy to join and easy to love, and doesn’t have onerous obligations or trickery or unwanted things; indeed there are discounts and benefits. We’ll soon be shipping our Spring 2025 release, and we’d feel honored if you joined and could then share in the wines we’re presently very excited about (including totally new, never-existed-before things). The story behind this photo is that around the time of the last release, a few folks signed up last-ish-minute. There’d been some buzz. This made us feel good, and we didn’t want to tarry which would have delayed them getting the wine, and we were at the winery without a car. So we (I mean, I) loaded up the bike just in time to get the wine to UPS before the weekend. This – willing to use bungee cords creatively and maybe-sorta risk inadvertently hurling bottles onto the road en route – is how much we love our Wine Club members. Not saying you should wait until the last minute to join up, all in all we’d rather put all the shipments in one load in our truck, just saying we love ya! And so: Sign up now – links are at the usual link-y places! (And here: https://bit.ly/43NNw5Z)

We’re like at least 92% sure @joeyappel did not slander cider in this chat — but on the other hand maybe @disgorgeous never lies? Maybe John did say F-ck Grapes at one point? ‘Twas an honor but more importantly a hugeload of fun to get deep into the real talk on the esteemed, unmissable, what-we-all-need Disgorgeous’ latest episode of “The Crushpad”, their special gift series for Patreon subscribers. It’s a great conversation about true terroir, East Coast beverage making and culture, and excellent place-based fruits such as Maine wild blueberries, apples, and grapes, all of which can produce delicious beverages. If for some weird reason you’re not a Disgorgeous Patreon subscriber, become one! Or honestly if you want to just get straight to listening and promise us you’ll subscribe at some point, DM us and we’ll send you the audio file.