Category: Cover Stories

A look at this piney, crisp spirit

Plus a preview of the Distiller’s Showcase

Dan Haggerty, co-owner of craft cocktail bar Industry East in Manchester, is a huge fan of gin.

“Gin is awesome,” he said. “Vodka’s main use is becoming gin.” He explained that gin begins its life as a neutral spirit — essentially vodka — before being flavored with botanical flavors: juniper berries, spices like coriander, or other, more exotic roots, stems or seeds.

“Every gin is different,” he said, ”and there are so many, so they’re fun to play with. If you’re looking for something a little bit more on the floral side, you can do that. If you want something more on the vegetal side, you can go with a gin like that. A lot of people say, ‘I don’t like gin.’ We actually had a drink on our menu that was called But I Don’t Like Gin. And it was always our goal to convince people. We’d say, ‘Hey, try this,’” Haggerty said that was a quick way to make gin skeptics into converts.

“Cocktail bartenders love gin,” said Jillian Bernat, the Bar Manager of Greenleaf in Milford. “I don’t know if I can pinpoint [why]. I just know that vodka has never done it for me. And they say that gin is the original flavored vodka. So it’s just got a little bit more substance to it and more depth. And it’s just easy. It mixes well with a ton of things.”

Bernat said that while gin has a reputation as an older person’s drink, her experience has been that gin people can be surprising: “It ranges from freshly 21-year-olds to the older crowd that just likes a basic gin martini or gin and tonic.”

Brian Ferguson makes gin. He is the owner and head distiller at Flag Hill Distillery in Lee. He has seen a sea change in the gin world that has attracted new gin drinkers.

“[Maybe 20 years ago] most gin was what was … what is referred to as London Dry,” Ferguson said. “And London Dry gin is to gin as double IPA is to beer. It’s like the most intense, over-the-top version of the category. So up until somewhat recently if you had gin it was this really, really intense version. The way I describe it is, imagine if your first beer was a 90 Minute IPA from Dogfish Head and that was your first introduction to beer. You’d probably think that beer was gross, right? Most people don’t get to where they like 90 Minute Dogfish Head by just having that as their first drink of beer. So that’s kind of what most people’s experience has been with gin up until recently. And then … I don’t know exactly when, but around maybe somewhere between 2000 and 2010, a lot of craft distilleries started producing this kind of like new age style gin. And they’re very botanical focused.”

Unlike most distillers, Flag Hill doesn’t start with a grain spirit. “We start with a base of apples,” Ferguson said. “It’s made from apples from Apple Hill Farm [in Concord], and those apples wind up getting distilled to almost neutral, not quite neutral.” While the apple spirit doesn’t actually taste of apples, it retains a high percentage of malic acid, a natural chemical in apples that gives them a crisp, dry quality. That malic acid gets partially converted into a compound that is responsible for the flavor of butter. “So we’re able to make this kind of buttery finish,” Ferguson said, “I [describe it] like candy butter on the back of the tongue, that’s so different from normal gin.”

Christopher Burk, the owner of Cathedral Ledge Distillery in North Conway, relies on a grain spirit to build his gin from. “We are a true grain-to-glass distillery,” Burk said. “One hundred percent of our products start with us milling grain and fermenting, distilling, working it all the way through the process. Our vodka, which becomes the base for our gin, is 45 percent wheat, 45 percent corn, 10 percent malted barley. All of our products, I should say, are certified USDA organic. They’re also all certified as gluten-free.”

For Burk, one of the attractions of making gin is the latitude it gives him for creativity.

“Gin is basically a blank palette,” he said.

“When my wife [Cathedral Ledge co-owner Tracy Burk] and I wanted to develop our gin recipe, we gathered scores of botanicals from around the world,” he recalled. “We started with store-bought vodka and jelly jars with botanicals and carefully measured proportions. When we wanted a cocktail at dinnertime, we would get out our pipettes and our notebook, and it was ‘three drops of this’ and ‘two of that’ and ‘one of those’ and ‘Oh, God, that’s wretched! Write it down, never do that again!’”

Burk is especially proud of their barrel-rested gin. “It’s entirely different from our other gin,” he said. “There’s overlapping ingredients, but in different proportions. So it [has] juniper, coriander and citrus peel, like all London Dries. It has hawthorn berry in there as a mid-palate focus — it’s a wonderful botanical, a neat plant to work with. It’s the real secret sauce to Barrel Rested. When the gin comes off the still, it’s an incomplete product — kind of flabby, like an unseasoned piece of protein coming out of the oven. We put it into a recently emptied rye whiskey barrel.It gets some spice from the rye, it gets caramel and vanilla from the wood, and it just makes a wonderful, wonderful gin. I consider it a sipping gin. I’ve had it in a gin and tonic, and it’s wonderful, but it’s a gin you can make a martini out of.”

Flag Hill owner Brian Ferguson summed up the state of gin today. “If you are somebody who has tried gin in the past and didn’t love it, try gin from a craft distillery,” he suggested. “Hopefully it’s ours, but even if it’s any other craft distillery, they’re all making these really exciting new gins. “There’s just so much more complexity and depth to craft distilled gins than there are to a lot of the big brand gins.”

Mentioned here
Industry East Bar 28 Hanover St., Manchester, 232-6940, industryeastbar.com
Cathedral Ledge Distillery 3340 White Mountain Highway, North Conway, 730-5696, cathedralledgedistillery.com
Apple Hill Farm 580 Mountain Road, Concord, 224-8862, applehillfarmnh.com
Flag Hill Distillery 297 N. River Road, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com
Greenleaf 54 Nashua St., Milford, 213-5447, greenleafmilford.com

Types of Gin

All gin starts as a neutral spirit — think vodka — that is usually made from grain but sometimes made from other ingredients. Barr Hill, for instance, distills its base alcohol from honey. After that, botanical flavors are added. One of them is always juniper, which gives gin its distinctive piney flavor, but other herbs, spices and roots can range from rhubarb to lavender to coriander. The finished product might be aged or treated in other ways before making its way into your glass. There is a great variety of gins, but they generally break down into three broad categories that you are likely to find in New Hampshire liquor stores:

London Dry Gin: This is the type of gin that most people think of when they hear the term “gin.” It is crisp and piney, with some citrus back-notes and an alcoholic kick. Your first gin and tonic was probably made with it. It is also perfect for a classic martini. Varieties include Gordon’s, Bombay Sapphire and Tanqueray.

Old Tom Gin: This gin has been played with a bit. It might be slightly sweetened, or barrel-aged. These are often sipped neat or on the rocks, or substituted for whiskey in alcohol-forward drinks like old-fashioneds. Barr Hill’s Tom Cat, Cathedral Ledge’s Barrel-Aged Gin, and Hayman’s of London are good examples of this type.

Botanical Gins: Sometimes referred to as American-style gins, these put their botanical flavors in the driver’s seat. There will still be notes of juniper and the base alcohol, but floral or spicy or herby flavors will be prominent. Hendrick’s is especially well known for its botanical gins, but Uncle Val’s, Creative Arts, and Grey Whale are examples of botanicals. They also make extremely good gin and tonics, where their flavors can shine through cleanly but are also strong team players in creative craft bar cocktails.

Gin Cocktails

A Classic Dry Martini

• 2 to 3 ounces London Dry gin
• An ounce or so of dry vermouth

Before starting, wet a stemmed martini glass, and either fill it with crushed ice, or put it in the freezer to chill.

Fill a mixing glass with ice, and pour the vermouth over it. Stir it with a cocktail spoon for 10 or 20 seconds, completely coating the ice with vermouth, then strain the ice to remove any vermouth left in the mixing glass. There will still be a fine, almost imperceptible coating of vermouth on the ice and the sides of the mixing glass.

Add the gin to the mixing glass and stir it gently, until it is thoroughly chilled.

Retrieve your martini glass from the freezer, or dump out the crushed ice, and strain your cold martini into it.

The classic garnish for a martini is a large olive, speared with a cocktail toothpick. A martini garnished with a cocktail onion is called a Gibson. One with a splash of olive brine is called a dirty martini. And, somewhat surprisingly, a “perfect” martini is made with equal parts gin and vermouth.

The attraction of a properly made martini is its simplicity. It is blisteringly cold and has a clean, pure flavor that makes the drinker pay very close attention to the gin.

Aviation

Recommended by Eric Avard, Bartender at Stashbox (866 Elm St., Manchester, 606-8109, stashboxnh.com)

This classic from the very early 1900s has been making a resurgence in recent years.

• 2 ounces gin – traditionally, this would be a London Dry gin, but many craft bartenders swear by something more botanical; Uncle Val’s would be delightful
• ½ ounce maraschino liqueur
• ¼ ounce creme de violette – a floral, purple liqueur that adds color and sophistication; use this sparingly
• ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice

Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker, and shake until thoroughly chilled; your fingers should hurt from the cold, and you should hear the ice starting to break up inside the shaker.

Strain into a stemmed glass — a coupe, perhaps, or a “Nick and Nora.” Garnish with a brandied cherry.

This is one of the prettiest cocktails you are likely to order in a bar. The maraschino brings a bitter-sweet quality that plays off the acidity of the lemon juice and the flowery hints of the creme de violette. The gin provides the backbone.

Bee’s Knees

Recommended by Jeff Cole of Barr Hill Distillery

This Prohibition-era cocktail comes from a time when gin, legal or not, was the most abundant liquor available in the U.S.

• 2 ounces gin – made with honey, Barr Hill’s Tom Cat might be perfect for this
• ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
• ¾ ounce honey syrup – 2 parts honey to one part hot water; let it cool before using

Combine the gin, lemon juice and honey syrup with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake ruthlessly, then strain into a chilled, stemmed glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

This is one of those cocktails where there is nowhere to hide. Use a honey you like, because it will shine through. Use a gin you like, because it will be in your face. Squeeze your own lemon juice; the stuff in the plastic bottle is fine for some recipes — cupcake frosting, for instance — but if you use it in a cocktail, you might as well be adding powdered lemonade mix.

French 75

Recommended by Christopher Burk, co-owner of Cathedral Ledge Distillery (3340 White Mountain Highway, North Conway, 730-5696, cathedralledgedistillery.com)

• 1 ounce gin – not surprisingly, Chris Burk recommends Cathedral Ledge Barrel-Rested Gin
• ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 1 ounce simple syrup
• 3 ounces Champagne

Combine the gin, lemon juice and simple syrup with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly.

Strain it into a Champagne flute and top it with Champagne.

Without the sparkling wine, this is called a Gin Sour and is also delicious. The Champagne adds a dryness and subtlety to the finished drink.

Negroni

Recommended by Brian Ferguson, owner of Flag Hill Winery and Distillery (297 N. River Road, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com)

This is a classic cocktail for gin lovers who like something a little less sweet.

• 1 ounce gin
• 1 ounce sweet vermouth
• 1 ounce Campari – a bright red, bitter Italian liqueur

Fill a rocks glass with ice, then add the gin, vermouth and Campari. Stir gently until combined. Garnish with an orange twist.

This classic is alcohol-forward, bright red, and bittersweet, perhaps a little more bitter than sweet.

Queen Bee

Invented and recommended by bartender Sian Quinn at 815 Cocktails & Provisions (815 Elm St., Manchester, 782-8086, 815nh.com)

• 2 ounces gin, fat-washed with brown butter – OK, we’re already going down a rabbit hole. When alcohol is exposed to a flavorful fat, like bacon fat, or brown butter, the flavor elements in the fat can get confused and leave the fat for a new home in the alcohol. In this case, the recommended method of “fat-washing” the butter is to brown it, then mix it with an equal amount of gin. Cover it and let it rest for five or six hours, then freeze it, and remove the plug of butter from the top of the container. Strain the gin into a new container, and keep it refrigerated until use. Alternatively, use 2 ounces of barrel-rested gin.
• half of a peach, fresh if possible, canned if necessary
• 1 ounce cinnamon-infused honey syrup – bring equal parts honey and water and several cinnamon sticks to a boil, remove from heat, and steep for half an hour
• ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice.
• A Biscoff cookie

Muddle the peach in the bottom of a cocktail shaker. This is bartender speak for smooshing it up with a stick. Add the gin, then dry-shake the mixture; this means “without ice.” The alcohol in the gin will help strip peach flavors from the fruit before it is diluted with other ingredients.

Add the lemon juice and cinnamon-honey syrup, with ice, to the shaker, and shake thoroughly. Set it aside briefly.

Crush the cookie until it is mostly dust. Spread it out on a small plate. Wet the rim of a cocktail glass, then dip it into the cookie dust. Flip the glass right-side-up, and strain your cocktail into it.

As you might expect, this is a complex drinking experience. The honey and gin play the starring roles, but with a warm-tasting-cold-drinking, buttery, cinnamony flavor.

I Should Call Her

Invented and recommended by Tristan George, bar manager at Industry East (28 Hanover St., Manchester, 232-6940, industryeastbar.com)

This is a very, very delicious cocktail with a name that hints at the kind of bad decisions you might make after too many of these.

• 2 ounces floral gin – Hendrick’s would be a good choice
• 1/2 ounce creme de violette
• ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
• ¾ ounce orgeat – a red, almondy syrup
• An egg white
• 5 to 10 drops habanero tincture – blend 4 or 5 habanero peppers with a cup of high-proof vodka, until thoroughly pulverized. Let it sit overnight to let the alcohol pick up the flavor and heat from the peppers, then strain twice, once through the finest-mesh strainer you have, then again through a coffee filter. Be patient; this will probably take longer than you think.
• 5 to 10 drops Peychaud bitters

Add all the ingredients except the bitters to a cocktail shaker, and dry shake it, without ice, for at least 30 seconds. This will give the egg white long enough to fluff up and add texture to the drink. Once everything is thoroughly mixed, add ice, and shake again to chill it.

Strain the cocktail into a coupe glass, then dot the foamy surface with bitters.

This is a stunningly good cocktail where the individual ingredients do NOT present themselves. It is a sweet, floral, juicy drink, with a little heat on the back end. Not for nothing, it is also a beautiful, pale lavender color.

Pink Gin

Reformulated and recommended by Tom Lloyd, bartender at What The Pho! (836 Elm St., Manchester, 606-8769, whatthephorestaurant.com)

For decades Pink Gin was a classic staple in British India and other hot colonial outposts. It was almost always gin over ice, with bitters. This grapefruit-forward conception is less colonial and much more refreshing. It does, however, have gin, and it is pink.

• 1½ ounces gin
• ¼ ounce elderberry liqueur
• ¼ ounce pamplemousse, a grapefruit-flavored liqueur
• 2 ounces ruby red grapefruit juice
• The juice of half a lime
• One dash of orange bitters
• 1 ounce seltzer

Combine all ingredients except the seltzer with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly, then strain into a rocks glass. Top with seltzer and stir gently.

This is the juiciest-tasting cocktail that you are ever likely to drink. The sourness of the grapefruit and lime juices have a mouth-watering quality, the elderflower liqueur provides a floral note, and the gin sits in the back, arms proudly folded over its chest, saying, “I told you so.”

Elderflower Cosmopolitan

Recommended by Nikki Miller, head bartender at the Barley House Restaurant and Tavern (132 N. Main St., Concord, 228-6363, thebarleyhouse.com)

Cosmopolitans have traditionally been made with vodka, but in this version, the gin stands out and gives depth to the cocktail. Miller said, “Gin is a very botanical liquor, with juniper berries and few roots. Sometimes it tastes like nutmeg or lemon. This drink is just a chef’s kiss of a cocktail. It’s a really good one.”

• 2 ounces botanical gin – Hendrick’s would be good for this
• ½ ounce elderflower liqueur
• ½ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 1 ounce cranberry juice cocktail
• Champagne to top – about one ounce

Combine the gin, elderflower liqueur and lemon juice with ice in a cocktail shaker, and shake until chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass, and top with Champagne.

This is a slightly less sweet, more American take on a French 75. It is slightly sweet from the elderflower liqueur, slightly sour from the lemon juice, and just a bit effervescent from the champagne. It is super-refreshing.

Tea and Lemons

Developed and recommended by Jillian Bernat, bar manager at Greenleaf (54 Nashua St., Milford, 213-5447, greenleafmilford.com)

• 2 ounces tea-infused botanical gin – Bernat suggests steeping a spoonful of high-quality loose-leaf black tea for 10 minutes or so, then straining it
• ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 1 ounce simple syrup
• ½ ounce Benedictine

Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker, shake soundly, and strain into a chilled martini glass.

This has all the basic flavors of an Arnold Palmer, but condensed into a classier, more adult beverage.

Olives
According to Bartender Jeremy Weatherby of Piccola Italia Ristorante (815 Elm St, Manchester, 606-5100, piccolarestaurant.com), how many olives you get in your martini is significant.
“Olives in a martini should always come in odd numbers,” he said. “Serving one with an even number is considered disrespectful; it’s a sign that the bartender doesn’t like you.”

New Hampshire Distiller’s Showcase

New Hampshire’s 11th Annual Distiller’s Showcase will be held Thursday, Nov. 7.

Distillers and distributors will show off more than 600 premium and ultra-premium alcohols from around the world. Mark Roy, the Director of Marketing, Merchandising, and Warehousing for the New Hampshire Liquor Commission, has been part of the yearly Showcase since the beginning. He said it is the climax of a week of events.

“We’ll have some in-store bottle signings and tastings with some of the VIPs and distillers and brand ambassadors coming in,” he said. “We’ll also be hosting a Wednesday evening event at the Manchester Country Club in Bedford. It’s a showcase where people can come in to a more intimate venue and they can go around and … talk to brand ambassadors or people from the [liquor] companies directly.”

Roy said the focus this year will be on premium ready-to-drink cocktails, “which is one of the fastest-growing categories in the country right now.”

“[I]t’s an evening where people can come together. We have our high-end Penn Stock room, which is the old restaurant located within the hotel where we have some select products and people in there showcasing their wares. Inside the main expo itself we have over 600 different spirits from every category that you can name, again with some VIP distillers and brand ambassadors coming in. We also partner with some of the best restaurants throughout New Hampshire. There are 25 different restaurants that will be there offering out samples throughout the evening,” Roy said.

In spite of the liquor bigwigs on site, Roy said, the Showcase is designed so ordinary drinkers can learn more about the choices of alcohol available in the state and introduce themselves to new drinks.

“The target audience is our consumer,” he said. “We have every category represented from vodkas to cream liqueurs to tequilas to high-end scotches and everything in between.”

Jillian Anderson is the Director of Tamworth Distilling (15 Cleveland Hill Road, Tamworth, 323-7196, tamworthdistilling.com).

“The Distiller’s Showcase is one of our favorite events to attend every year,” Anderson said. “We find it really brings a focus on all the different people who are really into spirits, who have been kind of following trends, and also people who are very new to the world of spirits and are excited to try a bunch of new things.”

Two of those new things are Tamworth products that focus on local ingredients.

“At one of our tables,” she said, “we will be representing our eight-year-old Chocorua straight rye whiskey, which is [made from] 100 percent rye that’s all grown on a local farm in Maine. We have a black trumpet mushroom and blueberry cordial, which showcases black trumpet mushrooms that are locally foraged right in Tamworth by the New Hampshire Mushroom Co. (153 Gardner Hill Road, Tamworth, 323-0097, nhmushrooms.com). I actually learned something very interesting recently, which is black trumpet mushrooms are one of the only mushrooms that can’t be grown. They have to be foraged. So it’s something about the way that they grow in a tree that you can’t actually try and farm them.”

Anderson is excited to introduce people at the Showcase to Tamworth Distilling’s products, and part of that is the packaging.

