- This time on "Retro Tennessee Crossroads," Janet Tyson has something for all you aircraft aficionados.

Al Voecks takes us to a farm where they harvest a very sweet crop.

And we'll tell you the story behind all of this wine.

Hi everyone, I'm Laura Faber, and welcome to "Retro Tennessee Crossroads."

(upbeat music) For our first story of this episode, we've arrived in Clarksville to visit one of the earliest commercial wineries in the state, Beachaven.

Just over 35 years ago, Joe Elmore made the same trek, discovering a family business years in the making.

And if you enjoy Tennessee wine today, you can thank the founder of this winery for jump-starting the industry in the state.

(gentle music) - Almost every August morning, the Beachaven Vineyards are busy with pickers, harvesting this year's crop for next year's wine.

Clarksville first commercial winery grew from a hobby of Judge William Beach.

Today it's a serious business for him, his daughter, Louisa, and her husband, Ed.

Judge, back when you were just experimenting with winemaking, did you ever have an idea that it would come to this?

- Only as a sort of a boyish dream I guess.

I certainly didn't visualize a place like this that we're in here now.

I thought that maybe one of these days if I decided to get out of government work that it would be fun to carry this into a commercial venture.

But I didn't envision the scale that we're on, even though we are a small winery now, nobody would claim that we are a large winery.

We're minuscule by industry standards.

- Here at the winery, we grow Catawba, which is what this is.

We also grow Delaware and Seyval Blanc, which is a French hybrid.

These vines here at the winery are all three years old, and so this is the first time we've ever harvested off of these.

As the vines mature and get older each year, the crops should get larger and better.

- Think this will be a good one for wine this year?

- Yes, it looks very good.

- We're about ready to find out, aren't we?

- I hope so.

- Okay.

- Okay, turn it off.

- [Joe] from the fields, the grapes go directly to the crusher, a machine that's more effective than crushing grapes with your feet.

From the crusher, the grapes go into another machine that presses the juice out.

From here, the grape juice will flow inside and into tanks for a long, long wait.

- All right, the juice comes into here, you can see it going through a line, here it goes.

Goes to a tank where it is settled.

It's kept for 24 to 48 hours.

It's chilled.

The sediment falls out.

We pump absolutely clear juice into another tank.

It is inoculated with a true wine yeast.

We use Pasteur champagne yeast, which has been in existence for about 800 years.

The wine ferments, it produces carbon dioxide, heat, and alcohol, which is I guess the most important.

- [Joe] After moving the wine a few times during fermentation, it's carefully tested for proper sugar and pH balance.

This is the job of a specially trained biologist who works in the lab.

Eventually, the wine is poured into bottles, it's then corked again by machine, and finally boxed for sales here at the winery or its stores and restaurants elsewhere.

While waiting for the wine to be ready, there's always plenty of work to do, such as riddling the champagne bottles daily to remove sediment.

And there's the now steady flow of customers who come for tours and tastings, and who invariably ask the same question.

- Do you have purple feet?

And where do you stomp the grapes?

- [Joe] Well, I haven't seen your feet- - I know, I have them covered up, but they're not purple, I promise.

- [Joe] Until winter months, winemaking is a nonstop job of harvesting and pressing this year's grapes and bottling last year's grapes in the form of ready-to-drink wine.

Are you two having a lot of fun doing this so far?

I know it's been a lot of work.

- I only want to kill him every other day I think.

(laughs) - This is a continuation of our hobby, which is a family thing, and this is a really good thing.

It's turned out to be a lot of work, but we're doing very well at it.

And if we can stay with it, then we can soon hire people to do the work.

So we think it'll work out quite well.

- [Joe] Well, before leaving the Beachaven Winery, I figured it would be rude not to sample some of the newest vintage, - And it's a very dry, very nice white wine.

- Now I always see the guys on TV doing this.

- You can smell it.

- That just gets the aroma.

- And you also swirl it to mix the wine with air.

This is the time you wanna mix wine with air, any other time it's bad for it, but right before you drink it, you swirl it.

- Bring out the flavor.

- It's good.

Here's to wine made in Tennessee.

- All right.

- When this year's wine is released sometime next summer, the owners are expecting about 15,000 gallons.

And that's not bad for a little local winery that only got in business a couple of years ago.

And who knows, you might be witnessing the beginning of a Tennessee family winemaking tradition that lasts for many generations to come.

(gentle music) - Joe Elmore produced that story in 1988, and what a great story it is.

And guess what?

We're at Beachaven Winery and Vineyards today to update this story.

And I am with third generation winemaker, Wilson Cook, who was Judge Beach's grandson.

- That's right.

- Thank you for being with us, Wilson.

- Pleasure to have you.

- Okay, what's changed?

Obviously you're producing more wine than you were in that story you were producing.

I think they were producing 15,000 gallons a year then.

What are you doing today?

- We do considerably more, and then we'll change with vintage to vintage as high as 45,000 cases a year, I'm sorry, gallons a year.

We're still around that 10,000, 12,000 case mark.

As he said, we're not a large winery, but we're doing really well for a small winery.

