Tours

Tasting
Price $5.00
Taste from our world class vintages, includes souvenir wine glass. No appointment necessary. Book Now!

Cellar Tour and Tasting **Daily Tours Now Available!
Price: $10.00
The Sand Castle Basic Cellar Tour is an education on how we go from the vine to the bottle. We will provide a guided tour of our vineyards and wine cellar. We are able to accommodate tours up to 100 people at one time. Tours are given on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the day. No appointment necessary. The tour's length is fifteen to twenty minutes. Minors are $5.00. After the tour, you are brought up to our tasting room and given a full tasting of the wines. Book Now!

Barrel Tour
Price: $15.00
Tour Time = approx. 45 minutes
In the magic environment of our wine cellar you will learn about wine aging firsthand as you taste different vintages from the barrels and vats.
This tour takes place every Saturday and Sunday at 3:00 p.m. Book Now!

VIP Educational Tour
Price: $20.00
Tour Length = approx. 90 minutes
A unique insight into the world of wines.
This tour takes place every Saturday and Sunday at 1:00 p.m. Book Now!

Vineyard

Sand Castle Winery makes all the wines only from its own 100% vinifera grapes. Grape vines planted in rocky soils combine with moderating temperatures of the Delaware River producing ideal fruit for wine making.

The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms has designated this area as a Central Delaware Viticulture District. Chardonnay, Johannisberg Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Pinot Noir have been specially selected and grafted for cool climate and rocky soils.

Cabernet Sauvignon
The outstanding grape variety used for finest great wines of the world. Cabernet Sauvignon Is a prominent grape In the regions of Bordeaux, California, Chile, Australia. At Sand Castle we leave the Cabernet grapes on the vines until one for two frosts will burn the harshness out of the grapes. The result is a very soft wine at fairly young age of two to five years.

Chardonnay
Excellent white grape grown notably in Burgundy. It yields a rich well-balanced wine with a distinctive aroma and a superb, lingering aftertaste. Grown in Burgundy, California, Australia, and of course the Sand Castle Winery. Sand Castle Winery is producing two styles of the Chardonnay wine. Our Private Reserve is made in the Chablis Style, aged only in stainless steel tanks. This style of Chardonnay produces a flinty, steely crisp chardonnay ideal for shell fish. Our Classic Chardonnay is aged for 2 years in French Oak and produces the very popular style of chardonnay- buttery, toasty with vanilla overtones.

Johannisberg Riesling
This is one of the oldest grape varieties coming from the Roman Empire and King Ludwig in the 9th century planted along the Rhine River. It quickly became well known grape variety producing the most distinctive and noble wines of Alsace, Mosel, Rhine, and Sand Castle. The fruit is small and yellowish, but it is one of the great grapes of the world which spans residual sugar and the wines could vary from dry, to semi sweet, all the way to dessert.

Pinot Noir
This is one of the greatest of fine-wine grapes. It makes fabulous red wines in Burgundy and is primarily responsible for champagne. If the grape is planted on a right slope and during right climatic conditions it will produce the most stable and velvety wines in the world. The southeast slope of the Sand Castle Vineyards with its rocky soils in combination with late summer drought conditions will produce the maximum of the flavors for these grapes.

Wine Cellar

30 feet deep underground wine cellar was blasted, excavated and engineered to provide the foundation for the castle. The wines are aged to perfection in stainless steel vats and oak barrels. Aging in the cellar is done for two to five years, in ideal temperature and humidity, provided by the underground environment.

Chardonnay Classic, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon are aged for one to five years in French Oak Barrels made by families of Nadalie and Mercier from oak grown in the Regions of Allier, Troncais, Nevers, and Limousin. Each of the regions has its own special flavors and nuances used by wine makers to create unique wines.

Castle

In 1974 our family purchased a hillside property in Bucks County overlooking the Delaware River and our dream of Sand Castle Winery was born. In the early 1980s, we began construction of the winery building. Against all odds, and after decades of continuous effort, our Castle is finally complete. Thank you for your loyal patronage and dedication that has made all of this possible.
— Paul and Joseph Maxian

Our Castle is the perfect place for your next banquet or party!
Click here to learn more about our event space and our special event planner, Open Aire Affairs.

History

Joseph and Paul Maxians came to the "land of opportunity" and claimed their birthright- a centuries old wine making art- and are proud to introduce in America superior quality, classic wines descended from the finest European wine making traditions. Immigrating to America in 1969, Joseph and Paul were drawn to Pennsylvania. They knew that centuries earlier William Penn realized that this region held great promise for wine making, and even established his own vineyard on the banks of the Schuylkill River. The tree and vine are still components of the seal of Bucks County. The Central Delaware Valley is now recognized by the Federal Government as its own special viticulture district. This area is one of the few places in the world that viticulturalists can grow Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Riesling grapes on the same vineyard.

The original property was purchased in 1974; an additional purchase in 1987 gave Sand Castle a 72 acre estate. The first vines were planted in 1985, and the first vintage sold to the public in 1988.

The vines are exclusively Vitis Vinifera ­ special seedlings cloned from European stock and chosen by master winemakers. 56,000 of these young plants were painstakingly hand planted, one by one. Until 1990, all of the vines were pruned and buried in the winter, then uncovered by hand each spring to ensure survival during the cold Pennsylvania winters. Varieties of grapes included Chardonnay, Johannisberg Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. All vines were selected from the Mosel Valley of Germany and the Burgundy and Bordeaux regions in France.

The first vintage was produced in 1987 and yielded roughly 2,000 cases of Chardonnay and Riesling. In 1988, the first bottle of Sand Castle wine was sold. Sand Castle relies entirely on its own harvest to produce its world class wines, one of the few wineries exclusively growing European vines on the East Coast.

Both stainless steel and French Oak barrels are used for aging of the wines. Stainless steel maintains the intensity of the fruit, while French Oak adds complexity. All vinification is done on the estate in Sand Castle’s 7,000 square foot wine cellar, blasted 30 feet deep into the hillside, to ensure a consistently cool, undisturbed environment. Wine masters are flown in from the Old Country, and combine the great potential of Pennsylvania with the tradition of Europe. The result? While this painstaking attention to quality limits the winery’s production, the wines are unlike anything you have tasted!

Brother Winemakers, Paul Maxian and Joseph Maxian

Press

FYI Philly — July 31, 2010
We were featured in this segment on the Bucks County Wine Trail (we are the last 2 minutes or so).

The Intelligencer — March, 2007
We were featured on the front page for an article on PA's wine sales laws.
Click here to read the article (PDF).

Philadelphia Inquirer — May, 2005
We were featured in an article on PA's wine sales laws relating to festivals.
Click here to read the article (PDF).

Bucks Magazine — Spring, 2003
We were featured in the premiere issue of Bucks Magazine.The article is a one year profile which features the life of the vineyard and the winery.
Click here to read the article (PDF).