“The labels are quite creative,” she said. “We pride ourselves on creating interesting, fun, boundary-pushing spirits, but the packaging always has a story to tell about any of the Tamworth distilling products also.” She used her company’s Siege of Wolves rum as an example. “The Siege of Wolves Is actually an event that happened in Tamworth in the 1800s,” she said. “The story goes that the farmers went out and took on the wolves in the middle of the night because they were eating all of their livestock. And when they succeeded in scaring the wolves off, they celebrated with a barrel of rum.”

For Chris Burk, owner of Cathedral Ledge Distillery (3340 White Mountain Hwy., North Conway, 730-5696, cathedralledgedistillery.com), the Distiller’s Showcase is an opportunity to meet customers and shift his perspective. “It’s a great chance for me to get away from the still,” he said, “and get out, meet customers and answer their questions.Their questions are all over the place. It’s a pretty savvy group, generally speaking. They know quite a bit about spirits, and some of them want to get really into some details about the grains in our whiskeys or our aging procedures. It could be the botanicals in our gins. They are there to learn, which is why it’s such a great event. It’s a great way for customers to explore and be able to learn and try a bunch of things without having to make a full-bottle commitment.”

The proceeds from the Distiller’s Showcase will benefit the New Hampshire Food Bank.

“This is their biggest fundraiser throughout the year,” Mark Roy said. “They provide critical service to many of the local soup kitchens and food banks throughout the state for people that have food insufficiencies. We also have the Crown Royal Bags for Our Troops program, so when people are waiting in line queuing up to go into the event they can help pack some of the bags and these bags get sent over to our troops.” —John Fladd

NH Distiller’s Showcase
When: Thursday, Nov. 7, from 6 to 8:30 p.m.
Where: Doubletree Expo Center, 700 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: $75 through distillersshowcase.com. Food and nonalcoholic beverages will be available. The Showcase has partnered with Brown Forman and Grace Limousine to offer free rides home to guests who live within 20 miles of the event. The event’s organizers encourage guests to drink responsibly.

Nick Lavallee talks chicken tenders, action figures, music and joy

For someone who’s never held office and does not aspire to, Nick Lavallee knew what to do when he got up to speak at the Manchester Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting in early December 2022. He was a man on a mission to foster pride in his home city via its signature dish, the chicken tender.

If the Island of Misfit Toys ever were to produce a food item, it would be the culinary masterpiece invented in the Puritan Backroom 50 years ago. Before Charlie Pappas decided to marinade, lightly bread and deep fry his first tenderloin, it was a castoff piece of the bird. Now, it’s the Backroom’s biggest seller.

The “tendie” is also a staple at restaurants throughout the city — and beyond. That’s why Lavallee implored the board to make it official. “Chicago is home to deep dish pizza; Detroit is known for its Mom’s Spaghetti. Manchester should be synonymous with the chicken tender,” he told them.

A little over seven months later, he stood on the pitcher’s mound at Delta Dental Stadium as the Fisher Cats were renamed the Chicken Tenders for one game. Beside him was a signed proclamation from Mayor Joyce Craig declaring Manchester the Chicken Tender Capital of the World.

Lavallee’s successful crusade was just one of his many efforts to build up his home city’s self-esteem, and boosterism has driven him for almost as long as he’s lived here. To hear him tell it, relentless positivity is a form of personal self-repair as well.

“I wanted to give Manchester a reason to believe in itself,” he said of what motivated him to speak that chilly December night, an act initially greeted with chuckles by city leaders. “I’ve learned to believe in myself along the way.”

It wouldn’t be his last trip to a municipal meeting.

In early October, Lavallee spoke in support of Eighty Eight Coffee Co., a Manchester business facing eminent domain and seeking a better deal from the city. “It’s more than a craft coffee shop,” he said, wearing a Stay Joyful ballcap. “It’s a community gathering space, one that is unfortunately rare to find in the largest city in New Hampshire.”

A few days before the meeting, the city had increased its offer to align with an independent appraisal done by Eighty Eight’s owners, but he hoped that his input would compel a closer look at the other costs of forcing the shop from its Queen City Avenue location.

The list of Lavallee’s successes in promoting his hometown continues to grow. A recent New York Times story that was teased on the front page and filled the cover of the Food Section was the result of Lavallee’s chicken championing.

Of course, the Paper of Record strove for fairness and balance in the story. “An icon of simple, straightforward, unpretentious American taste,” Pete Wells wrote of the tender, “it can also be an expression of dull, unadventurous food engineered for the lowest common denominator.”
Whatever. Wells gave Nick Lavallee, man of the people, the final word on whether his home city deserves its self-declared title. “It’s a silly idea … but you ask yourself: Is it true? Yes. Is it important? Sure. Manchester has had an identity problem. Why not point out the things worth celebrating?”

It’s fair to call him the Mayor of Tender Town, but Nick’s no politician. He’s a cheerleader, and beyond that, he’s walking the walk. Lavallee’s latest endeavor is a Wicked Joyful retail space located in Queen City Center, a mixed-use facility that’s under construction at 21 Canal St. It is due to open next May.

It’s been a long journey for the creative polymath, who has at various points of his life performed in punk rock bands, toured the country doing comedy, and promoted shows in downtown Manchester along with running his pop culture business — all while holding down a day job in community media.

Lavallee’s toughest road, though, was the one to happiness. Like a lot of artists, he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder, especially in his standup days. Maybe a better way to describe it is fierce ambition that more than a few mistook for something darker.

“The folks who own Vermont Comedy Club once told me, ‘When we met you, you appeared kind of mean’ — and I was in a good mood!” he recalled. “I feel like what was in my head was not what I could translate to people, whereas I’d like to think when people meet me now, it’s significantly different.”

It is, and most agree that the line of demarcation was Lavallee’s giving up alcohol in 2015.

Jenny Zigrino knew him when both were starting out in the comedy world in the late 2000s, when she recalls him being competitive and intense. “A Townie feel … it was Nick against the world,” she said by phone from New York City. “We were comedy friends … later, we became friend friends.”

The friendship, Zigrino continued, “really blossomed around like 2017, after he’d gotten sober and had a new-lease-on -life kind of vibe. I think he was just taking care of himself more. I think that being sober really was the key to him changing.”

Lavallee also lost a lot of weight, and he shifted his outlook from ruminating to radiating happy energy. On his socials, he urged followers to “stay joyful.” Much of his attention went to writing songs for Donaher, the pop punk band he formed with Tristan Omand, Lee Sevigny and Adam Wood in 2017.

It’s said that great art requires suffering, but Lavallee took a novel approach to coming up with material for his band’s first album, I Swear My Love Is True. Six months sober, he began a relationship one June knowing it would end in August, when the object of his affection moved across the country.

“It was a one-summer stand,” he said. “When I met her I was like, ‘Oh my God, I want to write pop songs for you all summer, and she said, ‘What about when I move?’ I said, ‘Then the songs will get better’ and she said, ‘Deal.’ And they did!”

There was, he continued, another reason for the exercise. “It was true heartbreak, but it was wild because as much pain as I was in, I was so happy to feel that hurt because I was sober,” he said. “It was a weird test, and it may not have been emotionally responsible. But, at the same time, I never turned to alcohol. I was thankful for the relationship because she enabled my continued sobriety.”

In 2019, Nick began augmenting action figures picked up at tag sales and secondhand stores to reflect pop culture moments. He’d repaint a discarded GI Joe as Rivers Cuomo of Weezer or Eddie Murphy in The Golden Child, create humorous packaging, stick an ersatz price tag on the finished work of art, and post a photo of it to Instagram.

He called the venture Wicked Joyful, the name a triple entendre that found its way into his brain and wouldn’t leave. “It represents yin and yang, the salty and sweet of being a New England guy,” he said, “and, I think, my sense of humor. That’s me. I’m wicked joyful.”

The effort began as a way to build an online community.

“It was just going to be a means of sharing photos of vintage toys and developing a following, connecting with people.” Beyond that, he continued, “I was also at a crossroads with stand-up. I was sick of it.”

Along with co-producer Dave Carter, he’d built the Shaskeen Pub into a midweek hub for alt comedy. With national headliners like W. Kamau Bell, Dan Soder, Emma Willmen and Kyle Kinane appearing, they two did more than 400 shows over seven years. Lavallee, however, now saw a different path for his humor. (Lavallee and Carter handed off organizing duties when weekly shows returned mid-2021. Wednesday comedy nights are now run by Sam Mangano – see rubyroom.com for upcoming shows.)

“I loved building the community we had at Shaskeen, but I realized I could do essentially the same thing through this medium of custom action figures,” he said. “I have creative license. This is my thing. I can insert myself in these pieces.”

Early works included Chris D’Elia with an Eminem cultural reference, and John Cusack holding a boom box over his head in Say Anything. People really started to take notice when a piece depicting Bill Burr in his Star Wars spinoff Mandalorian role, with a New England twist, blew up online.

Accessorized with a Dunkin’ cup and a galactic weapon, with consequential Rs lined out and replaced by an H, i.e. “Stah Wahs: Mayfield The Shahp Shootah,” the piece was retweeted by the comic and covered by the Boston Globe. Similarly, John Stamos responded to an action figure of his Full House Uncle Jesse character.

“How was my 2019?” Lavallee wrote on then-Twitter. “John frickin’ Stamos retweeted me.”

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, it was a blessing for Lavallee, as it provided him with an excuse to pivot from comedy to his newly growing venture, which he called “a medium that I can communicate my most authentic self with that stand-up could never do for me.”

He was successful at telling jokes and creating hilarious multimedia content. With sobriety, his routine was kinder, gentler and more reflective of his hometown and upbringing. Crowds were warming to him in a new way, but the bits required more self-deprecation than he liked.

“I was getting really burnt out on Nick Lavallee’s name, face, body … my words,” he said, his voice trailing off. “Now I know why so many comedians deal with mental health issues and everything else, because I was dealing with a lot of them myself.”

“It does things to you,” Jenny Zigrino agreed. “You’re only as good as your last set … it can make you toxic. It’s also just a lonely job and Nick thrives on community.”

In January 2020 Lavallee sat on an MSNBC panel during primary season and told a national cable audience, in response to an Ari Melber question, that anyone visiting Manchester should try the chicken tenders. With a second wing added, his high-flying bird took flight.

Over time, he added apparel to the Wicked Joyful product line, beginning with a bright yellow Chicken Tender Capital of the World T-shirt featuring an anthropomorphic tendie perched in a sauce cup that’sa replica of one from the Puritan Backroom. Along with that were fun packs filled with pins and stickers, and more than a few Manchester inside jokes like a Cadillac Motel key fob.

There’s a Tender Town banner, logoed water bottles, holiday ornaments and a flood of action figures, all one of a kind, like the one marking Exeter as New England’s UFO Capital, a tribute to one of his favorite bands The Get Up Kids, and Chappell Roan in her Midwest Princess Lollapalooza suit.

His wares are available online and at street fairs; he did brisk business at this year’s Taco Tour. He’s also at events like the recent Granite State Comicon, where his booth was a few yards away from one run by Dave’s Hot Chicken, a new addition to Manchester.

Wicked Joyful pop-up shops
Sunday, Oct. 27, 5 to 7 p.m., at Bookery, 844 Elm St., Manchester
Saturday, Nov. 9, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Garrison City Mini Con, City Hall, Dover
Sunday, Dec. 8, noon to 3 p.m. at Merrymaking on West Merrimack, Manchester

Lavallee is amused that both Dave’s and fellow chicken restaurant Raising Cane’s are opening franchises in the city.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” he said. “Why all of a sudden did these two national chains decide to come to Manchester? I mean, the Chicken Tender Initiative got a lot of press.”

He wasn’t telling the whole story. Lavallee was invited to the Dave’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, where he noticed their signature graffiti decor included a nod to his initiative. Later, he chatted with the local franchise owner and learned he was also a fan of Goldenrod Restaurant, the city’s second pillar of tenders, and the Puritan.

“Chicken tenders are deliciously non-divisive and truly bring the people of Manchester together,” Lavallee wrote on Facebook.

Another person who noticed Lavallee’s enterprising civic activism was Travis York, the entrepreneur behind Queen City Center. Early on, he wanted Nick to be a part of it, both for his art and his skill at putting together events, something he still does for Shaskeen rock shows and other venues.

“I’ve admired how multifaceted he is but perhaps most importantly how joyful he seems pursuing and doing those types of things,” York said by phone from his office at GYK Antler, a creative agency located across the parking long from the new development. “I’ve always liked to surround myself with people like that and when Queen City Center as a development project came up … Nick was one of the first guys that came to mind to … be a thought partner to me and the team as we consider how to bring that vision to reality.”

Nick’s experience as a promoter will be valuable at Queen City.

“There’s a multitude of options for where we could host different types of events,” York said. “We have the desire to bring comedy, music and other types of entertainment that might be a bit different than what the city’s drawn in the past.”

In the early 2010s, York and his wife hosted concerts at their home in the North End, many by acts that went on to greater fame. He hopes to bring similar talent to the new venue. “The good thing about Manchester is there are places where people can play and do stuff,” he said. “The challenge is they all kind of serve multi-purposes and are not consistently bringing in talent…. That’s a gap in the market we think we can fill.”

One belief York shares with Lavallee is that the state, “and specifically southern New Hampshire [has] always had a bit of a poor self-esteem, at least in my era. Growing up, I went to West High School in the ’90s [and] like a lot of people I grew up with, I moved away … I didn’t imagine I would be back. I’m certainly glad that I am.”

These days, the narrative is shifting, and more young people are choosing Manchester. Leadership is needed for that to continue.

“People are moving to this area because they want to; they see something better than we believe we have,” York said. “If we can better align the potential of our city with the desires of those coming here, then everybody should win as a result of that.”

He’s happy to have Lavallee as an ally. “Nick has clearly found lanes of his creativity that are very authentic to him,” he said, recalling a conversation when the New York Times story came out. “I said, this is now etched in your obituary. If something, God forbid, happens to you, being behind the chicken tender capital-of-the-world thing is going to be in there.’ He couldn’t have been prouder, and I kind of love that … it’s a positive way of bringing his talents to the world, getting people to engage and be joyful.”

The self-described “compulsive creative” has a newfound ability to prioritize his packed life into something more well-rounded. If he’s behind a microphone, it’s probably a conference on community media, or another municipal meeting. The only time he’s on stage is with Donaher, and he keeps that in perspective.

When they play, it’s usually at a show he organized, and Donaher is down the bill. That’s so he can wrap up early and enjoy watching his friends play — he’s usually near the front of the stage, dancing like a fan. Another reason is it gives him an early bedtime if he needs one.

Music is more a pastime than a profession. “The band’s a bowling league. I’m comfortable saying that, and I think the guys would say the same. Tristan’s a dad, we’ve got jobs, we’ve got significant others. There are no illusions of grandeur there.”

Like everything else in Lavallee’s life, the main goal is to stay joyful.

“It’s nice to know that once a week or a few times a month, I have three friends I get to hang out with,” he said. “It’s four dudes who love playing music that are fighting having to be in a cover band, because that’s where a lot of people end up as they get older…. We’re still playing original music.”

Crucially, his head and heart are finally aligned with his hopeful love songs. “I wrote a lot of them years ago, but they’ve found new meaning,” he said. Joyfully, there’s a reason for this rediscovery.

Nearly a decade beyond the self-induced emotional shock treatment of his first sober summer, Nick is in a healthy relationship. Before his band roared into their third song on a recent Friday evening at the Shaskeen, he took a moment to acknowledge the woman he’s been with for the past three years.

Over an order of Puritan tenders the previous week, he’d shared that they met when she was working at a restaurant across the street from the Shaskeen. After setting up the weekly comedy show, he’d go there for dinner. He’d flirt and she’d defer, but he eventually got her number.

This began a two-year friendship that, coincidentally or not, bridged his time in and out of comedy. Then one night she strolled into the Shaskeen back room as his band was packing up. That’s the memory he recalled to introduce his song “Let Me Know” that Friday night.

“Three years ago, to the day, my best friend came to a Donaher show and asked, ‘Is it too late to say I’m in love with you?’ and I said, ‘definitely not.’ Then we made out, right over there.” He pointed to a spot near the merch table. “So I’d like to dedicate this song to Gina.”

In conversation, he’s giddy. “I’m the luckiest guy on the planet, I love her. It’s true I had to go through all that, but this relationship I have with Gina is super healthy and we’re evolving together … she’s helping me grow in so many ways.”

One thing that won’t change for Nick Lavallee is his commitment to his hometown, and to making sure that everyone’s a winner. To that end, he’ll never name a favorite tender and won’t endorse any effort that aims to crown a champion, making the case that a healthy argument helps everyone.

“If someone’s proclaimed the best in any official capacity, we lose a core part of our identity … the discussion is over,” he said, summoning the clam pie pizza capital of the world in Connecticut. “No one in New Haven is going to say Frank Pepe’s or Sally’s is definitively the best. You have to keep that conversation going.”

Finality, he concluded, contradicts “the spirit of everyone who’s ever lived here; when people come in, you want them trying everybody’s chicken tender. It’s an economic boost to tourism. As long as I’m carrying the torch of Tendertown, USA, I hope there’s never a competition.”

Donaher shows
Friday, Oct. 25, 8 p.m., Auspicious Brew, Dover, with 5Ever and Lovewell; all ages
Sunday, Nov. 10, 4 p.m., Taffetta Music Hall, Lowell, Mass., with Keep Flying, Don’t Panic, Eternal Boy; 18+
Tuesday, Dec. 31, 9 p.m., Penuches, Concord, Donaher New Years Eve Show, 21+

Your guide to festivals, parties, haunted attractions and more Halloween excitement for all ages

It’s a spooky world filled with dark woods!

Behind the scenes at haunted attractions

By Zachary Lewis
[email protected]

The weather gets colder and New Hampshire becomes spookier as Halloween fast approaches. One way to revel in the season is to traverse a haunted attraction, and there are several in the area. We take a look at two of them here.

Spooky World: big scares and a big party

“Spooky World is absolutely the place to be in the fall,” said Michael Accomando, co-owner of Spooky World Presents Nightmare New England and the Haunted Hayride in Litchfield along with Wayne Caulfield.

“We’ve put together a place that’s not only just one of the top horror theme parks in the country, but you also can have just as much fun while you’re here, while you’re screaming,” Accomando said.

“There’s multiple DJs set up throughout the entire night, so you can go listen to music, you can dance,” he said. “There’s … different food areas that you can go to … courtyards, there’s multiple bars throughout where you can get alcoholic, non-alcoholic drinks. There’s fun photo ops throughout the entire park that you can stop and go to, and while you’re doing that and you’re going through all the fun parts and enjoying and laughing, you’re also going through haunts in between that where you’re screaming at the same time. So it’s like the perfect blend of fun and fear all at one location.”

As for the scary part, Accomando said there are four main haunted attractions. One of those is the mile-long haunted hayride. Next up is “Asylum 47, which is an absolute state-of-the-art medical scene that has actors, props, animatronics, smells, sounds. We attack you on all of your senses.”

“And then from there,” he said, “you can head on into the Colony…. It’s your outside wooded walk. And that’s approximately two to three acres. You go in and out of multiple buildings. The cool part about that is you freak yourself out because you’re in the dark, you’re hearing the sounds around you, so it gives our actors an opportunity to get on top of you even quicker because you’re spending so much time just looking around. Is it an animal in the woods? Is it a person in the woods?”

And finally, Nightmare in 3D has something scary for everyone.

