There’s both history and innovation connected to a one-of-its-kind promotion that will culminate with a Mazza Vineyards release party of bottles it recently pulled up from the bottom of Lake Erie.
The underwater-aged Sparkling Riesling, the first of what’s planned to be a series of sparkling wines that make up the South Shore Wine Company Coupe Collection, will be unveiled at the Tom Ridge Environmental Center at Presque Isle State Park in Erie County from 6 to 8:30 p.m. on Nov. 1.
The Mazza family owns the South Shore Wine Company, part of their winery operations in North East, Pennsylvania, along with Mazza Vineyards and Mazza Chautauqua Cellars. The Mazza family re-established South Shore in 2007 in a historic Civil War-era stone cavern.
This sparkling release has been two years in the making, Mario Mazza, the company vice president/general manager, told PennLive in an email.
It “was a combination of my wife, Mel, commenting on some of the underwater aged wines in Western Australia [since she is an Aussie herself] and timing in the fall of 2023 when I was attending the premier of WQLN’s ‘Erie Chronicles.’ The first episode of that series was about Midnight Herring and the rum-running history of Lake Erie during prohibition. We amalgamated the history of rum running, prohibition, shipwrecks of Lake Erie [and of the Great Lakes as a whole], and the viticulture along the Lake Erie AVA all in one with this project.”
“Midnight Herring: Prohibition and Rum Running on Lake Erie,” is the fourth edition of the Lake Erie Quadrangle Shipwreck Series, written by David Frew. Published in 2006, it’s described as a work of narrative history, with all of the stories set on Lake Erie in the corridor between Port Dover, Ontario, and Erie, Pennsylvania. Per the book’s summary, “details were provided by extensive interviews with actual characters from the book or close friends and family members.”
Midnight Herring was the term used by sailors to describe the contraband that was transported in the overnight hours across Lake Erie during the Prohibition Era.
Adding to what you could call the perfect storm for this project is that John Poquadeck, a charter boat captain, also drives trucks for Mazza.
Even after the plans were completed in the fall of 2023, they had to be put on hold until conditions allowed for the bottles to be dropped to the wreck of the John J. Boland, located 10 miles offshore and 130 feet below the lake’s surface.
“The team did some test dives with a few bottles and to scout the dive site, set up a crane and rigging on the boat, among other various preparations,” Mazza said. “It took over a half-dozen tries to get out to sink the first lot as the conditions had to be perfect — we didn’t want any waves/chop when handling a 500-pound cage on a crane over the back of the boat with divers in the water.”
Those 156 bottles were aging underwater for more than 12 months.
Aging sparkling wine underwater is a unique process that allows for the stability of temperature, increased pressure, low light, and some gentle movement to encourage stirring of lees. References to individuals or wineries aging their wines, either sparkling or still, can be found going back more than 15 years, according to a Wine Folly story, which featured a list of submersions it was aware of at that time, including:
Bisson Abissi Prosecco from Liguria, Italy Louis Roederer (the makers of Cristal) sunk Champagne in the Bay of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France, where temperatures maintain an even 50° FChateau Larrivet Haut-Brion experimented, aging a 56-liter barrel of Bordeaux in the Bay of Arcachon, calling it “Neptune” Henri Maire from Arbois, France, submerged wines in an ancient underwater Abbay in Lake of Vouglans, France’s third largest man-made lake Mira Winery aged its Napa red wines for three months in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina
A jamessuckling.com story noted that the process picked up steam after a group of divers in 2010 discovered a cache of 168 wine bottles in a shipwreck off the Åland Islands in the Baltic Sea. The find included 47 bottles of Veuve Clicquot Champagne. After further investigation, it was determined that the Veuve Clicquoet bottled dated back to the 1839 harvest, a period of the Champagne house’s history that would have seen Madame Clicquot herself involved in the blending and tasting of wines. Those bottles sold for as much as $30,000 apiece, the story noted.
John Poquadeck is a charter boat captain who is also a truck driver for Mazza Vineyards.Mazza Vineyards
While underwater aging has been experimented with around the globe, Mazza said he believes that this might be the first attempt in the Great Lakes.
The cage was pulled off the lake floor on June 29, 2025, following five postponements due to unstable conditions. The crew of the Southwind (Osprey Charters), an expert dive crew, members of the Mazza Wines team, and some select wine enthusiasts departed from Barcelona Harbor to begin the “rescue.”
With the help of a five-person dive team (Rich Bartley, Ryan Cook, Wayne Rush, Tim Laurito, and Jeremy Bannister), three lift bags (balloons), and some heavy lifting by Bob Mazza, according to the winery, Poquadeck and first mate Bo Wendel secured the cage containing the specially prepared, wax-coated bottles and brought them back to shore, where they underwent riddling and disgorgement. The bottles not purchased at the release party will be available for purchase at South Shore Wine Company in North East, Pa., beginning Nov. 2.
The price of those bottles has not been revealed.
Mazza said there’s more to come, with a new group of bottles laid to rest each year on different shipwrecks in Lake Erie.
The tickets are $25 apiece, with guests asked to register by Oct. 25. You can purchase them at this link.
Activities at the Nov. 1 event include the following:
Light hors d’oeuvres reception by Cali’s WestMazza Wines SamplingTalk by David Frew, author of “Midnight Herring: Prohibition and Rum Running on Lake Erie (The Lake Erie Quadrangle Shipwreck Series, Book 4)”Big Green Screen showing a short film documenting the sinking and retrieval of the 1st ever batch of Mazza Wine’s underwater-aged sparkling wine by Chris Maas, featuring underwater footage from the dive crewMeet & Greet with the team from Mazza Wines and Osprey Charters ship and expert dive crewTalk by Diver Ryan Cook of the Pennsylvania Archaeology & Shipwreck Survey Team (PASST)View the “Navigating Peril: Lake Erie’s Shipwrecks and Beacons” public exhibit at TRECToast with Midnight Herring Sparkling WineWine release: Commemorative gift-boxed bottles of the first edition of Mazza Wines Midnight Herring Sparkling Wine available for sale
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