“That was our latest,” Accomando said, recalling how it went from idea to reality. “We’re going to do a spider room here. And then we’re like, geez, the spider room is so great. What if we did like an egg sac room here? … Like what’s something that people might think is cool? Well, how about an alien scene? How about 3D aliens? Spaceships? … So somebody might go through, and they might be terrified of spiders, but somebody might not care about spiders, but then they get in the next room and it could be bees, or then you get out and then you have a clown room, or then you get out and you have a dance party room. So we try to make everybody have a little of something for every single haunting show that we have.”

Nightmare in 3D adds optical illusions for effect. “As you’re going through it, you’re wearing your 3D glasses, so … the scenes that we’ve built are popping, and on top of it you’ve got all of our actors in there with 3D paint, so they’re popping twice as much as they normally would as a regular actor with their makeup and their costumes on.”

And then there’s zombie paintball.

“Outside we’ve got our paintball,” Accomando said. “I mean where else do you go you get to shoot at somebody where they can’t shoot back at you, where your zombies are looking throughout the fields? … You take them out. They don’t take you out. They hide behind tombstones. They’ll hide behind this or that.”

Then, unwind with some food or hang out by the fire pit.

“After you go through the other remaining haunts, then it pops you out into the big back courtyard area … where you have your main food areas, the zombie paintball, your ax throwing, you have another DJ,” Accomando said. “That’s more of like your dance party, where some of our characters get out there, they get people fired up. The next thing you know, you’ve got 50 to 100 people out on the dance floor having a great time.”

It takes a ghoulish army to pull off a Spooky World. “We normally employ, during the Halloween season, we’ll run about 200 employees,” Accomando said, “ … from car parkers to actors to ticket takers. So you could see anywhere between 100 to 150 actors.”

A boo-tique haunt

Chad Zingales and his wife, Hillary, own and operate The Dark Woods at Trombly Gardens in Milford.

“The Dark Woods is what we consider a boutique haunt,” Zingales said. “That’s a little play on words there, B-O-O-tique haunt. We are a smaller-scale haunted attraction outdoors walk through the woods. Our haunted attraction sells a limited amount of tickets. We do not have tens of thousands of people a year. We have a very specific number of people that we offer tickets to, and once we sell out, we sell out. And our haunted attraction is best-known for our characters, so we are very improvisational, comedic, creepy, very interactive, because here at The Dark Woods it’s all about the acting and the actors.”

The process of characterization goes deep. “They have to have a backstory — why are they out in the woods?” he said. “[A]ll of our characters have props, all of them have original costuming, we do all the makeup here, and they’re all original characters that are kind of the brainchild of the actors themselves. And through the years we’ve had a bunch of really creative characters, but our show is in the realm of farmer, backwoods, zombie, woods people.”

The human element is the essence of the scares. “Two of our best-known characters are Pork Ryan Patterson and Cousin Samuel,” Zingales said. “They … put on a customized puppet show for all of our guests, but they also serenade our guests, come up with a song right as they’re walking through the event.”

And the experience can be a little bit customized, he noted.

“All of our groups are tailored to a certain way. So if a young family that has maybe children that are already petrified when they first walk in, we can tone down the show. We can make the show more kind of funny and more towards kids or the younger populace.” He said the walk will typically take about 15 or 20 minutes.

“If it’s … mostly adults and they want to get really scared, then we can ramp it up a little bit,” Zingales said, noting that The Dark Woods introduced a new and scarier show last year called The Darker Woods — “the same walk through the woodlands, but … a lot of the house lights are just dimmed down; groups are given a very small flashlight.” It was “wildly popular,” he said.

They also host a calmer version earlier in the season: Trauma-Free Sunday Nights. “That’s for people with really young families who just want to stroll through the woods,” Zingales said. “There’s no characters jumping out of you. There’s no intense music. It’s just a great way to kind of look at all the lights and look at the props and see the scenery.”

Trombly Gardens also hosts a corn maze that visitors can get lost in. “We have a lot of people that will do that, either before, while they’re waiting in The Dark Woods, or after,” he said.

The Dark Woods got started in 2020, so this is its fifth season, Zingales noted. The attraction raises funds for mental health awareness in the area.

“We are once again partnering with the Greater Nashua Mental Health Center … so we do take some donations,” Zingales said. Part of the proceeds from the photo booth goes to Greater Nashua Mental Health.

Zingales is passionate about Halloween.

“I love being able to entertain and watching people have a good time … seeing them just laughing and, you know, getting a little bit creeped out in the spirit of … having a unique experience during Halloween,” he said.

The whole family is involved. “… my wife included, and my stepson. My two daughters are out here. My dad is out here. He’s 84 years old. So it’s just fun to have this kind of community event and family event.”

Haunted attractions

• Fright Kingdom (frightkingdom.com) 12 Simon St., Nashua. When: General admission Friday, Oct. 18, through Saturday, Nov. 2, Friday and Saturday 7 to 10:30 p.m; Sunday 7 to 10 p.m.; Thursday, Oct. 31, 7 to 10 p.m. Hardly Haunted Sunday, Oct. 20, 1 to 4 p.m. In the Dark Friday, Nov. 8, and Saturday, Nov. 9, 7 to 10 p.m. Cost: General admission and In the Dark tickets $36, Hardly Haunted $10.
• The Dark Woods (thedarkwoodsnh.com) Trombly Gardens, 150 N. River Road, Milford. When: Scary Walk-Through Show on Fridays, Oct. 18, Oct. 25, Nov. 1, and Saturdays; Oct. 19, Oct. 26, Nov. 2. Gate opens at 7 p.m., last ticket sold at 10 p.m.; Sunday, Oct. 29, gate opens at 6 p.m., last ticket sold at 9 p.m. The Darker Woods Thursday, Oct. 17, from 7 to 9 p.m. and Oct. 24 from 6 to 9 p.m. Cost: $29, with upgrades and add-ons available.
• Spooky World Presents Nightmare New England (nightmarenewengland.com) 454 Charles Bancroft Hwy., Litchfield. When: Thursdays, Oct. 17 and Oct. 24, 7 to 9:30 p.m.; Fridays, Oct. 18 and Oct. 25, 7 to 11:15 p.m.; Friday, Nov. 1, 7 to 10:15 p.m.; Saturdays, Oct. 19 and Oct. 26, 6 to 11:15 p.m.; Saturday, Nov. 2, 6 to 10:15 p.m.; Sundays, Oct. 20 and Oct. 27, 6 to 10:15 p.m.; Thursday, Oct. 31, 7 to 10:15 p.m. Cost: Tickets range from $39.99 to $84.99; general admission and VIP admission tickets are offered. General admission ticket reservations allow one-time access through all four haunted attractions. General admission time-slot tickets must be purchased in advance online. VIP ticket reservations allow two times through all four haunted attractions.Ticket reservations are every 15 minutes. VIP guests join a lower-wait entrance line at each Spooky World Haunted Attraction and access to Mel’s Funway Park Go-Karts (weather permitting), mini golf and batting cages. Mel’s Funway Park opens for VIP ticket holders to enjoy unlimited activities beginning at 3 p.m. on open Saturday and Sundays, or beginning at 5 p.m. on open Thursday and Fridays. Mel’s Funway Park activities close 30 minutes after the main ticket booth closes.
• Haunted Overload (hauntedoverload.com) DeMeritt Hill Farm, 20 Orchard Way, Lee. When: Thursday, Oct. 17, through Sunday, Nov. 3. Main Event: Fridays, Oct. 18, Oct. 25 and Nov. 1 from 7 to 9 p.m.; Saturdays, Oct. 19, Oct. 26 and Nov. 2 from 6:45 to 9 p.m.; Sundays, Oct. 20 and Oct. 27, 6:30 to 8 p.m. Fright Night Lite: Thursday, Oct. 17 and Oct. 24, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Black Out Night: Sunday, Nov. 3, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Halloween: Thursday, Oct. 31, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Day walks are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Cost: $36 for Main Event, $22.50 for Fright Night Lite, $26 for Black Out Night, $12 for Day Walk.
• The Salisbury Woods Haunted Barn and Trail (salisburywoods.com) 19 Franklin Road, Salisbury. When: Fridays and Saturdays, Oct. 18 through Oct. 26, 7 to 10 p.m. Cost: $20.
• Screeemfest at Canobie Lake Park (canobie.com) 85 N. Policy St., Salem. When: Fridays, Oct. 18 and Oct. 25, 5 to 11 p.m.; Saturdays, Oct. 19 and Oct. 26, 3 to 11 p.m.; Sundays, Oct. 20 and Oct. 27, 1 to 9 p.m. Cost: General admission ranges from $52 to $64; those under 48 inches tall or 60 years or older pay $37.

Mostly treats

Halloween excitement for the kids

Compiled by John Fladd
[email protected]

Here are some Halloween happenings geared specifically at kids.

• Kids age 12 and younger are invited to a Halloween Haunted Hangar event at the Aviation Museum of New Hampshire (27 Navigator Road, Londonderry) on Saturday, Oct. 19, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., when they can meet the ghosts of aviation past, enjoy Halloween treats and receive their “Broomstick Pilot License.” The experience is free with admission to the museum; admission costs $10 for visitors age 13 and up. Visit aviationmuseumofnh.org or call 669-4820.

• Charmingfare Farm (774 High St., Candia) will offer its Children’s Trick-or-Treat Experience on Saturdays, Oct. 19 and Oct. 26, and Sundays, Oct. 20 and Oct. 27, with start times available on the hour between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. In addition to trick-or-treating, families can meet a friendly witch, see wildlife exhibits and barnyard animals, take a horse-drawn wagon ride, decorate pumpkins, ride a pony and watch a juggling show. Tickets cost $29 per person — admission is free for children under age 2 — and must be purchased online in advance. Visit visitthefarm.com.

• The Players’ Ring Theatre (105 Marcy St., Portsmouth, playersring.org) will present Trick and Treat, a“workshop production, performed by kids and for kids, [that] is the culmination of 5 weeks of rehearsals focused on collaboration and the creative process” about a girl in Sleepy Hollow and a little witch in Frightsburgh, according to the website, on Saturday, Oct. 19, and Sunday, Oct. 20, at 10 a.m. Tickets cost $20; $16 for kids 12 and under.

• There will be a Pumpkins and Scarecrows, and Art, Oh My Fall Festival, Sunday, Oct. 20 from 1 to 4 p.m. at Different Drummer Farm (55 South Road, Candia, 483-2234, differentdrummerfarm.com), with a rain date of Sunday, Oct. 27. There will be a scarecrow-building contest, pumpkin decorating, live entertainment, animal petting, pony rides, kids’ arts and crafts, and more. General admission tickets are $20 per person, or $50 per family, on the Farm’s website.

• The Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600, bookerymht.com) will host a Storytime with Naomi Fredette, author of Ellie the Skelly, Tuesday, Oct. 22, from 10 a.m. to noon, a treat for small children who are excited about Halloween. Reserve a space through the Bookery’s website.

• Hotel Transylvania(PG, 2012) will screen on Tuesday, Oct. 22, at 11:30 a.m., a “Little Lunch Date” screening at all Chunky’s Cinema Pub (707 Huse Road, Manchester, 206-3888, chunkys.com). Little Lunch Dates are for parents and their preschool children. The movie will be shown with the lights slightly dimmed and admission is $5; the $5 can be used toward food and beverage purchase during the event.

• There will be a Halloween Costume Workshop at the Griffin Free Public Library (22 Hooksett Road, Auburn, 483-5374, griffinfree.org) Tuesday, Oct. 22, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Bring any kind of craft material you’re looking to use, or use some provided. Even if you’re not dressing up this year, this could be an opportunity to help someone else with a project. All ages welcome, but recommended for fifth grade and up.

• The Educational Farm at Joppa Hill (174 Joppa Hill Road, Bedford) will host Halloween on the Farm on Tuesday, Oct. 22, from 4 to 6 p.m. Attendees are encouraged to come in costume to enjoy a bonfire, scavenger hunt and Halloween music. The event is free, and fireside treats such as s’mores, apple cider, hot cocoa and hot dogs will be available for purchase at the farm stand. Each child will receive a complimentary Halloween treat. Visit theeducationalfarm.org. Registration is required.

• Arlington Street Community Center (36 Arlington St. in Nashua) will hold a Halloween P arty on Friday, Oct. 25, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The event is free and will include a trunk or treat, pumpkin painting and more, according to a post on the center’s Facebook page.

• The New Hampshire Audubon’s McLane Center (84 Silk Farm Road in Concord; nhaudubon.org, 224-9909) will hold its annual Enchanted Forest Friday, Oct. 25, and Saturday, Oct. 26. Follow a trail in the forest illuminated by jack-o’-lanterns, watch skits, hear stories by the campfire and more, according to the website, where you can purchase tickets for $15 per person. Reservations are required.

• The Children’s Museum of New Hampshire (6 Washington St., Dover) hosts its Not-So-Spooky Spectacular on Friday, Oct. 25 and Saturday, Oct. 26, with sessions each day from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 4 p.m. Attendees are encouraged to wear costumes The event will feature interactive science experiments, crafting in the STEAM Lab and a pumpkin scavenger hunt. The afternoon session includes a concert and dance party with kids’ musician Mr. Aaron at 2 p.m. Admission costs$12.50 for adults and children over age 1; $10.50 for 65+. Register in advance online.

• Join kids’ musician Laurie Berkner for a Halloween show at the Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord) on Saturday, Oct. 26, with performances at 11 a.m.and 3 p.m. Laurie will blend her hits with Halloween tunes. Attendees are encouraged to wear dancing shoes and bring a stuffed animal. Tickets start at $31.75 on the CCA website.

• Families with children of all ages are invited to participate in the Family Costume Parade at the Nashua Public Library (2 Court St.) on Saturday, Oct. 26, at 10:30 a.m.. Attendees are encouraged to don their costumes and parade around the building. Each department of the library will offer a special treat for the participants. Visit nashualibrary.org.

• There will be a Teen Halloween Party Tuesday, Oct. 29, 10 to 11 p.m. at the Manchester City Library (405 Pine St., Manchester, 624-6550, manchesterlibrary.org). Come dressed in your costumes for Halloween activities.

• A Kids’ Halloween Party will take place Wednesday, Oct. 30, from 10:30 a.m. to noon at the Weare Public Library (10 Paige Memorial Lane, Weare, 529-2044, wearepubliclibrary.com). Enjoy Halloween crafts while dressed in your Halloween costumes.

• The North Side Plaza in Manchester will hold a Community Trick or Treat on Wednesday, Oct. 30, from 5 to 7 p.m. with store-to-store trick or treat, a small petting zoo and horse-drawn wagon rides. See northsideplazanh.com for directions.

Trick-or-Treat Times

Trunk-or-Treats

All Halloween

Spooky season fun for everyone

Compiled by John Fladd
[email protected]

Find fun for all (or most) ages at these Halloweeny happenings.

• J&F Farms (124 Chester Road, Derry, jandffarmsnh.com) has a Halloween-themed corn maze through Oct. 31. The farm is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., according to its website. The cost is $10 per person.

• Elwood Orchards (54 Elwood Road in Londonderry; 434-6017, elwoodorchards.com) opens its corn maze for night admission on Fridays and Saturdays (last admission is at 9 p.m.). The maze is also open daily at 9 a.m., last entrance at 5 p.m.. Admission costs $12; children 5 and under get in for free.

• Coppal House Farm (118 N. River Road, Lee, nhcornmaze.com) has a flashlight night corn maze on Saturday, Oct. 26, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Tickets must be purchased ahead of time and are $15. Flashlights will not be provided. Additionally there is a daytime maze open on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays from noon to 5 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Daytime admission can be purchased at the farm stand and costs $10 for adults and $8 for children, students, seniors and military. For both events, children under age 4 get in free.

• Take photos with the pumpkin man and then check out the corn maze at Brookdale Fruit Farm (41 Broad St., Hollis, 465-2240, brookdalefruitfarm.com) Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The cost is $4 per person.

• Rochester Opera House (31 Wakefield St., Rochester, 335-1992, rochesteroperahouse.com) presents a stage adaptation of The Wizard of Oz through Sunday, Nov. 3, with showtimes on Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 5 p.m. Tickets range from $26 to $32. Visit rochesteroperahouse.com to purchase tickets.

• Hocus Pocus(PG, 1993) will screen at Chunky’s Cinema Pub (707 Huse Road, Manchester, 206-3888, chunkys.com) Friday, Oct. 18, through Thursday, Oct. 24, at 12:45, 3:50 and 7 p.m. (6:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 23).

• Spookville: A Nightmare on Chestnut Street, a haunted attraction designed by SCARE NH (Secondhand Costume Annual Redistribution Effort), will open Friday, Oct. 18, and run Fridays from 7 to 9 p.m., Saturdays from 6 to 9 p.m. and Halloween night from 6 to 9 p.m. The attraction also has sessions on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. that are “sensory safe/ fright-light days,” according to scarenh.org/spookville. The attraction is at 1 Chestnut St. in Nashua and admission is free with any donations going to the organization to help with its efforts, which include the annual attraction and the collection of new and gently used costumes to give away to kids in need, the website said.

• The Strand (20 Third St., Dover, thestranddover.com) will present Break A Leg Legally’s eighth annual live production of Dracula Friday, Oct. 18, through Sunday, Oct. 27, with shows Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets cost $18 for matinees, $20 for evening performances. See breakaleglegally.com.

• The Portsmouth Farmers Market (1 Junkins Ave.) will host a Pumpkin Smash on Saturday, Oct. 19, from 8 a.m. to noon. For $10 participants can choose a pumpkin to smash with a mallet, a two-by-four or “the trusty ol’ Louisville Slugger.” For $5 they can bring their own pumpkin to smash. See portsmouthhalloweenparade.org.

• Devriendt Farm (178 S. Mast St., Goffstown, devriendtfarm.com) opens its corn maze (and its pumpkin patch) on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at its 47 Story Road location.

• The Animal Rescue League of NH (rescueleague.org) will host a Howl-O-Ween 5K run Saturday, Oct. 19, beginning at 10 a.m. at Delta Dental Stadium (1 Line Drive, Manchester, 641-2005, milb.com/new-hampshire). This is a dog-friendly run/walk that benefits the Rescue League. Participants can purchase a special timed bib for their dog. Visit rescueleague.org/howloween5k.

• The Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off and Regatta in downtown Goffstown takes place Saturday, Oct. 19, and Sunday, Oct. 20, with a variety of events each day as well as vendor booths throughout the weekend. See goffstownmainstreet.org/pumpkin-regatta.

• Windham Recreation Department will hold its annual Harvest Fest on Saturday, Oct. 19, in Griffin Park. See windhamnh.gov for more on this family fun event.

• Cake Theatre (12 Veterans Square, Laconia, 677-6360, thecaketheatre.com) will host three Halloween with Recycled Percussion performances: Saturday, Oct. 19, at 2 and 7 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 20, at 2 p.m. Tickets begin at $49. There will also be a Spook N’ Groove hangout and dance party Friday, Oct. 25, at 7 p.m. with special drinks and snacks, including the Cake’s signature cotton candy and candy bar. This event is family-friendly and promises a night of spooky fun for all ages. Tickets are $15 and available through the Cake’s website.

• The City of Nashuawill host its Halloween Boo Bash on Saturday, Oct. 19, from 4 to 7 p.m. at Greeley Park (100 Concord St.). Activities include hay rides, pumpkin decorating, a haunted house and a bonfire. Costumes are encouraged and admission is free. Visit nashuanh.gov.

• Watch Hocus Pocusin Derryfield Park in Manchester on Saturday, Oct. 19, outside starting at dusk. Bring chairs and blankets; concessions will be available for purchase, according to a post on the Manchester Parks & Recreation department Facebook page.

• Step into the Halloween spirit with a Graveyard Walk at Castle in the Clouds (455 Old Mountain Road, Moultonborough, 476-5900, castleintheclouds.org). This outdoor history walk spans approximately 2 miles over varied terrain, offering insights into the rich past of this remarkable estate. Tickets are $15 each and available through the Castle’s website. Pre-registration is required. The Walk will take place on Saturdays and Mondays throughout October, from 3 to 5 p.m.

• The 18th annual Celebrate Samhain festival will be held on Sunday, Oct. 20, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Doubletree by Hilton Nashua (2 Somerset Pkwy., Nashua, 886-1200, hilton.com/en/hotels/ashssdt-doubletree-nashua).The Samhain Festival is a celebration of the final harvest and of those who have passed and will feature vendors, artisans, psychic readings and a ritual led by Serenity Coven to honor the dead. Admission is $12 or $10 with the donation of a nonperishable food item. Visit facebook.com/ NHSamhain.

• The Groovy Witch (332 Central Ave., Dover, 312-9267, groovywitch.com) is hosting Dover’s third annual Witches Market on Sunday, Oct. 20, from noon to 5 p.m. The Witches Market is a community event that highlights local artisans and small businesses specializing in witchcraft, magic, herbalism, spiritual readings and handmade mystical items. It’s in the Dover City Hall Auditorium but also spills out onto Central Ave. for an outdoor experience. Visit eventbrite.com to reserve a spot or for more information.

• Der Golem (1920) will screen at Wilton Town Hall Theatres (40 Main St., Wilton; find them on Facebook) on Sunday, Oct. 20, at 2 p.m., with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis. Admission is free, though a $10 donation is suggested.

• The Seacoast Repertory Theatre(125 Bow St., Portsmouth, seacoastrep.org) will present Lizzie! A Lizzie Borden Rock Musical through Sunday, Oct. 27, with shows on Sunday, Oct. 20, at 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, Oct. 24, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, Oct. 25, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 27, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $37. The content warning includes “adult themes, description of abuse, blood/gore, suicidal idealtion/attempted suicide,” according to the website.

• The Friends of the Salem NH Historical Society will host their annual Salem Soul-Stroll, Sunday, Oct. 20, from 3 to 5 p.m. This will be a tour of the Salem Burying Ground at The Salem Common. Meet at the Old Town Hall (310 Main St., Salem). Children under age 13 must be accompanied by an adult.

• The Haunted History of New England is a one-hour slide presentation at the Derry Public Library (64 E. Broadway, Derry, 432-6140, derrypl.org) on Wednesday, Oct. 23, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. The presentation compares present-day photographs of all the sites to historical period photographs, and melds historical fact together with legend and myth to produce an interesting new look at events that really happened and the stories of hauntings that followed them. This event is free and open to the public, but pre-registration is required. Visit the Library’s website.

• The Lost World (1925), a silent film based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel about dinosaurs found by “modern” explorers, will screen at the Flying Monkey (39 S. Main St., Plymouth, flyingmonkeynh.com) on Wednesday, Oct. 23, at 6:30 p.m. The presentation features live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis.

• On Thursday, Oct. 24, Friday, Oct. 25, and Saturday, Oct. 26, Canterbury Shaker Village (288 Shaker Road, Canterbury, 783-9511, shakers.org) will host Ghost Encounter Tours at 5, 6 and 7 p.m. The 45-minute tours will explore the evolution of spiritualism in Shaker faith and will include “firsthand accounts of otherworldly encounters,” according to the website. Tickets purchased in advance are $20 for adults and $10 for children 12 and under. Tickets cost $25 day of. Register at shakers.org.

• Ghosts on the Banke is a family-friendly Halloween event. Trick-or-treat outdoors from house to historic house at the Strawbery Banke Museum (14 Hancock St., Portsmouth, 433-1100, strawberybanke.org) with jack-o’-lanterns lighting the way in Portsmouth’s oldest waterfront neighborhood. Meet wayward pirates and a mysterious fortune-teller, listen to ghostly tales, construct a giant spider web, dance to tunes and play games for prizes. This event will take place Thursday, Oct. 24, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 25, at 5 and 6:30 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 26, at 5 and 6:30 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 27, at 6 p.m. Tickets are $12 for adults and children, less for infants and Museum members.

• Manchester City Library (405 Pine St., Manchester, 624-6550, manchesterlibrary.org) will partner with local historian Stan Garrity for a walk through Manchester’s forgotten history in a Tour of the Valley Street Cemetery on Friday, Oct. 25, from 2 to 4 p.m. Hear the fascinating stories of some of the Cemetery’s more obscure residents. The event will start in the rotunda of the Main Library at 2 p.m. From there, participants will walk as a group to the cemetery for the tour before returning to the Main Library rotunda around 4 p.m. This is a free event, but pre-registration on the Library’s website is recommended.

• The Witch of Weston Tower is back and haunting McIntyre Ski Area (50 Chalet Way, Manchester, 622-6159, mcintyreskiarea.com) Oct. 25 through Oct. 27. Take a scenic chairlift ride and travel the treacherous trail on a tractor to the Witch of Weston Tower. Guests are welcome to climb the stairs of Weston Tower and see the most spooktacular views of Manchester. Proceeds benefit the Manchester Historic Association. Hours are Friday, Oct. 25, 4 to 8 p.m.; Saturday, Oct. 26, noon to 6 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 27, noon to 6 p.m. Tickets are $5 to $22 and are available at ticketscandy.com.

• On Friday, Oct. 25, there will be a Downtown Trick-or-Treat and Zombie Walk on Main Street in Rochester. Businesses downtown will be handing out candy from 4 to 6 p.m. Zombies will be taking a new route from the Citizens Bank parking lot to Bridge Street, around River Street and back to North Main Street.

• InTown Concord (49 S. Main St., Concord, 226-2150, intownconcord.org) will host a Halloween Howl on Friday, Oct. 25, on Main Street from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. There will be Wicked fun on Main Street for community trick-or-treating, festive costumes and decor, and plenty of ghoulish games and activities for the whole family to enjoy.

• Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone (PG, 2001) will screen at Chunky’s in Manchester, chunkys.com, Friday, Oct. 25, through Wednesday, Oct. 30, at 6:30 p.m.

• The Park Theatre (19 Main St., Jaffrey, 532-9300, theparktheatre.org) is hosting Halloweenie at the Park, featuring some scary movies. On Friday, Oct. 25, there will be a showing of the 1960 movie 13 Ghosts (featuring “Illusion-O” glasses to see the ghosts) at 6:30 p.m. On Saturday, Oct. 26, Yellow Brick Road (PG, 1984), a horror movie filmed in Lancaster, New Hampshire, will play at 7 p.m., followed by a live Zoom interview with the director. On Thursday, Oct. 31, beginning at 4 p.m., the theater will continue its tradition of giving out treats to trick-or-treaters, as well as screenings of 1987’s The Monster Squad at 6 p.m. and Little Shop of Horrors with Jack Nicholson at 7:45 p.m. Visit theparktheatre.org/halloweenie for event details and to purchase tickets.

• Nosferatu (1922), a silent film directed by F.W. Murnau, will be presented with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis at the Derry Opera House (29 W. Broadway, Derry) on Friday, Oct. 25, at 7 p.m.

• Disney’s Descendants will be presented by Epping Community Theater (38 Ladds Lane, Epping, eppingtheater.org) on Friday, Oct. 25, at 7 p.m.; Saturday, Oct. 26, at 2 and 7 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 27, at 2 p.m. Tickets cost $20 for adults, $17 for seniors and $15 for ages 12 and under.

• The New Hampshire Pumpkin Festival will take place Saturday, Oct. 26, starting with a road race at 9 a.m. and running through a laser show at 7 p.m. Events include an arts and crafts fair, a pet parade, food trucks, lots of pumpkin activities and more. See nhpumpkinfestival.com.

• The Wilton Main Street Association will host The Haunting of Wilton on Saturday, Oct. 26, with various events throughout the day. At 2 p.m. there will be a costume parade down Main Street, followed by trick-or-treating with Main Street merchants. There will be a Bizarre Bazaar, a Haunted trail and more.Visit visitwilton.com.

• The third annual Halloween Howl Hustle for Housing is a 5K that will benefit Fellowship Housing Opportunities. The adult 5K costs $40 and will take place from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Oct. 26, at Masonic Lodge (53 Iron Works Road, Concord). Registration will end on Thursday, Oct. 24, at 11:59 p.m. To register visit runsignup.com/ halloweenhowlhustle5k.

• The Amherst Orthodontics Trick or Trot 3K will be held at Backyard Brewery and Kitchen (1211 S. Mammoth Road, Manchester, 623-3545, backyardbrewerynh.com) on Saturday, Oct. 26, at 11 a.m. Participants ages 9 and up are welcome to participate in the race, and preregistration is encouraged. Registration costs between $15 and $25 at runreg.com/trick-or-trot-3k. Pre-race activities will begin at 9:30 a.m. and will include a Kids’ Halloween Festival with magic, animals, and vendors, a magic show on stage, and Lil’ Pumpkin Fun Runs (100m dash) for young children. Visit millenniumrunning.com/trick-or-trot.

• The Exeter Parks and Recreation Department is hosting a Halloween parade and costume contest on Saturday, Oct. 26, at Swasey Parkway. The costume contest will be judged at 10:30 a.m., and the parade will begin at 11 a.m. From noon to 3 p.m. there will be trick-or-treating downtown. Visit exeternh. gov.

• Join the town of Merrimack for its 32nd annual Halloween Party on Saturday, Oct. 26, from noon to 3 p.m. at Wasserman Park (116 Naticook Road). There will be a costume contest and a pumpkin race car derby along with free games, crafts and face painting. Visit merrimackparksandrec.org.

• The 18th annual Dover Zombie Walk will take place on Saturday, Oct. 26, at 2 p.m. Zombies will assemble at the Dover Chamber of Commerce and shuffle their carcasses down to Henry Law Park for games, goodies, giveaways and costume contests for kids and adults alike. Visit facebook.com/doverzombiewalk.

• The Players’ Ring Theatre (105 Marcy St., Portsmouth, playersring.org) will presentFright Night!, a horror-themed comedy night presented by the improv and comedy group Stranger Than Fiction, on Saturday, Oct. 26, at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Admission is $15.

• Dracula will be presented by PUSH Physical Theatre on Saturday, Oct. 26, at 7 p.m. at Stockbridge Theatre (5 Pinkerton St., Derry, pinkertonacademy.org/stockbridge-theatre). Tickets cost $15 to $35.

• Monster Mash Teen Cabaret will be presented by the Majestic Academy Teens at the Majestic Studio Theatre (880 Page St., Manchester, majestictheatre.net) on Saturday, Oct. 26, at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $15.

• Kiki’s Delivery Service (G, 1989) will screen Saturday, Oct. 26, through Wednesday, Oct. 30, at Apple Cinemas in Hooksett and Merrimack, O’neil Cinemas at Brickyard Square in Epping, Cinemark in Salem and Regal Fox Run. See FathomEvents.com for times and for which screenings are dubbed or subtitled..

• Bedford Event Center (379 S. River Road, Bedford, 997-7741, bedfordeventcenter.com) will host the second annual Fall Artisan Fair Sunday, Oct. 27, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. This free event will include food trucks, dozens of local art vendors, free Halloween-themed kids’ activities, and trick-or-treating.

• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (PG-13, 2024) will screen at Chunky’s (707 Huse Road, Manchester, chunkys.com) as part of a five-course farmer’s dinner on Sunday, Oct. 27, at 7 p.m. Dinners (with a vegetarian option) are $75 per person, $110 with a wine package.

• There will be a lecture, “The Capital Crime of Witchcraft: What the Primary Sources Tell Us,” at Rodgers Memorial Library (194 Derry Road, Hudson, 886-6030, rodgerslibrary.org) on Tuesday, Oct. 29, from 6:30 to 7:45 p.m. This presentation will explore an array of prosecutions in 1600s-era New England. This is a free event, but pre-registration is recommended.

• The Lon Chaney Halloween Creepfest Double Feature brings The Unknown (1927) and West of Zanzibar (1928) featuring live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis at the Rex Theatre in Manchester (palacetheatre.org) on Wednesday, Oct. 30, at 7 p.m.

• Fathom Events will screen Coraline (PG, 2009) in celebration of its 15th anniversary with shows on Thursday, Oct. 31, and Friday, Nov. 1, at Cinemark Rockingham Park in Salem (4 and 7 p.m.) and Regal Fox Run in Newington (1 and 7 p.m.). See FathomEvents.com.

• Vampire Circus will offer a mix of circus cabaret and theater on Thursday, Oct. 31, at 7 p.m. at the Chubb Theatre at Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord; ccanh.com). Tickets cost $44 through $64.

• The Portsmouth Halloween Parade will take place on Halloween, Thursday, Oct. 31, at 7 p.m. Visit portsmouthhalloweenparade.org for the parade route and details.

• The Players’ Ring Theatre (105 Marcy St., Portsmouth, playersring.org) will present The Fall of the House of Usher Thursday, Oct. 31, through Sunday, Nov. 17. The Halloween opening night of this adaptation of an Edgar Allen Poe short story will be presented at 9 p.m.; thereafter shows will be at 7 p.m. on Thursdays; 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and 2:30 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets cost $29 general admission; $26 for students, 65+, military and first responders. A Players’ Ring email described the show as PG-13.

• A live production of Beetlejuice will be presented by Riverbend Youth Company Friday, Nov. 1, through Sunday, Nov. 3, at the Amato Center for the Arts (56 Mont Vernon St., Milford, amatocenter.org/riverbend-youth-company). Shows are at 7:30 pm. on Friday and Saturday and 2:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday; tickets cost $15, $10 for seniors and children.

• Stay with that Halloweeny vibe of the supernatural at Magic Rocks with illusionist Leon Eitenne on Saturday, Nov. 2, at 4 and 7:30 p.m. at the Rex Theatre (23 Amherst St., Manchester, palacetheatre.org). Tickets cost $35.

Spooky season of fun

Movies, dances, meals and more grown-up Halloween fun

Compiled by John Fladd
[email protected]

If a scary movie is more your speed or you want to start your Halloween partying before the big week, here are some events aimed at the 18+ (and in some cases 21+) crowd.

• Enjoy a Halloween Wine Cave Igloo Experience at Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com) until the end of October. This private wine tasting will be in a darkened igloo where blacklights enhance the experience. Choose from a flight of four wines, or indulge in a single glass. There will be a complimentary charcuterie board with nuts, meats, cheeses and crackers. Tickets are $100, with additional guests for $50. Reservations at the Averill House website.

• Enjoy a spooky evening on the water with a Haunted Winnipesaukee Ghost Story Cruise by Mount Washington Cruises (211 Lakeside Ave., Laconia, 366-5531, cruisenh.com). The cruise will last from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights through Saturday, Oct. 26. Tickets are $60 each and available at cruisenh.com.

• The Conjuring (R, 2013) will screen at Chunky’s (707 Huse Road, Manchester, chunkys.com) on Thursday, Oct. 17, at 7:30 p.m. as part of the October Classic Horror Movie Collection series. Tickets cost $5 (plus fees), which also gets you a $5 food voucher for use that night.

• Test your It and Misery knowledge at Stephen King movies trivia with Heather at Chunky’s (707 Huse Road, Manchester, chunkys.com) on Thursday, Oct. 17, at 7:30 p.m.

• The Seacoast Repertory Theatre (125 Bow St., Portsmouth, 433-4472, seacoastrep.org) presents Nick Dear’s adaptation of Frankenstein on Thursday, Oct. 17, at 7:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 18, at 8 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 19, at 2 and 8 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 23, at 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 26, at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 27, at 2 p.m. Tickets start at $37. The website recommends the show for 18+ as it has “graphic depictions of violence and sexual assault [and] adult content.”

• Brookline Events Center (269 Route 130, Brookline, 673-4474) will hold a Halloween DJ dance with Bernie & Bob on Friday, Oct. 18, at 7 p.m. The cost is $10 at the door.

• Auspicious Brew (1 Washington St., Dover, 953-7240, auspiciousbrew.com) will host a Spooky Soirée Drag Night with Raya Sunshine on Friday, Oct. 18, at 8 p.m., tickets $12, and a Fall Swap & Sip (Halloween costume edition) on Tuesday, Oct. 22, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. — bring five to 10 fall garments, housewares or Halloween costumes to swap.

• Red Rivers Theatres (11 S. Main St., Concord, redrivertheatres.org) will hold its annual screening with audience participation of Rocky Horror Picture Show (R, 1975) on Fridays and Saturdays from Oct. 18 through Oct. 26 at 10 p.m. Tickets are $25 for this 18+ event (16+ with an adult). “We provide the props, you provide the costumes, and we all enjoy a night of interactive, movie-going naughtiness. There will be prizes for best costumes so we expect you to BRING IT! Audience participation is expected — this is NOT a quiet night out at the movies!” said the website, which specifies no outside props are allowed.

• Join the Royal Palace Dance Studio (373 S. Willow St., Manchester, 621-9119, royalpalacedance.com) Saturday, Oct. 19, at 6:30 p.m. for a sultry Halloween Tango & Tarot Social with complimentary drinks, appetizers, a psychic, and festive fun. Tickets are $45 through eventbrite.com.

• Salsa Secrets Studio (2800 Lafayette Road, Portsmouth, 584-2985) will hold a Spooky Dance Social on Saturday, Oct. 19, beginning with an intermediate dance class at 7:30 p.m., followed by social dancing until 10:30 p.m. See salsasecretsdance.com.

• An unrated release of Saw (2004) will screen as part of a celebration of its 20th anniversary via Fathom Events on Sunday, Oct. 20, at Apple Cinemas in Merrimack and Hooksett (at 7 p.m.), Cinemark Rockingham Park in Salem (4 and 7 p.m.), O’neil Brickyard Cinemas in Epping (4 and 7 p.m.) and Regal Fox Run in Newington (4 and 7 p.m.) as well as Wednesday, Oct. 23, at Apple Cinemas in Merrimack and Hooksett (at 7 p.m.), Cinemark Rockingham Park in Salem (7 p.m.), O’neil Brickyard Cinemas in Epping (4:25 and 7 p.m.) and Regal Fox Run in Newington (4 and 7 p.m.). See fathomevents.com.

• It’s Boo-ze and Cookies “A Halloween Cookie Decorating Class with Drinks” at The Hill Bar & Grille (McIntyre Ski Area, 50 Chalet Way in Manchester) on Wednesday, Oct. 23, at 6:30 p.m. Tickets cost $45 for one ticket, $80 for two and include a beer or wine (or non-alcoholic drink), four cookies, decorating materials and instruction, according to a post on The Hill’s Facebook page where you can purchase tickets. Children welcome with an adult, the post said.

• Test your knowledge of frightening films at a 21+ Horror Movie Trivia Night at Chunky’s Cinema Pub (707 Huse Road, Manchester, 206-3888, chunkys.com) on Thursday, Oct. 24, at 7 p.m. Gather your team to crown yourself the ultimate fan with a Chunky’s Gift Card for the top three teams. $6 will secure a spot and a $5 food voucher. Be advised: Each player needs to purchase a ticket; one ticket does not reserve an entire team.

• Also at Chunky’s Cinema Pub (707 Huse Road, Manchester, 206-3888, chunkys.com) there will be a screening of the original Halloween(1978, R) on Thursday, Oct. 24, at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $5, which gets a food voucher that can be used on the night of the viewing.

• To Share Brewing (720 Union St., Manchester, tosharebrewing.com) will offer a Beer & Candy Pairing Thursday, Oct. 24, through Sunday, Oct. 27. The pairing of an assortment of To Share brews and classic Halloween candy will only last as long as the candy, so get in early.

• Catch the murder mystery dinner show Death of a Gangster at the BNH Stage (16 S. Main St., Concord, 225-1111, ccanh.com) on Saturday, Oct. 26, at 4 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $48.75.

• It’s the Buzz, Brews & Boos Halloween Party at The Hill Bar & Grille (McIntyre Ski Area, 50 Chalet Way in Manchester) on Saturday, Oct. 26, from 7 to 10 p.m. Tickets cost $40 and are available through The Hill’s Facebook post about the event, which describes the 21+ party as featuring Rock 101’s Greg and the Morning Buzz, a Halloween contest, a DJ, an appetizer buffet and more.

• The Rocky Horror Picture Show will return to Chunky’s Cinema Pub (707 Huse Road, Manchester, 206-3888, chunkys.com) on Saturday, Oct. 26, at 9 p.m. This is a one-night-only viewing party with props and costumes encouraged. Tickets cost $10.

• The Seacoast Repertory Theatre (125 Bow St., Portsmouth, seacoastrep.org) will present The Rocky Horror Picture Show Live! On Wednesday, Oct. 30, at 8 p.m.; Thursday, Oct. 31, at 8 and 11:59 p.m., and Friday, Nov. 1, at 8 p.m. “Make no mistake, this is not a showing of the classic film — this is a fully produced, spectacular production of the original stage show, featuring a top tier cast of wild & untamed performers and an electric live band,” according to the website. No props. Tickets start at $37.

• Chunky’s (707 Huse Road, Manchester, chunkys.com) will hold a 21+ screening of 2001’s Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone on Thursday, Oct. 31, at 7 p.m. Costumes are encouraged (free admission to a future movie for those who show up in Harry Potter gear) and the event will feature specialty themed cocktails available for purchase, according to the website.

Arts tours, vineyard visits, historic sites and more half-day road trip ideas

Take a tour

Meet the artists and craftspeople and their community with a self-guided tour

By Zachary Lewis
[email protected]

Demystify oil painting, sculpting and more by venturing out on one of the many studio tours offered by art communities in New Hampshire this fall.

The Monadnock Art/Friends of the Dublin Art Colony Open Studio Tour is the perfect event at which to see artists in their natural habitat.

Sue Weller, president of the board of the Monadnock Art Tour, is impressed by “the amazing art that just flows through this event.”

“It’s really been a privilege to be working with so many wonderful people,” Weller said. “We have an amazing board. It’s all volunteer. Everybody works really hard to pull this event off,” she said.

Many artists moved to the Monadnock region during the mid-19th century. “I think they gravitated because of the presence of Mount Monadnock and its power and allure, and so we had watercolorists and oil painters and all kinds of artists come to the Dublin area,” Weller said. Abbott Handerson Thayer was an important figure that the artists wanted to learn from as well.

“In 1995 this group of folks, local artists in the Dublin area, got together, became Monadnock Art, Friends of the Dublin Art Colony, and they started to open their studios and create this beautiful tour so that the art appreciation of this area would continue,” Weller said.

This is their 28th year, with 65 studios and more than 80 artists for visitors to see.

Rose Lowry does marketing for the organization and explains the tour process: “It’s free,” Lowry said. “It’s a self-guided tour. So people either find us online and use the map that’s online. And then we have … 10,000 brochures. Practically dropped them from airplanes, you know, put them in stores and post offices just to get the word out.”

“Rose does this amazing job of putting this map together…,” Weller said. “You could use GPS now or, you know, just sort of follow the written map and go and see the artists in their working studios, and talk to them and get a sense of what their inspiration is and how they communicate, how they work, how they do their art. It’s just really extraordinary.”

“We get people from all over the country, literally,” Lowry said.

Weller agreed: “Yeah, and it’s really neat because we basically cover these seven towns of Harrisville, Dublin, Hancock, Peterborough, Sharon, Marlborough, Jaffrey.”

“There are these beautiful orange maple leaf signs that say Art Tour and the dates,” Weller said, “which are Oct. 12 through the 14th. And then each of the studios has a very unique black and white sign that has the studio number on it so … the drivers can easily follow those signs to the studio. So it’s really fun. You get to drive down roads you probably have never been at before and all of a sudden there’s this wonderful studio that is open to you.”

Another art tour takes place via the Center for the Arts. This year that tour is on Saturday, Oct. 12, and Sunday, Oct. 13.

“We love to offer open studios to our community,” said Dena Stahlheber, the Executive Director of the Center for the Arts. “Our particular organization, our nonprofit, serves the 12 towns surrounding and including New London. But we promote, support and connect our artists of all ages in the literary, performing and visual arts arenas to enrich our community through the arts.”

Stahlheber says she is “always surprised and amazed by the talent that lives here and loves to work here. So it’s really just a joy to be a part of it.” Besides New London, studios included in the tour will be in Andover, Sunapee, Danbury, Bradford and Springfield. Some artists will be sharing studios as well. “We have, at this year’s Open Studios … 14 different artists across the towns that we serve. And most of them are home studios. Some of them are coming to a shared location. But it’s a great way for our community to see the creative inspiration, the place in which our artists are getting inspired, making their art.”

Why would people be interested in checking out one of the studios?

“You get to ask questions, to ask about their approach, look at the different types of things they’re doing, see the creative spaces,” Stahlheber said. “Some of the home studios are stunning. Some of these have been built up over the years and are just amazing. And I think it’s really fun if you enjoy arts and creativity to see the different ways artists and people, you know, approach it.”

Depending on how much of a scenic fall road trip is in the cards, participants can cover a lot of ground. “It’s free to the public, which is wonderful. And, you know, depending on where you live, some of the artists may be closer, and some may be a little bit farther, but people can pick and choose where they want to go and when between the hours that are noted, depending on the time period.”

Deerfield Arts also puts on a tour of various studios in Deerfield. On their website they mention how every year “the artists and craftspeople of Deerfield, New Hampshire, offer the Deerfield Arts Tour — a self-guided open house tour of our studios and work.” In total there are 13 different locations and 21 different artists that participants could expect to visit if they decided to see every spot on the map.

The Deerfield Arts Tour has taken place every year since 2003 and is made up of artists who live or work in Deerfield, many having been recognized throughout the state for the high caliber of their work, according to the same website. Participants in the tour represent a mix of contemporary and traditional styles and a variety of media.

In November, the Route 3 Art Trail Tour, an effort by Twiggs Gallery and others, will run Saturday, Nov. 2, at 17 locations in Concord, Pembroke, Boscawen and Franklin, according to the event’s Facebook page. See route3arttrail.com for the map to this event.

All these art tours will include various styles. Among others, you can see potters, sculptors, photographers, textile artists, painters using different media, glass artists, wood turners and furniture makers.

Rose Lowry summation of the Monadnock Art Open Studio tour applies to them all.

“It’s absolutely beautiful and you go to the cute little towns,” Lowry said. “It’s a great journey.”

Hit the road with these tours

Center for the Arts Open Studios
When: Saturday, Oct. 12, and Sunday, Oct. 13
Towns: New London, Andover, Sunapee, Danbury, Bradford, and Springfield
More info: centerfortheartsnh.org

The Monadnock Art Open StudioTour/Friends of the Dublin Art Colony
When: Saturday, Oct. 12, through Monday, Oct. 14
Towns: Harrisville, Dublin, Hancock, Peterborough, Sharon, Marlborough, Jaffrey
More info: monadnockart.org

New Hampshire Wool Arts 41st Annual Tour
When: Saturday, Oct. 12, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 13, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Towns: Antrim, Bennington, Deering, Greenfield, Lyndeborough (each location is a farm and also features other artists and craftspeople)
More info: woolartstournh.com

Deerfield Arts Tour
When: Saturday, Oct. 19, and Sunday, Oct. 20
More info: deerfieldarts.com

Route 3 Art Trail Tour
When: Saturday, Nov. 2, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Towns: Concord, Pembroke, Boscawen, Franklin
More info: route3arttrail.com

One passport, 21 museums

NH Heritage Museum Trail welcomes visitors

By Zachary Lewis
[email protected]

The New Hampshire Heritage Museum Trail Passport Program allows visitors to experience 21 different museums. Each passport is valued at $150 but they are available for purchase at participating museums for only $30, according to the program’s website.

Specifically, the Trail Passport provides buyers with one admission ticket to each of those 21 museums that are part of the museum trail. The Passport is good for one person for one year from the date of purchase, and it’s non-transferable. The Passport includes brief summaries of the museums organized by location and category and can be stamped upon entry.

According to the website, each member museum is recognized as a significant cultural institution that preserves and promotes an understanding and appreciation of a shared national and state heritage.

The 21 museums combined present 300 years of history by hosting more than 100,000 historical artifacts, which are viewed by over 200,000 patrons every year, according to the same website.

NH Heritage Museum Trail

Passport cost: $30
More info: nhmuseumtrail.org/passport

Participating museums:
Albacore Park (Portsmouth, ussalbacore.org)
American Independence Museum (Exeter, independencemuseum.org)
Aviation Museum of NH (Londonderry, aviationmuseumofnh.org)
Canterbury Shaker Village (Canterbury, shakers.org)
Castle in the Clouds (Moultonborough, castleintheclouds.org)
Currier Museum of Art (Manchester, currier.org)
Lake Winnipesaukee Museum (Laconia, lwhs.us)
Lee Scouting Museum (Manchester, scoutingmuseum.nhscouting.org)
Libby Museum of Natural History (Wolfeboro, libbymuseum.org)
Millyard Museum (Manchester, manchesterhistoric.org)
Moffatt-Ladd House & Garden (Portsmouth, moffattladd.org)
Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum (Warner, indianmuseum.org)
Museum of the White Mountains (Plymouth State University in Plymouth, plymouth.edu/mwm)
NH Boat Museum (Wolfeboro, nhbm.org)
NH Historical Society (Concord, nhhistory.org)
New England Racing Museum (Loudon, nemsmuseum.com)
Portsmouth Historical Society (Portsmouth, portsmouthhistory.org)
Remick Country Doctor Museum & Farm (Tamworth, remickmuseum.org)
Strawbery Banke Museum (Portsmouth, strawberybanke.org)
Woodman Museum (Dover, woodmanmuseum.org)
Wright Museum of World War II (Wolfeboro, wrightmuseum.org)

History with UFOs and Ninja Turtles

Driving through time with roadside historical markers

By John Fladd
[email protected]

Francestown used to be famous for its soapstone. There used to be a double-decker bridge over the river in Suncook. Horace Greeley, the owner and founder of the New York Tribune, presidential candidate, and one of the fathers of westward expansion, was born in Milford in 1811. Colonel John Goffe didn’t actually live in Goffstown. You could spend a day or so in a research library learning these things; alternatively, you could read about them on roadside historical markers.

According to the New Hampshire Department of Transportation (dot.nh.gov) there are more than 16,000 miles of roads and highways in New Hampshire. It’s very difficult to drive for any distance in the state without seeing a green historical marker on the side of the road as you drive by. The New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources (nhdhr.dncr.nh.gov), the agency responsible for the markers, says there are more than 200 of them, spread across the state.

Michael Bruno is an expert in New Hampshire’s roadside historical markers. He is the author of Cruising New Hampshire History: A Guide to New Hampshire’s Roadside Historical Markers. He said that documenting the state’s markers involved traveling to every part of New Hampshire.

“I started [visiting the markers] in late 2015,” Bruno remembered, “and published in May of 2018. … I visited every marker at that time. There were 255. I visited every marker, photographed it, GPS tagged it, and then did a back story, learning a little bit more than the 12 to 14 lines of text that you had on the marker.”

The State of New Hampshire has been placing historical markers since the 1950s.

“It’s pretty amazing that the legislation happened in 1955,” Bruno said, “and by 1958 four markers were in place in the state.” One of the first three markers marked Horace Greeley’s birthplace near Milford. “That marker has like 35 words on the whole marker,” Bruno said. “It’s amazing that the story of a guy who founded the New York Tribune is on a marker with 35 words.”

Bruno hears from a lot of people who use his guide to take road trips from marker to marker, across the state. He thinks the Covid epidemic was a turning point in public interest in the markers.

“[During lockdown] people needed something to do,” he said. “I remember this one couple from somewhere in Sullivan County.” They emailed Bruno. “They were like, ‘We’re supposed to go to Florida, we can’t go.’ So they had a Mazda Miata and they would pack a picnic every day and go visit markers. Every day was a journey. The lady wrote to me and said, ‘I learned so much about our state. I didn’t realize I had so much history in my own community and region.’ So it was kind of eye-opening.”

New Hampshire’s historical markers are not limited to the birthplaces of Revolutionary War figures, or obscure architecture. Animator, film maker and historical marker enthusiast Griffin Hansen (youtube.com/user/Gruppetstudios) was the force behind placing a historical marker near a manhole cover in Dover to commemorate the origin of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who first appeared in a comic book written there. (Dover, not the manhole.) Hansen and his co-director Anna Chavez worked together to get approval from the State for the marker. He explained that getting permission from the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources (nhdhr.dncr.nh.gov) is a three-part process. “One, get 25 signatures from people in New Hampshire, Two, write up the text that you want for the marker. And this is a new one, but the third one is to get the town’s approval as well. The town’s permission is a new thing. We didn’t get that permission because our marker was installed last year but it actually got approved a long time before that.”

Hansen speculated that the reason for the addition of the town approval part of the process is rooted in last year’s Elizabeth Gurley Flynn controversy. In May 2023, the Concord-located marker for Flynn was removed shortly after being installed after receiving opposition from some on the New Hampshire Executive Council. According to a press release at the time from the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources Flynn, who was born in Concord in 1890, was “a well-known labor, women’s rights and civil liberties activist.” Identifying Flynn as “The Rebel Girl,” the marker highlighted Flynn’s involvement in the labor movement and her imprisonment after joining the Communist Party, according to Hippo coverage from last year. According to Wikipedia, Flynn died in the Soviet Union in 1964 and received a state funeral in Red Square before her body was sent to Chicago for burial.

Hansen said that in his experience the marker approval process takes about a year.

“I run an organization that I founded, which installs historical markers across the country,” he said, “and we actually use the same historical marker manufacturer as the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources, so that is actually very timely for them to only take a year.”

Hansen’s personal favorite marker is in Lincoln.

“The greatest marker in the state of New Hampshire — ask anybody — is going to be the Betty and Barney Hill marker,” he said. The Hills reported being abducted by extraterrestrials near Lincoln in 1961. “I have had a lot of people tell me that they’re very thankful that Anna and I put up a historical marker for the Ninja Turtles and they think it’s really cool, they think it adds to the culture, and I’m very flattered, but I do not have any illusions about the fact that it will never be as cool as the UFO historical marker, which I am proud to cede the throne to.”

Guide to markers
Cruising New Hampshire History: A Guide to New Hampshire’s Roadside Historical Markers by Michael Bruno (Lloyds Hill Publishing, 2018) can be found in many New Hampshire libraries or purchased online.

10 Historical Road Markers

Marker 0110, Concord, Ratification of the Federal Constitution, on the corner of Church and Bouton streets. There was suspense and drama surrounding New Hampshire’s decision to ratify the Constitution. The state’s approval ultimately provided the two-thirds majority needed to adopt it. This is one of Michael Bruno’s favorite markers.

Marker 0184, Bow, Turkey Pond – 1938 Hurricane, Route 13, approximately 0.7 miles from the Bow Town Line. In 1938 New England was struck by a Category 3 Hurricane that decimated towns and forests across the region. Some forests have not yet completely recovered.

Marker 0208, Manchester, St. Mary’s Bank Credit Union/La Caisse Populair Sainte-Marie, 418-420 Notre Dame Ave., Manchester, in front of the America’s Credit Union Museum (acumuseum.org). Appealing to enthusiasts of credit unions and Franco-American history, this marker has two sides, one in English and one in French.

Marker 0126, Derry, Robert Frost, Route 28, 1.7 miles south of the Derry Rotary. Legendary poet Robert Frost lived and farmed in Derry between 1900 and 1911.

Marker 0166, Londonderry, Londonderry Town Pound, Route 128 (Mammoth Road) and Old Stage Road. “Stray farm animals were confined here by elected ‘pounders,’ or reeves, until ransomed by their owners.”

Marker 0072, Salem, Mystery Hill, Route 28, south of Route 111. This marker describes America’s Stonehenge.

Marker 0221, Salem, Armenian Settlement, Cross Street at the intersection of Brady Road, near the Armenian Church. One of the often forgotten stories of New Hampshire’s immigrant past is that of Armenians who settled here after fleeing persecution in Europe.

Marker 0271, Brookline, Fresh Pond Ice Co., Route 13. Before electric refrigeration, Northern New England supplied ice to sweaty people around the world. At its peak the Fresh Pond Ice Co. employed 250 people and harvested 100,000 tons of ice each year.

Marker 0132, Hooksett, New Hampshire Canal System, Merrimack Street and Lambert Town Park. In their day, before the coming of the railroads, canals were a state-of-the-art method of transporting cargo. This marker describes some of New Hampshire’s canals and the artifacts of them that can still be seen.

Marker 0143, Weare, East Weare Village, Route 77 and South Sugar Hill Road. East Weare used to be a town. Now it’s under water. According to its marker, it “was sacrificed for the Everett Flood Control Project” in 1960.

10 visits gets you a sticker!
The New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources website (nhdhr.dncr.nh.gov) has a link to a free computer/smartphone app to locate any NHDHR-approved historical marker. It can be used on a desktop computer or bookmarked for use on a phone.

Dashing through merlot

Jingle Bells Winery tour is becoming a holiday tradition

By John Fladd
[email protected]

If you’re looking for a low-stress, fun way to explore New Hampshire this fall, Beth Waite thinks wine might be the answer. Waite is the General Manager of Averill House Vineyard in Brookline and one of the creators of the Jingle Bells Winery Tour.

“The tour is a really great adventure,” she said, “for our guests to tour New Hampshire and visit 15 participating [wineries] throughout New Hampshire and be able to sample four different wines from each catalog. This is actually a seven-week self-guided tour.”

Waite said the tour was designed to allow small groups to celebrate and enjoy each other’s company.

“This is meant for friends and families and wine lovers. A great opportunity to get out and, you know, enjoy the holiday season with each other,” she said.

Each winery will provide each Tour guest with a flight of four of its wines, a snack and a holiday ornament. Waite said the snack is important as a palate-cleanser between wines but also provides an insight into how different wines pair with food.

“There are some really fun options that some of the wineries do,” she said. “I know our customers’ favorite is over at Flag Hill Winery — they’ll do a meatball, or there might be more of a sweet option, like chocolate. So the snacks vary, depending on the location.”

Different wineries will showcase their wines in different ways.

“Here at Averill House Vineyard, we do a kind of an ala carte [tasting],” Waite said.”So the customer gets to choose which option they want to taste. And our menu can range about 30 different styles of wines, going from your whites to your reds to your sweets. And one of my favorite things that we do is we serve it with a cookie.”

As the Jingle Bells Tour becomes an established end-of-year event, Waite said, more and more people have been writing it into their calendars.

“The biggest thing is that families that are starting with us and they’re starting new traditions,” she said. “That’s been something I’ve been noticing over the previous years, that we’re getting repeat customers from all over, whether that’s Maine or Connecticut, Rhode Island, and especially us here in New Hampshire. And the event grows each year, you know, so this year we’re hoping to see about 700 participants coming through.”

Jingle Bells Winery Tour

When: Saturday, Nov. 16, through Sunday, Dec. 29. Wineries will be open for the Tour Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Some wineries will have additional hours.

Tickets: A single ticket costs $65; a couples ticket is $125. Tickets are available at eventbrite.com; find a link on the event’s Facebook page. Guests will be able to sample a tasting flight of four wines from each of the participating locations. They will also get a snack and an ornament.

Participating wineries:

Alpine Garden Winery (1257 Route 302, Bartlett, 374-5076, alpinegardenwinery.com)

Appolo Vineyards (49 Lawrence Road, Derry, 421-4675, appolovineyards.com)

Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com)

Black Bear Vineyard (289 New Road, Salisbury, 648-2811, blackbearvineyard.com)

Cabana Falls Winery (80 Peterborough St., Suite 2, Jaffrey, 249-6577, cabanafallswinery.com)

Crazy Cat Winery (365 Lake St., Bristol, 217-0192, crazycatwinery.com)

Flag Hill Winery (297 N. River Road, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com)

Front Four Cellars (13 Railroad Ave, Wolfeboro, 633-5433, frontfourcellars.com)

Gilmanton Winery & Vineyard (528 Meadow Pond Road, Gilmanton, 267-9463, gilmantonwinery.com)

Hermit Woods Winery & Eatery (72 Main St., Meredith, 253-7968, hermitwoods.com)

LaBelle Winery (345 Route 101, Amherst, and 14 Route 111, Derry, 672-9898, labellewinery.com)

Seven Birches Winery (22 S. Mountain Drive, Lincoln, 745-7550, sevenbirches.com)

Sweet Baby Vineyard (260 Stage Road, Hampstead, 347-1738, sweetbabyvineyard.com)

The Summit Winery (719 Route 12, Westmoreland, 852-8025, thesummitwinery.com)

White Mountain Winery (2724 White Mountain Highway, North Conway, 356-9463, whitemountainwinery.com)

Meet authors and browse their works at the first New Hampshire Book Festival

Friday night, New Hampshire’s first statewide book festival will kick off in Concord. According to its founder, the New Hampshire Book Festival was born out of a passion readers have for the written word, authors, and meeting like-minded book enthusiasts.

Emilie Christie Burack and Sarah McCraw Crow are both authors and close friends. They used to meet frequently to sit together while they wrote, sometimes independently, sometimes in collaboration. A lot of the time they would meet at the café in Gibson’s Bookstore in downtown Concord.

“For years, we’ve been talking about what a perfect place South Main Street would be for a book festival,” Burack said. “We both attended them as authors and participants in different states and it always kind of drove us nuts that New Hampshire was the one New England state that didn’t have a statewide book festival. Finally, one day about a year ago in April, Sarah and I were talking about it again and I said, ‘Why don’t we just do it?’”

A statewide book festival was apparently an idea whose time had come.

“Authors really like to come to festivals,” Burack said, “and that’s why it’s very competitive for authors to get a spot at festivals. We were just inundated with authors reaching out to be on our rosters and publishers contacting us about their authors and, you know, we haven’t even had an event yet, so we were really thrilled by the interest that people had in coming out to this in New Hampshire.”

The festival will kick off on Friday, Oct. 4. The public face of the festival will begin with a keynote session by Jean Hanff Koretitz, the New York Times bestselling author of The Plot and its sequel, The Sequel. Writer and former longtime host of NHPR’s The Exchange Laura Knoy will be the moderator.

Knoy is eager to have a chance to discuss Koretitz’s work with her.

“I’ve got The Plot and The Sequel in front of me,” she said in a telephone interview. “They are thrillers, but the writing is, oh, just funny and sarcastic, but also rich and literary, I would say. They’re written in the third person, so from the point of view of an omniscient narrator. She does a fantastic job with it. It’s laugh-out-loud funny sometimes, but it’s obviously also a thriller. Like, things are happening and some of those things are a little bit terrifying.”

The keynote session is designed to give readers an insight into Koretitz’s work and her characters. Knoy will ask questions and take questions from the audience.

“I’ll introduce her and then we will do probably about a 20-minute interview,” Knoy said. ”Then I’ll turn to the audience for their questions. Then I’ll go back and do a little more interviewing, and then we’ll do a couple more audience questions. We’ll close it out in about an hour or an hour and 10 minutes.”

Knoy wants to examine some of the philosophical underpinnings of Koretitz’s writing.

“One key, key, key theme in both of these books,” she said, “is who owns ideas? Who owns a story? Who gets to tell that story? And that very interesting question is woven throughout both of these books.”

Eager as she is for the keynote session on Friday, festival co-founder Emilie Burack is even more excited for what will happen earlier in the day.

“We really wanted to reach out to children in schools all over the state,” Burack said, “and we wanted to give an opportunity to under-served schools to make sure that they could get to this book festival — that the kids could get to this book festival and meet live authors. And that’s why we’re starting on Friday, because we are having a special keynote [from childrens’ author] Kate DiCamillo, just for school children. It will be at 10 in the morning so the buses can bring the kids. We have heavily underwritten tickets and we also have a fund that was donated by the Judge Family Foundation, which is supporting the bus transportation. We did a lot of research and we realized why a lot of kids don’t come to these kinds of things is because the school district and the kids can’t afford the bus fees. So we’re underwriting a lot of buses coming in. People are coming in from as far away as Groveton, which is up in Coos County.”

Each child attending will get a first-edition copy of Kate DiCamillo’s new book that will be released the day before the Festival, Burak said. “The school show sold out in a day.”

On Saturday, a three-block section of Main Street will be cordoned off for Book Festival activities. There will be panel discussions with different groups of authors in three different venues: the main stage at the Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St.) for adult books, an outdoor KidLit Stage about a block away, and two poetry sessions, also at the Capitol Center.

New Hampshire Poet Laureate Jennifer Militello will be part of both poetry sessions, beginning with a Spotlight Session in the morning with Irish poet Paul Muldoon.

“This is a really rare New Hampshire appearance for Muldoon,” Militello said. “He is a premier award-winning poet who has won basically every major prize both in America and internationally.”

In the afternoon Militello will be part of a panel where poets will read poems around the theme of “Hope in Difficult Times.”

“We will be reading poems that consider the role of poetry as both a source of hope and a way to articulate struggles in a time of challenge in the current climate,” Militello said. “These are poets whose work I am familiar with and who I admire deeply. We have a poet, Oliver de la Paz, who is currently the Poet Laureate of Worcester in Massachusetts. We have Kate Marvin, who is from Maine, an excellent poet, and Tim Liorde, who’s a British poet. I think it’s really important for poets and other artists to reflect on these times and have conversations with the broader kind of reader public about what these things mean and how we can cope with them, but also just that we’re encountering them and that it’s important to feel things about them and express those feelings. And I think often that leads to an understanding that also catalyzes change.”

Panel discussions through the day will include literary topics as different from each other as Suspense and Mystery, Debut Novels, and Fantasy. Emilie Burack said the discussions will be especially fresh because all the authors on the panels have published novels within the past year. “All of the works at our festival are new works,” she said. “They’re 2024 releases. Even though many of these authors are very well-known and have written books in years past and have other titles behind their names, everyone that we have coming here are going to be people with fresh work. Many of the books are not coming out until just days before the festival. It gives it kind of a fun, exciting feel for New Hampshire.”

One of those authors is Matt Tavares, the author of Hoops, a graphic novel about an Indiana girls’ basketball team in the 1970s. He will be part of a panel called Graphic Novel Spotlight, Saturday afternoon. He said interacting with authors and readers at festivals like this is one of the best parts of writing work for children and teens.

“You kind of just go into it not really knowing what the conversation is going to be,” Tavares said, “but just being able to chat with a couple other children’s book creators is always something that I get a lot out of. It’s always interesting to hear questions from the audience, especially if we have a bunch of kids in the audience.” He has written and illustrated picture books before, but Hoops is Tavares’ first graphic novel. “It’s interesting,” he said. “I’ve really noticed a difference in the audience. With picture books you get a lot of questions about, ‘How did you do this?, How did you do that?’ I found with Hoops a lot of the questions are specifically about the characters, things that happened in the book, that kids are really thinking about, ‘Why did Lisa do this in this scene?’ They get so excited to meet the people who made the book that they’ve read 10 times.”

Even though the festival hasn’t happened yet, Emilie Burack said plans are already underway for next year’s event.

“We already have lots of thoughts,” she said. “We’re so excited. We don’t know what our panels are going to be, but we’ve had a lot of suggestions from people. There are a lot of people who are fans of horror. … and there’s also a big appetite for nonfiction. We don’t have nonfiction this year, but there’s just so much of that that people really, really love. We’ve created this [the Book Festival] from the beginning to be an annual event. We hope it becomes a beloved annual event and a not-to-be-missed New Hampshire thing every fall.”

NEW HAMPSHIRE BOOK FESTIVAL

Venues

The NH Book Festival takes place in downtown Concord

CCA Authors Stage (Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 S. Main St.)

KidLit Stage (NHBF Village, South Main Street)

Poetry Salon (Capitol Center for the Arts)

Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S Main St., 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) Immediately following each panel discussion, the authors will be at Gibson’s or at a Gibson’s tent for book signings.

Friday, Oct. 4

10 a.m. Children’s Keynote: Kate DiCamillo, author of Ferris and Hotel Balzaar (ticketed event), CCA Authors Stage

7 p.m. Inaugural Keynote: Jean Hanff Korelitz, author of The Sequel, with Laura Knoy, moderator (ticketed event), CCA Authors Stage

Saturday, Oct. 5

9 to 9:55 a.m.

Family Secrets: T. Greenwood, A.H. Kim, Sharon Wishnow and Shannon Bowring, with Julie Gerstenblatt, moderator. CCA Authors Stage.

Picture Books! Author/Illustrator Spotlight: Lita Judge, Jennifer Goldfinger, and Maryann Cocca-Leffler. KidLit Stage.

Poetry Spotlight: Paul Muldoon reads from his work. Intro by Jennifer Militello, NH Poet Laureate. Poetry Salon.

10:20 to 11:15 a.m.

Debuts: Kayla Min Andrews, Joseph Earl Thomas, Alina Grabowski and Vinson Cunningham, with David Moloney, moderator. CCA Authors Stage.

Earth Day Every Day — Kids Make a Better Tomorrow: Linda Sue Park, Evan Griffith and Melissa Stewart, with Amanda Gokee, moderator. KidLit Stage.

11:40 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Spotlight Conversation: Claire Messud and Ann Hood, with Katie Crouch, moderator. CCA Authors Stage.

MG Fantasy Spotlight:Kekla Magoon, MT Anderson, Lisa Stringfellow, with Erin Bowman, moderator. KidLit Stage.

1 to 1:55 p.m.

Suspense & Mystery:Sarah Stewart Taylor, Margot Douaihy, Edwin Hill and CB Bernard, with Margaret Porter, moderator. CCA Authors Stage.

Families: It’s Complicated: Michael Leali and Michael Stewart, with Virginia MacGregor, moderator. KidLit Stage.

2:20 to 3:15 p.m.

20th Century Historical Fiction: Marjan Kamali and Dawn Tripp, with Brinda Charry, moderator. CCA Authors Stage.

Graphic Novel Spotlight: Matt Tavares and Jannie Ho, with David Elliott, moderator. KidLit Stage.

Poetry Spotlight: Jennifer Militello, Oliver de la Paz, Cate Marvin and Tim Liardet. Poetry Salon.

3:40 to 4:20 p.m.

Epics, Quests, and Magic: Ann Dávila Cardinal, Mark Cecil, MT Anderson and Lyra Selene, with Jocelyn Winn, moderator. CCA Authors Stage.

Co-Authors: Two Pens are Better than One Terry Farish & Lochan Sharma and Donna Gephart & Lori Haskins Houran, with Kari Allen, moderator. KidLit Stage.

5 to 8:15 p.m.

Family Keynote: From Novel to Netflix: Kate DiCamillo, with Veronica Chao, moderator. Program and movie (ticketed event). CCA Authors Stage.

See nhbookfestival.org for more.

Eats with your books
In addition to Sue’s Kimbap House in the Capitol Center for the Arts (sueskimbaphouse.com), the Festival’s website says, “The festival will host several fabulous local food vendors in the festival village: Analog Wood-Fired Pizza, Batulo’s Kitchen, and Hackleboro Orchard, so you can find a snack or a meal easily.”

Lita Judge Q&A

Lita Judge is the author of Don’t Worry, Wuddles. She will be part of the panel discussion “Picture Books! Author-Illustrator Spotlight” at the New Hampshire Book Festival, Saturday, Oct. 5, at 9 a.m. She lives in Peterborough.

Could you tell me a little bit about your work?

I write and illustrate books for children and I work anywhere from preliterate wordless picture books all the way through YA, young adult. I’ve written a book called Mary’s Monster, which is a young adult novel in verse, fully illustrated. But a lot of my work is nonfiction, and the other half is whimsical fiction.

What will your session at the Book Festival be like?

It will be children’s book illustrators. We’re going to be sharing our process. I know we’re going to be talking about what inspires our stories, how we develop our characters, where do our stories come from, a little bit of the process of how we create and how we get together as well.

Will you be taking questions from the audience?

Yes. We always wish and hope that it will be young people [at the session], but you’d be surprised how often it’s adults — both librarians, teachers, and people who want to break into publishing. We try to read the audience and we’ve all talked about various things that we’d like to discuss and we have a Plan A, hoping that there’s youngsters, and Plan B, if it’s mostly adults.

What kinds of questions do you get from kids?

The kids I write for are at that stage where they’re learning how to ask questions. And so a lot of times they want to know about your favorite character. And they are so wrapped up in the story that the questions are kind of like as if you’re talking about a mutual friend, which I really like. They’re talking about your character as if it’s your friend that you’ve created, but it’s also their friend. And so I really love that.

If it’s more of an adult audience, what would a librarian, for instance, ask you?

A librarian is probably thinking more about your process and how you created your book, and maybe about the many layers to a picture book. I do a lot of fiction and nonfiction, but I always try to incorporate layers so that children of different ages can read it and that teachers can use it in classrooms for a topic. Like I wrote a book about the history of dogs and there’s a lot of history and evolution and 40,000 years of how dogs developed around humans. Teachers are going to be asking questions like that, like move them in and use that in a classroom.

What are you particularly looking forward to at this festival?

It’s always just so fun to connect with readers, and as a picture book author and illustrator, I know a lot of times the focus at every event is around authors. I like to share how much a picture book is for all ages, and that we as creators, when we’re drawing pictures, that’s constructing a story narrative in the same way that words do.

At the Festival

Here are authors and moderators participating at the NH Book Festival. Bio information is according to bios at nhbookfestival.org unless otherwise stated.

Moderators

• Kari Allen — Bio: Allen lives in New Hampshire and is an author and a teacher, according to her website. She has worked with the National Writing Project in New Hampshire as a teacher consultant, her bio says. Books: Children’s books including the Maddie and Mabel Series of children’s books about two sisters, the fifth of which, Maddie and Mabel Ready For Snow, is slated for release Nov. 19, and Little Golden Books about the Bee Gees and Julia Child. More info: kariallenwrites.com

• Erin Bowman — Bio: A New Hampshire resident, Bowman is the author of books for children and teens. Books: The Taken Trilogy (the final book of which, Forged, was released this year), Vengeance Road, Retribution Rails, the Edgar Award-nominated Contagion duology, The Girl and the Witch’s Garden and Dustborn, a 2021 release described on Amazon: “Delta of Dead River sets out to rescue her family from a ruthless dictator rising to power in the Wastes and discovers a secret that will reshape her world in this postapocalyptic Western.” More info: embowman.com

• Veronica Chao — Bio: Chao is editor of The Boston Globe Magazine. She has worked at the Boston Globe since 2007. More info: bostonglobe.com/magazine

• Brinda Charry — Bio: Charry is a professor of English at Keene State College and lives in Keene. Books: Her website describes her novel The East Indian: “Inspired by a historical figure, The East Indian tells the story of Tony, a native of the Indian subcontinent who came to colonial America.” She has also published several books and articles on the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, a collection of short fiction, and two other novels, her bio said. More info: brindacharry.com

• Katie Crouch — Bio: Crouch lives in Vermont and teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College. She has written essays for The New York Times, Glamour and other outlets. Books: Her 2021 novel Embassy Wife, about a woman posing as the wife of an American diplomat in Nigeria, was a Joyce Carol Oates Prize nominee and a recommended read from Time, EW, Buzzfeed and other sources; Kirkus Reviews called it “a sharp, funny, page-turning romp.” She’s also the author of Men and Dogs: A Novel (2010). More info: us.macmillan.com/author/katiecrouch

• David Elliott — Bio: Now an emeritus at Lesley University’s Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, where he taught for 20 years, Elliott spent time as “a cucumber washer in Greece, a popsicle stick maker in Israel, a teacher in Libya, and a singer in Mexico,” according to his bio. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife, the bio said. Books: Elliott is the award-winning author of more than 35 books for young people, including the picture books Finn Throws a Fit, Baabwaa and Wooliam and And Here’s to You!.He is also the author of three critically acclaimed YA verse novels: Bull, Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc and The Seventh Raven. More info: davidelliottbooks.com

• Julie Gerstenblatt — Bio: Her website describes her a native New Yorker now living in Rhode Island, a novelist, essayist and educator, and says she is a producer and on-air host for A Mighty Blaze.Books: Daughters of Nantucket is her debut novel: “Set against Nantucket’s Great Fire of 1846, this sweeping, emotional novel brings together three courageous women battling to save everything they hold dear,” her website says. More info: juliegerstenblatt.com

• Amanda Gokee — Bio: Gokee covers New Hampshire news for the Boston Globe, according to her bio; she co-writes the Globe N.H. Morning Report. More info: See bostonglobe.com.

• Marty Kelley — Bio: Kelley “spent his formative years drawing action-packed pictures of his teachers being eaten by dinosaurs,” according to his online biography. “Marty spent many years as a second grade teacher and loved it when students gave him pictures of himself being eaten by dinosaurs.” Books: Among the 30+ books he’s written and/or illustrated are Almost Everybody Farts (2017) and Almost Everybody Farts: The Reek-quel (2022), as well as the Molly Mac series and many more. More info: martykelley.com, which features activity sheets related to his books.

• Laura Knoy — Bio: Longtime host of NHPR’s The Exchange, Knoy now hosts the podcast ReadLocalNH and in 2022 she joined the Rudman Center at UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law as its Director of Community Engagement. Books: Knoy wrote a novel called The Shopkeeper of Alsace, which she describes on her website as “a dramatic family saga spanning the World Wars, based on a true story that unfolds in a unique, little-known region with a complex past: Alsace, France.” More info: lauraknoy.com

• Virginia Macgregor — Bio: Now a New Hampshire resident, Macgregor was born in Germany, lived on the island of Corsica until age 5, moved to Oxford in England and spent her early career teaching at British boarding schools, her bio said. Books: She has written five novels for adults — What Milo Saw (2014), The Return of Norah Wells (2016), Before I Was Yours (2017), You Found Me (2018) and The Children’s Secret (2021) — and two young adult novels, Wishbones (2017) and As Far As the Stars (2019). About The Children’s Secret, her website says: “one hot Saturday afternoon, at a back-to-school party, nine children sneak into a barn — and only eight come out unharmed.” More info: virginiamacgregor.com

• David Moloney — Bio: A graduate of Middlesex Community College and the University of Massachusetts Lowell, he now teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University. Books: Barker House (Bloomsbury 2020) revolves around a number of correctional officers at a fictional county jail in New Hampshire. More info: davidrmoloney.com

• Margaret Porter — Bio: “Margaret and her husband live in New England with their dog, dividing their time between an architecturally unique book-filled house in a small city and a waterfront cottage located on one of the region’s largest lakes,” according to her bio.

Books: Contemporary novels A Change of Location (2024) and Sequins and Starlight (2025), historical fiction The Myrtle Wand (2022), The Limits of Limelight (2021), Beautiful Invention: A Novel of Hedy Lamarr (2018), and others. More info: margaretporter.com

• Jocelyn Winn — Bio: Winn is a New Hampshire–based freelance writer and the associate nonfiction editor for The Maine Review, her online bio says. Books: “Her recent work can be found in WTWH Media publications, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Eratio, The Waterwheel Review as a Pushcart Prize nominee, and Fourth Genre as a Steinberg Memorial Essay Prize finalist,” her bio said. More info: theeleventhletter.com

Authors

• M. T. Anderson — Bio: A lifelong New Englander who lives in Vermont, Anderson earned a B.A. from Cambridge University and an MFA from Syracuse University, his online bio says; and “He has curated concerts that bring together text and classical music all over New England.” Books: His 2024 release is Nicked, his adult fiction debut: “Based on a bizarre but true quest to steal the mystical corpse of a long-dead saint, Nicked is a fantastical, genre-defying, and delightfully queer historical romp,” according to his website. He’s written picture books for children, adventure novels for young readers, graphic novels, books for teens and adults. His books include Feed, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the LA Times Book Prize and which made both Time Magazine’s and NPR’s lists of the 100 best YA novels of all time, and Elf Dog & Owl Head, a Newbery Honor book for 2023. More info: mtanderson.com

• Kayla Min Andrews — Bio: She grew up in central New Hampshire and is now a New Orleans resident. Andrews was a finalist in the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival’s Very Short Fiction Contest in 2023 and assisted Putnam on the posthumous publication of her mother’s (Katherine Min) novel The Fetishist (January 2024). She is an MFA candidate in fiction at Randolph and is working on a novel, the bio said. More info: kaylaminandrews.com, where you can find links to her published works.

• C.B. Bernard Bio: After spending much of his adult life in Alaska and Oregon, he can now be found on the Rhode Island coast and is the author of the novels and a nonfiction travel narrative, the bio said. Books: His 2024 release is the Alaska-set novel Ordinary Bear, described on Amazon as “dark and humorous, literary but with the heart of a detective novel.” Previous books include his debut novel Small Animals Caught in Traps (2023) and the non-fiction Chasing Alaska: A Portrait of the Last Frontier Then and Now(2013). More info: cbbernard.com

• Shannon Bowring — Bio: She lives in Bath, Maine, and her work has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes, her bio said. Books: The Road to Dalton, her debut novel, which Amazon describes as “a novel of small town America,” was selected as an NPR Best Book in 2023 and won the Maine Literary Book Award for Fiction in 2024, according to her website. Its sequel, Where the Forest Meets the River, was published in September, and a third book in the series, In a Distant Valley, is forthcoming from Europa Editions, according to her website. More info: shannonlbowring.com

• Ann Dávila Cardinal — Bio: Ann Dávila Cardinal is a Nuyorican, Vermont-based author from a long line of Puerto Rican writers, her bio says, and lives in Vermont with her husband “in a lovely little house with a massively creepy basement.” Books: Her young adult Five Midnights won the 2020 International Latino Book Award for Best Young Adult Fantasy & Adventure and an AudioFile’s Earphones Award for the audiobook, and was a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award; the story continues in Category Five (2020), which was a 2021 finalist for International Latino Book Award category. She had a 2023 young adult horror novel Breakup From Hell; co-wrote a middle grade biography, Hispanic Star: Bad Bunny (2024), and has two recent adult novels — the Puerto Rican magical realist mystery The Storyteller’s Death (2022) and We Need No Wings, slated for release Oct. 10, according to her bio. More info: anndavilacardinal.com

• Mark Cecil — Bio: Host of The Thoughtful Bro podcast, Cecil was originally from Worcester, Mass., and is head of strategy for A Mighty Blaze as well as a journalist and author Books: His debut novel is Bunyan & Henry; Or, the Beautiful Destiny, a book described on the publisher page of a reimagining of the stories of Paul Bunyan and John Henry. More info: markcecilauthor.com

• Maryann Cocca-Leffler — Bio: Cocca-Leffler grew up in the Boston area and now lives in Portland, Maine. She writes kids’ books and is also a playwright and has a BFA in illustration from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her daughter, Janine Leffler, inspired the book Janine (2015) as well as We Want To Go To School! The Fight for Disability Rights (2021), which the two co-authored, her bio said. Books: Cocca-Leffler is an award-winning author and illustrator of over 70 books for children including her most recent book Don’t Ask Cat, about which the Amazon description says: “A cat who struggles with social skills learns ways to be honest without being rude.” Her book Marabella’s Moments is slated for April 2025, her website says. More info: maryanncoccaleffler.com

• Vinson Cunningham — Bio: Cunningham is a critic for The New Yorker and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2024. He teaches at Yale and is a co-host of the weekly podcast Critics at Large. Books: His debut novel, Great Expectations, came out earlier this year; Publishers Weekly called it a “remarkable first novel.” More info: vinson.nyc

• Kate DiCamillo — Bio: Born in Philadelphia and raised in Florida, DiCamillo now lives in Minneapolis, according to her website, which also says: “I am short. And loud. I hate to cook and love to eat. … I think of myself as an enormously lucky person: I get to tell stories for a living.” Books: Her books include picture books, and early chapter books such as the Mercy Watson series, the Tales from Deckawoo Drive series and the 2024 release Orris and Timble: The Beginning. Her many novels include Because of Winn-Dixie, Flora & Ulysses and 2024 release Ferris. More info: katedicamillo.com

• Margot Douaihy — Bio: Born in Scranton, Douaihy lives and works in Northampton, Mass., and is an assistant professor at Emerson College, according to her website. Books: Douaihy is the author of three books of poetry and the queer hardboiled mysteries Blessed Water (2024) and Scorched Grace (2023). The next mystery in her Sister Holiday series, Divine Ruin, will be published in 2025, her bio said. More info: margotdouaihy.com

• Terry Farish — Bio: Farish lives in Portsmouth. According to her website: “I really like doing writing workshops with kids, teens, and adults who are finding their own stories to tell. I love collaborating with illustrators, writers, and in a classroom with everyone while we all inspire each other to create.” Books: Farish is the author of young adult books including The Good Braider and Either the Beginning or the End of the World and picture books such as A Feast for Joseph, which was written with OD Bonny and illustrated by Ken Daley. More info: terryfarish.com

• Donna Gephart — Bio: Gephart grew up in Philadelphia, where “the books that I write are on the shelves of that library I used to love as a kid,” she says in her online bio. Books: Death by Toilet Paper (ages 9-12), How to Survive Middle School (ages 10-12), Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen (ages 8-12), Lily and Dunkin (ages 10-13), the Woofmore series, cowritten with Lori Haskins Houran, about a luxury hotel for dogs, (ages 5-8) and many more. More info: donnagephart.com

• Jennifer Goldfinger — Bio: Goldfinger lives in Portland, Maine. She writes and illustrates picture books and is a fine artist whose work has been shown throughout the country.Books: Her most recent is this year’s humorous picture book Daisy the Daydreamer. There’s also My Dog Lyle (2007), Hello, My Name is Tiger (2016) and A Fish Named Spot (2001). More info: jennifergoldfinger.com

• Alina Grabowski — Bio: Grabowski grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Texas, according to her website. Books: Her debut novel, Women and Children First, published earlier this year by SJP Lit (Sarah Jessica Parker’s publishing imprint), earned starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. More info: alinagrabowski.com

• T. Greenwood — Bio: Greenwood grew up in rural Vermont and now splits her time between San Diego and Vermont. She has a background in dance, teaches creative writing and is also a photographer. Books: She’s written 15 novels, including Keeping Lucy (a 2020 Target Book Club pick), the true crime story Rust & Stardust and The Still Point (2024, an Indie Next pick, about the cutthroat world of dance moms). More info: tammygreenwood.com

• Evan Griffith — Bio: Griffith studied creative writing at UNC Chapel Hill, earned an MFA at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, worked as an editor at Workman Publishing and now lives in Austin Texas, teaching online writing classes. His hobbies include rocking climbing and playing guitar, according to his website’s FAQ. Books: Griffith’s middle-grade novel Manatee Summer (2022) was nominated for several awards and praised by critics. Its “sweet characters facing complicated problems will keep readers hooked,” wrote Kirkus Reviews. Griffith also wrote the middle-grade The Strange Wonders of Roots, released this year, and the picture books Secrets of the Sea and Wild at Heart. More info: evangriffithbooks.com

• Edwin Hill — Bio: A teacher at Emerson College, Hill lives in Roslindale, Mass. Books: Hill is a suspense writer and author of novels including Who to Believe (2024) The Secrets We Share, and the Hester Thursby mysteries. The description of Who to Believe on his website says: “In this twisting domestic suspense thriller … the aftermath of a murder in a quiet New England coastal town reveals a web of dark secrets.” More info: edwin-hill.com

• Jannie Ho — Bio: Ho studied at Parsons School of Design in hopes of being a fashion designer, her website bio says, but then became an illustrator and worked as a designer and art director at Nickelodeon and Scholastic. She lives near Boston and illustrates for books, magazines and games and also writes her own stories. Books: The Lost Mitten (a 2023 ALA Best Graphic Novels for Children selection), Bear and Chicken (“When Bear finds a chicken frozen in the winter snow, he brings it home to try to defrost it.”) and more. More info: chickengirldesign.com

• Ann Hood — Bio: Hood grew up in Rhode Island and worked for TWA as a flight attendant. She’s won two Pushcart Prizes and two Best American Food Writing Awards and written for several magazines. Books: The Knitting Circle: A Novel (2006), The Stolen Child: A Novel (2024), Fly Girl: A Memoir (2022) and several other novels and memoirs, plus a ten-book series for middle-grade readers and a short story collection. She is the editor of Life’s Short, Talk Fast: Fifteen Writers on Why We Can’t Stop Watching Gilmore Girls, set for release on Nov. 12. More info: annhood.us

• Lori Haskins Houran — Bio: She’s a former children’s book editor and author of more than 50 books for kids and lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts, her bio said. Books: Her books include nonfiction books such as Little Golden Book biographies of Jane Goodall, Tom Brady, Johnny Appleseed and George Washington, an I Can Read book about Thomas Edison, and books about animals. Her fiction books include books for learning to read, picture books and a series called The Woofmore co-authored with Donna Gephardt — “Welcome to the Woofmore, where the water bowls are always full, and there’s kibble on every pillow!” according to her website. More info: lorihaskinshouran.com

• Lita Judge — Bio: An author and illustrator who has written more than 35 nonfiction and fiction books, Judge lives in Peterborough, her bio said. Books: Among her many books are two Hoot and Peep books about owl siblings, Red Sled, Mary’s Monster: Love, Madness and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein (which combines verse and black-and-white watercolors) and the forthcoming Old Blue Is My Home (April 8, 2025), described as “poignant yet reassuring picture book [that] follows a family and the van that provides them with safety, warmth, and togetherness amidst economic and housing insecurity,” and Wake Up, Moon! (Oct. 29), in which “An energetic squirrel isn’t ready to give up on winter fun and go to bed”). More info: litajudge.me

• Marjan Kamali — Bio: Kamali received the National Endowment for the Arts 2022 Creative Writing Fellowship. Her novels have been published in more than 25 languages and her essays have run in The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She holds an MFA from New York University and an MBA from Columbia University. Having spent her childhood in Turkey, Iran, Germany, Kenya and the U.S., she lives in the Boston area and is writer-in-residence at Brandeis University, according to her website. Books: Kamali is the author of the 2024 novel The Lion Women of Tehran (an Apple Must-Listen for July and an Indie Next pick) as well as 2019 national bestseller The Stationery Shop and 2013’s Together Tea. More info: marjankamali.com

• A.H. Kim — Bio: A.H. (Ann) Kim was born in South Korea, immigrated to the U.S. as a child, attended Harvard College and Berkeley Law School, and practiced corporate law for many years, her website bio says. Books: Kim’s debut novel was A Good Family, inspired by her family’s experience when her sister-in-law was held in a women’s prison camp. Her second novel, Relative Strangers, was published earlier this year and is a contemporary take on Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. More info: ahkim.net

• Jean Hanff Korelitz — Bio: Born in New York City, where she lives today with her husband, Irish poet Paul Muldoon, Jean Hanff Korelitz graduated from Dartmouth College and Cambridge University and is the author of nine novels, according to her website. Her book You Should Have Known (2014) was adapted as a limited series for HBO as The Undoing; her book Admission (2009) was adapted as a movie starring Tina Fey. The Latecomer (2022) and The Plot (2021) are both in development as limited series, the website said. Books: The sequel to The Plot, called The Sequel, was released this week. “With her signature wit and sardonic humor, Jean Hanff Korelitz gives readers an antihero to root for while illuminating and satirizing the world of publishing in this deliciously fun and suspenseful read,” according to her website. She has also written a novel for children. More info: jeanhanffkorelitz.com

• Michael Leali — Bio: “Born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, Michael currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area,” according to his bio. Leali is “an award-winning writer and veteran educator. He earned his MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts,” the bio said. Books: “His widely-praised debut novel, The Civil War of Amos Abernathy (2022), won the prestigious Golden Kite Award in 2023 and was a finalist for the Lambda literary award among many other honors,” his bio said. His second novel, Matteo (2023), was a 2024 Lambda award finalist; author Cynthia Leitich Smith said, “This enchanting, modern homage to Pinocchio reminds us anything is possible if we’re true to ourselves.” His third novel, The Truth About Triangles, was released in May and is described on Amazon as “A heartfelt contemporary middle grade novel perfect for fans of Front Desk, following Luca Salvatore, a young gay Italian American trying to save his family’s pizza restaurant….” More info: michaelleali.com

• Tim Liardet — Bio: Born in London in 1959, Liardet is Professor of Poetry at Bath Spa University according to his website. Books: Eleven collections of poetry; The World Before Snow and The Blood Choir were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Recently he received an Authors’ Foundation work-in-progress award from the Society of Authors for his 12th collection, Atlas, Tick, Hog and Gold, his bio said. More info: timliardet.org

• Kekla Magoon — Bio: Magoon grew up in Indiana, graduated from Northwestern University, and earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is a full-time author, speaker and writing teacher and received the 2021 Margaret A Edwards Award for her contribution to Young Adult literature. Books: The Season of Styx Malone, Chester Keene Cracks the Code and other middle-grade books, as well as non-fiction and YA novels including Fire in the Streets, which was an NAACP Image Award Nominee, and The Rock and the River, which won a Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award. More info: keklamagoon.com

• Cate Marvin — Bio: Marvin has two MFAs and a Ph.D.and teaches poetry writing at the University of Southern Maine, according to her website. Books: She’s written four books of poetry and co-edited an anthology. Her collection Fragment of the Head of a Queen received a Whiting Award, and her book Oracle was named one of the best poetry books of 2015 by The New York Times. More info: catemarvin.com

• Claire Messud — Bio: “A recipient of a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.” her bio said. Books: Her latest is This Strange and Eventful History (2024), which is longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and on several lists of most anticipated books of 2024, her website said; “from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state — separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all,” according to the book’s description on her website. Other books include The Emperor’s Children (2006) and an “autobiography through essays,” Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write (2020). More info: clairemessud.com

• Jennifer Militello — Bio: A poet and memoirist, Militello is the Poet Laureate of New Hampshire and “teaches in the MFA program at New England College,” according to her bio. Books: “She is the author of the forthcoming collection Identifying the Pathogen, named a finalist for the FC2 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize; The Pact (Tupelo Press/Shearsman Books, 2021), and the memoir Knock Wood, winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize (Dzanc Books, 2019), as well as four previous collections of poetry,” her bio said. More info: jennifermilitello.com

• Paul Muldoon — Bio: “Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh in 1951. He now lives in New York. A former radio and television producer for the BBC in Belfast, he has taught at Princeton University for thirty-five years,” his bio said. Books: 15 collections of poetry, including Joy in Service on Rue Tagore this year, his bio said. “In his latest collection, Paul Muldoon continues his longtime trick of marshaling obscure references into fluent, fun and rollicking lyrics,” according to a quote from the New York Times review of the book on Muldoon’s website. More info: paulmuldoonpoetry.com

• Linda Sue Park — Bio: “Linda Sue is the founder and curator of Allida Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. She serves on the advisory boards of We Need Diverse Books and the Rabbit hOle museum project, and created the kiBooka website, kibooka.com, to highlight children’s books created by the Korean diaspora,” her bio said. Books: 2002 Newbery Medal winner A Single Shard and the NYTimes bestseller A Long Walk to Water (2010), and many other books. Her most recent title is The One Thing You’d Save (2021), a collection of linked poems. More info: lindasuepark.com

• Oliver de la Paz — Bio: The current Poet Laureate of Worcester, Mass., de la Paz teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University, his bio said. Books: He is the author and editor of seven books, including The Diaspora Sonnets (2023), which won the 2023 New England Book Award for Poetry,and was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award, according to his bio. More info: oliverdelapaz.com

• Lyra Selene — Bio: According to her website, Selene “grew up on a steady diet of mythology, folklore, and fantasy,” and now lives in New England “in an antique farmhouse that probably isn’t haunted.”Books: Selene is the author of the YA duology Amber & Dusk and Diamond & Dawn, as well as the adult novel A Feather So Black. Its follow-up A Crown So Silver, about a trickster king and ancient magic, is due in January. More info: lyraselene.com

• Lochan Sharma — Bio: Sharma’s family is from Nepal and lived as refugees in Bhutan before moving to New Hampshire. He’s currently a student at Keene State working on a degree in biology, according to a writeup at Shelf Awareness, and said he loved the Percy Jackson books as a kid. Books: Sharma co-authored the 2024 YA novel Go Home with author Terry Farish.

• Melissa Stewart — Bio: “While gathering information for her books, she has explored tropical rainforests in Costa Rica, gone on safari in East Africa, and swum with sea lions in the Galapagos Islands,” her website said. “When Melissa isn’t writing or exploring the natural world, she spends time speaking at schools, libraries, and conferences for educators.” Books: “Melissa Stewart has written more than 200 science books for children,” according to her bio. Her website lists books on animals, earth and space science, environment and plants, health and the human body, physical science, technology and math and more. A recent release was Mega-Predators of the Past (2022), and Meet the Mini-Mammals: A Night at the Natural History Museum is slated for a March 4, 2025, release. More info: melissa-stewart.com

• Michael Stewart — Bio: Stewart has an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Ottawa, Canada, the bio said. Books: He is the author of more than “two dozen books for kids and young adults,” his bio said. His latest is Seeking Draven (2024), described in a blurb on his website as a novel-in-verse — “Using free verse, wordplay, concrete poetry, and more, Stewart’s story provides a lovely mycorrhizal mutualism for readers of all ages,” K.A. Holt, award-winning author of Ben Bee and the Teacher Griefer, is quoted as saying. More info: michaelfstewart.com

• Lisa Stringfellow — Bio: Stringfellow is a middle school teacher who lives in Boston; her work “often reflects her West Indian and Black southern heritage,” according to her bio. Books: Middle-grade fantasies Kingdom of Dust (2024) and A Comb of Wishes (2022). Her website describes Kingdom of Dust as “a West African-inspired fantasy about a girl who is determined to return both magic and justice to her people — and whose destiny holds more surprises than she could ever imagine.” More info: lisastringfellow.com

• Matt Tavares — Bio: An author and illustrator, Tavares was born in Boston and now lives in Maine, “and he’s even done a few book signings at Fenway Park,” according to his website. Books: Tavares has created more than 20 books since his first, Zachary’s Ball, about a boy who catches a foul ball at a Red Sox game, was published and “named one of Yankee Magazine’s 40 Classic New England Children’s Books,” according to his website. Hoops (2023), a graphic novel about a girls’ high school basketball team in 1975 inspired by a true story, received multiple awards. He also wrote and illustrated Dasher (2019) and Dasher Can’t Wait for Christmas (2023). More info: matttavares.com

• Sarah Stewart Taylor — Bio: Taylor is a former journalist and teacher who lives and writes mysteries in Vermont. Books: The acclaimed Maggie D’arcy mystery series, featuring an American detective in Ireland. Her latest mystery is Agony Hill, the first in a new series set in rural Vermont in the 1960s. More info: sarahstewarttaylor.com

• Joseph Earl Thomas — Bio: “Thomas teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and courses in Black Studies, Poetics, Video Games, Queer Theory and more at The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research,” his bio said.Books: Thomas is the author of Sink, a memoir (one of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2023); the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer (2024, named Best of June by the Washington Post and Book Riot), and the short story collection Leviathan Beach (Grand Central, 2025), according to his bio. More info: josephearlthomas.com

• Dawn Tripp — Bio: “She graduated from Harvard and lives in Massachusetts with her sons,” her bio said. Books: Tripp’s books include Georgia (2016), which was a national bestseller, finalist for the New England Book Award, and winner of the Mary Lynn Kotz Award for Art in Literature, and this year’s release Jackie (2024). “Her sixth novel will be published by Random House in 2026,” according to her website. More info: dawntripp.com

• Sharon Wishnow — Bio: Wishnow is “a transplanted New Englander who makes her home in Northern Virginia,” according to her website, and “has been a member of the Boston Malacological Club since she was ten years old.” (They study mollusks.) She’s also the founder of Women’s Fiction Day and has an MFA from George Mason University. Books: The Pelican Tide, released this year, is her first novel. It’s set in Louisiana. More info: sharonwishnow.com

Some books Festival participants love

A River Runs through It and Other Stories by Norman MacLean (1992)

“It’s all about how hard it is to understand the people you love the most, your family.” — Emilie Christie Burack, Festival co-founder and president

By Any Other Name: A Novel by Jodi Picoult (2024)

“I went to a really intriguing event by Jodi Picoult just a couple of weeks ago, and she has this new book that contemplates the history of Shakespeare and whether Shakespeare was a woman. She’s done a lot of research and it really positions the female perspective at a time when we are facing so many challenges surrounding womanhood and the female perspective…” — Jennifer Militello, Poet Laureate of New Hampshire

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (2016)

“The writing is so beautiful, and the story is simple, but so incredible…. Actually, strike the simple. The man at the center of the story is very philosophical and I love his sort of musings on life and change and how we must adapt and make the best of what we’re given.” — Laura Knoy, keynote moderator

Mexikid, by Pedro Martin (2023)

“It’s hilarious, poignant, and extremely well-done.” — Matt Tavares, author

This is Happiness, by Niall Williams (2021)

“It feels like a very contemporary novel but captures an old-fashioned literacy. It just slows the world down and makes you feel much more present in your own life. I love the sets of this book; I’m giving it away to all my friends.” — Lita Judge, author-illustrator

This year’s grape harvest is as excellent as last year’s was bad

Some of the most reliable weapons in Amy LaBelle’s yearly battle to bring her grapes through to harvest are bars of soap. Of course there are nets to protect young grapes from birds — “As the grapes start to ripen, birds start to get savvy, and we have to drop our nets,” she said. And who could have predicted the beavers? “We had a few problems with beavers taking out an entire row one year and borrowing our trunks to make a dam in the stream that runs behind the winery. So that was kind of a bummer. Yeah, so we battle, but we’re winning so far. I don’t think anyone ever wins completely.”

But it’s the bars of Irish Spring soap that keep the deer away. “I’m a believer that Irish Spring soap works to protect my perennial beds at home and my grapes at the vineyard,” LaBelle said. “So we hang Irish Spring soap bars from some of the vines closer to the wood lines.”

LaBelle and her husband, Cesar Arboleda, own LaBelle Winery (345 Route 101 in Amherst and 14 Route 111 in Derry, 672-9898, labellewinery.com). They grow 6 acres of grapes between their two vineyards. It turns out you don’t need a huge amount of land to grow grapes. While a small apple orchard generally covers at least 20 acres, grain fields can be hundreds of acres in size, and some cattle ranches are as big as medium-sized European countries, a respectable vineyard often takes up about the same amount of space as a couple of football fields.

“The 3 acres in Derry haven’t matured quite yet,” she said. “We’re not pulling a full crop from there. In Amherst we’re pulling about 14,000 pounds a year.”

Most years.

2023 was a rough year for New Hampshire grape growers. A hard frost toward the end of May killed off new blossoms and buds, more or less destroying last year’s grape crop.

“On May 18 [last year], I lost my entire crop in two hours,” LaBelle said. “The six weeks just before that I had spent meticulously pruning that whole vineyard myself, every single plant, and I was making sure that every plant was perfect. I was trying to have the best year ever. Last year I [harvested] 300 pounds of grapes.”

This year’s grape harvest is looking good across the board.

“This year was our earliest harvest ever,” said Al Fulchino, owner of Fulchino Vineyard in Hollis. “We started picking on Aug. 21. It’s been a fabulous year. We’re three and a half weeks into our harvest, maybe four, and then we probably have two more weeks. The tonnage has been good.” Fulchino said that the sugar content in this year’s grapes have been high, and their acidity has been right about where it should be.

That acidity comes in part from New Hampshire’s climate. Winter temperatures are low enough that most vineyards in the state grow cold-weather varietals that tend to be lower in sugar and fairly acidic.

“It’s interesting,” said Richard Jacob of Vinilandia NH, a wholesaler specializing in wine from small estate vineyards, “because we obviously have a different climate than very famous growing regions for grapes. Normally in New Hampshire grape wine-making, you would get a lower-alcohol wine with higher acidity. So that being said, a classic thing that winemakers would do in New Hampshire is if they do go bone dry, sometimes the acidity can be a little bit overwhelming. And so you can back sweeten by adding some sugar or you can stop your fermentation a little bit earlier, so that way you have a little bit of natural residual sugar and the acidity isn’t as intense.” In that case, he explained, because the fermentation has been stopped early, the resulting wine is normally lower in alcohol.

Ted Jarvis is the owner of Black Bear Vineyard in Salisbury and the President of the New Hampshire Winery Association (260 Stage Road, Hampstead, 770-6719, nhwineryassociation.org). He said that New Hampshire wine makers are not limited to acidic wines.

“Each winemaker can finish the wines however they like,” Jarvis said. Personally, I don’t like sweet wines, and I like my wines finished off fruit-forward. We can’t grow just any type of grape here in the Northeast.”

“For instance,” Jarvis continued, “I do what is called a meritage, which is a blend of a couple of my reds together that we grow here on the property.” He also experiments with flavors in his finished wines. “I do some infusion in wines where I make what is called Amante de Chocolate, which is a raspberry chocolate-infused red wine, which is a big hit. I also do a take on my favorite childhood ice cream; I’ve turned an orange creamsicle into a wine. Yeah. It tastes exactly like an orange creamsicle ice cream. I sought out a certain coffee bean — a Sumatra coffee bean that had some spicy notes and chocolatey notes — and then I infused that into the wine; it’s called Vino Cappuccino.”

Not all grapes in New Hampshire are grown for wine. Owner John Lastowka grows 16 varieties of table grapes at Maple Gate Farm and Vineyard (183 Amherst Road, Merrimack, 759-9174).

“Normally, the table grapes that we get here in New England come from California in one season,” he said, “and in our winter season they come from Chile. Those two locations supply pretty much all the table grapes in the country.” As a result, Lastowka explained, most supermarket grapes have been developed to ship well from the West Coast or South America, and not necessarily for other characteristics, like flavor. “The universities have been doing a lot of research on table grapes to develop hybrids and different rootstocks that will survive our cold winters,” he said.

Like other New Hampshire grape-growers, Lastowka only devotes a small area to his vines. “I have about a half-acre vineyard,” he said. “I’m not done picking, and so far I’ve picked two tons. Each vine will produce on average 20 to 30 pounds of grapes.” His rows are 9 feet long and spaced 4 feet apart.

This sort of density of planting seems to be the norm, but Amy LaBelle says she plants each varietal of grape a little differently. “I’ve planted them a little bit differently depending on their expected vigor,” she said. The Cayuga [varietal], for example, is a very vigorous vine, so I planted those a little closer together to try to control that vigor so I don’t get an all-vine-no-grape kind of situation. It reduces the workload eventually in the vineyard a little bit, because if you can help the plant naturally reduce its vigor then you don’t have to trim it back every week to make sure that the grapes can do their thing.”

Ted Jarvis at Black Bear devotes a little more acreage to his vines. “I’m very old-school, very traditional,” he said. “We have one of the largest vineyards here in the Lakes region. We have about 4 1/2, 5 acres of vines on our property. We grow seven different varietals. We started our vineyard in 2008. It was my oldest son’s senior high school project. He got the A+. My wife and I get to spend every time we have money.”

LaBelle grows six main varietals in her vineyards — three white and three red. “In Amherst, we take all of the white varietals,” she explained, “and we blend those into an estate blend called Amherst Vineyard White. And that wine is so beautiful because it has that little influence from the grape called petit amie, which is, even when you just eat them fresh off the vine, that you get this huge explosion of florals, especially roses. It’s crisp and elegant and lovely and with that floral overtone — just very, very special.”

Al Fulchino said that about half of Fulchino Vineyards’ wines are blends. “I would say we’re closer to 50-50,” he said. “We do a lot of single varietals and we do do a lot of blends. That’s kind of a lot of fun in that. Literally taking the same grapes and doing a tweak one way or the other, aging it differently, oaking it differently, and getting a totally different wine that will be more suitable for one customer over the other.”

Because New Hampshire vineyards are comparatively small, if the grapes are ready to be picked, most or all of a season’s crop can be harvested very quickly, often in a day or two. LaBelle winery brings its customers in on the process.

“We usually select a date for harvest, and then we send out a note to our Vineyard Club,” Amy LaBelle said. “Our Vineyard Club is a long-standing club at LaBelle Wine. They are very loyal, very good customers — folks who have paid money to join the Vineyard Club. [Club members] sponsor a vine in the vineyard. They get their name on one of the vines and they come and visit their vine during the year and they take pictures with their vine. It’s very cute.”

Bill and Mary Reinhardt are Vineyard Club members. They said harvesting grapes at LaBelle is one of the highlights of their year. “What happens is that early in the morning we’ll gather with other Vineyard Club members. Amy and Caesar basically tell us, OK, this is what we’re going to be doing; we’re going to be harvesting these grapes’ and go through the process,” Mary Reinhardt said. “It’s a day where you can just go out and enjoy nature and life, go pick grapes, and talk to the people — just leave all your troubles and what’s going on in the world behind and enjoy yourselves.”

Bill and Mary each sponsor a vine, and of course they have named them. “It’s Mia and Grumpy,” Mary said, “because that’s what our grandchildren call us.” The Reinhardts’ vines are petite amie grapes, which make a dry white wine. “They put your name on it and you can go visit it,” Bill said, “when you’re there for lunch or whatever and see how your grapes are growing.”

Fulchino Vineyards harvests their grapes themselves. “We are hand-harvest,” Al Fulchino said. “We have three different vineyards all within 2 miles of our winery. [Our harvest is] mostly staff. We do have some people who follow our social media page like on Facebook and they know we’re harvesting and they want to get involved. We used to pick much more on Saturdays and Sundays, but because the winery is so much more busy on the weekends we have strategized to move more toward Monday through Friday. We’ll meet up in the morning and target what we want to pick, then we’ll all sit down and have some lunch and some wine and talk. It’s kind of old-school — very simple. It’s a really nice old-fashioned way to enjoy and not rush and remember why we’re here. Oftentimes when you do it on the weekends, you have to rush a bit. We’ve picked 20 tons or so so far.”

Ted Jarvis organizes a ticketed event to get his grapes in. “We throw a big harvest fest weekend,” he said. “Last year we had over 250 people up. We have live music. We have food trucks come in. We have 20 or 30 vendors to set up their New Hampshire crafts, so people can go booth by booth and check all that stuff out. And if people want to help out, we are a family business. I’ve had people come up, families, for years come up and just want to come in and participate in the whole process of it and help pick the grapes. My boys and I set up a crush pad so folks can see how their wine became from vine to glass. They can taste the juice coming right out of the wine press to see what it tastes like just being crushed and then like if they’re having a glass of La Crescent wine, ‘This is the grape, this is how I started it, and that’s what you’re tasting is how I finished it.’

Grape Fun

• Help with the harvest at Black Bear Vineyard (289 New Road, Salisbury, 648-2811, blackbearvineyard.com). Volunteer to help with the harvesting of grapes at Black Bear Vineyard on the weekend until the harvest is in and Black Bear provides lunch and a bottle of wine, according to the vineyard’s Facebook page. Email [email protected] to volunteer and get the details.

• Bottle Your Own experience at Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com). This is an ongoing series of events held Sundays through Nov. 10, at noon, 1 and 2 p.m. Attendees get a guided tour of the winery and vineyard and will learn directly from staff about the winemaking process. The cost is $59 per person and includes your own bottled wine to take home.

• Harvest and Stomp Festival at Appolo Vineyards (49 Lawrence Road, Derry, 421-4675, appolovineyards.com) Saturday, Sept. 28, and Sunday, Sept. 29. In addition to grape harvesting opportunities, there will be winemaking tours starting at 10 a.m., grape foot stomping and more. Tickets are $60 per person and include a catered lunch and other amenities.

• Harvest Weekend at Black Bear Vineyard (289 New Road, Salisbury, 648-2811, blackbearvineyard.com) is Saturday, Oct. 5, and Sunday, Oct. 6, noon to 6 p.m. Tickets are $18 through eventbrite.com. There will be live music, wine, food trucks, yard games, vendors selling New Hampshire products, and bringing in this year’s harvest.

• “Walks in the Vineyard’ wine class at LaBelle Winery Amherst (345 Route 101, Amherst, 672-9898, labellewinery.com) Sunday, Oct. 6, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Join Wine Educator & Sommelier Marie King and Senior Assistant Winemaker Melaney Shepard for an educational walk through LaBelle Winery’s vineyard and wine cellar in Amherst. Sample five LaBelle wines and learn about the winemaking process during the harvest season. Tickets are $35 through LaBelle’s website.

• The Annual Hollis Grape and Italian Festival will be Sunday, Oct. 20, noon to 6 p.m. at Monument Square in Hollis. The day will include a car show, live music, food vendors and a meatball contest, according to the event’s Facebook page. See fulchinovineyard.com.

• It’s not a local harvest but the Franco-American Centre will celebrate the French harvest with its Beaujolais Nouveau Gala dinner and dance on Saturday, Nov. 23, from 6 to 10 p.m. to celebrate the release of the 2024 Beaujolais in France. The three-course meal, with optional wine pairing with each course, will be at Oscar Barn Wedding Venue, 191 W. River Road in Hooksett. Tickets cost $115 ($90 without wine) for non-members. See facnh.com.

Wild Grapes

Joe Ross is a foraging expert and the owner of Eat the Planet (eattheplanet.org), a business that teaches students how to identify and find edible New England wild foods. According to him, there are three varieties of wild grapes we are likely to run across. “In our region, there’s three different kinds of wild grapes that are native,” Ross said in a telephone interview. “There’s the fox grape, the riverbank grape, and the frost grape.”

“The fox grape is the wild variety that’s called Concord,” Ross said, “but when they make a variety, they breed it specifically for certain traits over time. They select obviously. But if you look up Concord, it should be the same.” Ross said that all three species of wild grape have what’s called a “palmate” leaf structure. “It’s not like an oak leaf that’s got a center line all the way up the leaf with lobes on the side. The lobes can vary in what they look like.”

Ross said that while wild grapes can grow almost anywhere in New England, from the edges of swamps to deep forest, they do best on the edges of woods, where they have access to a lot of sunlight.

“Wooded edges and wetter areas are good areas to look for them; check those spots,” he advised. “Even just old fields where there’s a lot of bramble-type stuff — that’s a good spot to check because they’ll at least have a chance of popping up a vine again above everything else., so they can get to that sun.”

Sometimes older grape vines can be found deeper in the woods, Ross said, but that’s usually a situation of new trees growing up around an established vine. “Some of them are shade-tolerant,” he said, “but growing in the shade, you’re just not going to get a lot of grapes.”

Wine-Making Terms

Crush pad – Where grapes are crushed for their juice. This is usually done outside.

Meritage – A blend of two or more red “noble” Bordeaux varietals — cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, malbec, merlot, etc.

Root stock – The base of a plant that is used to graft onto a different variety. In the case of New Hampshire grapes, the root stock will be of a hardy, cold-tolerant variety, and the vine grafted onto it will have other characteristics, like improved sweetness or acidity.

Terroir – Subtle characters in the taste of a wine, dependent on unique weather and soil conditions in the vineyard where the grapes are grown. Each vineyard has its own terroir.

Varietals – How winemakers describe the types of grapes that go into their wines, instead of “varieties.”

Local varietals

A good resource for finding out more about cold-hardy grape varieties is a website by the University of Minnesota, mnhardy.umn.edu.

Whites

Frontenac Gris: A gray-skinned cold-hardy varietal used in white or rosé wines with fruity flavors, especially peach and pineapple, with hints of honey. Black Bear Vineyard (289 New Road, Salisbury, 648-2811, blackbearvineyard.com) makes a Frontenac Gris white.

Frontenac Blanc: A golden-skinned cold-hardy white wine grape. The vines produce exceptionally high yields of fruit. Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 244-3165, averillhousevineyard.com) uses this grape in its Fronteanna White.

Petit Amis: A green-skinned cold-hardy grape used in acidic white wines. LaBelle Winery Amherst (345 Route 101, Amherst, 672-9898, labellewinery.com) uses this grape in its Amherst Vineyard Estate White.

Cayuga: A French-American hybrid grape used in light, citrus-tinged wines that can come in a range of styles, from dry and sparkling to late-harvest dessert wines. Flag Hill Winery (297 N. River Road, Lee, 659-2949, flaghill.com) produces a Sparkling Cayuga White.

La Crescent: A very cold-hardy white grape. The wine produced from La Crescent has flavors of apricot, citrus and tropical fruit similar to that of muscat. Zorvino Vineyards (226 Main St., Sandown, 887-8463, zorvino.com) produces a La Crescent White that it describes on its website as “lively with sweet flavors of Meyer lemon and white peach.”

Reds

Frontenac: A classic bluish-black grape known for its rich, red wines. Black Bear Vineyard makes a “deep garnet”-colored Frontenac.

Marquette: Medium-bodied, dry, red wine suitable for extended maturation in oak barrels. Shara Vineyards (82 Currier Road, Concord, 836-9077, sharavineyards.com) uses this variety.

Petit Verdot: Red wine grape whose small, thick-skinned berries are valued for their depth of color. LaBelle Winery uses this grape in its Amherst Vineyard Estate Red.

Chancellor: A black-skinned cold-hardy grape used in full-bodied red wines with notes of plum and apple. Blue Heron Winery (Quinn Court, Newfields, 770-6719, blueheronwines.com) uses Chancellor grapes in its Seacoast Red.

Maréchal Foch: A cold-hardy hybrid grape that is made into deeply colored red wines with jammy, dark-fruit flavors. On its website, Flag Hill Winery describes its Maréchal Fochas having “lingering flavors of cherry and plum, with nice acidity.”