- Yeah, okay, how old were you, Wilson, when they shot that story?

That was 1988, so you must have been five?

- Yeah, I was very young.

- Do you remember them being here, the crew being here on scene?

Okay, you don't remember that.

Did you have any idea that you would be running the show today?

- I never had a plan to do anything else, honestly.

- Really?

- Yeah, sure, I dabbled in other things, but I've always been here at Beachaven, grew up here obviously, and always kind of assumed this is where I would land.

- I think many people consider your grandfather, Judge Beach, kind of the father of Tennessee winemaking.

Do you agree with that?

- Absolutely, that's definitely part of our story.

Of course, there were plenty of others.

He wasn't in it by himself, but I think without the Judge and a lot of the people in his organization, his network at the time, we wouldn't be here today.

- [Laura] And you continue to be a really popular destination for tourists.

I mean, visitors must have, you're right off of I-24, the tourism must have increased from 1988.

- [Wilson] Absolutely, we're lucky to be in Clarksville, a growing town, of course.

And we hope that we're one of the hallmarks of Clarksville tourism.

Lots of great consumers from our own community, but lots of tourist traffic as well.

- Now I think that you guys were like the 11th, one of the first 10 wineries to open in Tennessee, and you're only one of two wineries from that time that still exist.

What is it?

What's your secret that you guys are continuing to do good business here?

- It's no secret, it's just hard work.

We are here every day, really putting our heart and soul into the products that we're making.

So I think that reflects in the end product, and the consumers can see it.

- [Laura] Yeah, what has changed in terms of the processes of making wine from back in 1988 when we first saw that story and Joe Elmore here way back then?

Has anything changed today?

- [Wilson] A lot has changed, and very little has changed at the same time.

A lot of the tanks are still the same tanks.

The equipment that we had then, we still have now, but we're also growing and evolving and adopting new technologies where they make sense for our product.

- [Laura] But you still do really, it's important to you that you pay homage and pay attention to the winemaking processes that have been around forever.

- [Wilson] Yeah, of course.

The process of winemaking is obviously very old, and a lot of those processes are still the same today that they were hundreds of thousands of years ago.

- What about the community?

Has the community really supported you obviously all these years?

- Yeah, sure.

We've always had great community engagement.

Of course, things have changed.

We've kind of revamped the way that we entertain our guests now.

We offer more opportunity for onsite engagement and picnicking and charcuterie and music and all these things.

But we still try to have the large concerts and get lots of thronging people out there together.

- [Laura] And a new tasting room downtown- - Of course, we're revamping the tasting room here at the winery as well as launching a new tasting room downtown, satellite for us, which has really been very interesting to kind of spread our footprint in Clarksville.

- Okay, the grapes pretty much have stayed the same from when Judge launched this winery.

A little bit of a difference.

Talk about the different grapes that you have now and basically what kind of wine people can get when they come here.

- Well, we still have the Seyval.

We still have the Catawba.

And we still use those for sparkling wines.

We will make a varietal Seyval now.

We use the Catawba for blending, and we're growing Sunbelt, which is a type of concord, and it goes into our Golden Rose.

It's one of our most popular wines.

If we're gonna put all the time and energy into the field, we want to try to make a top-notch product with what we produce.

- Yeah, so the old story from 1988, what was it like seeing that story, seeing your parents and your grandfather in that story?

- That was an absolute time machine.

(laughs) Of course, I have a recollection of my grandfather.

We lost him when I was eight, but my parents are the real gem of that piece.

I see a lot of myself in them, but that's not how I remember them from my childhood anyway.

- [Laura] Huh.

So that was special.

- [Wilson] Oh, it was an absolute gem.

- Such an inspiring story as that family carries on a great winemaking tradition in Tennessee.

Well now, we look to the skies, as Janet Tyson takes us back to 1990 and an aviation extravaganza in Nashville.

(upbeat music) - [Janet] Those magnificent men and women in their flying machines.

The evolution of aviation is one of the most exciting chapters in the history of mankind.

The romance and mystique of flight intrigues nearly everyone and consistently draws people to air shows like this one at John C. Tune Airport, sponsored by the Middle Tennessee Aviation Association and the Metro Nashville Airport Authority.

The Tune tarmac boasted dozens of aircraft, from antiques to ultralights, that visitors enjoyed seeing, and owners like Gary Allen enjoyed talking about.

- This is a T-34 Beach, T-34 Navy trainer.

It was used with the Navy, still used by the Navy, partially it's a C model now, but it's been used by the Navy for training since 1956.

Every pilot that goes in for Navy training is trained, and gets 50 hours in this airplane.

- [Janet] Many of the participating pilots stay active in air shows nationwide from April through October.

Who comes to see them?

- [Gary] You'll find, like I say, a lot of people, a lot of the older people that were in the Second World War, pilots in the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam, and they're here bringing back old memories, trying to see if they can find something that they flew.

Just people that generally like aviation, like airplanes, and then you'll find those that are just curious about airplanes.

They don't really know anything about them.

And you can tell that at an air show that's not well-policed, you'll find a kid walking out on your wing.

You've got to know that his mother would not be letting him do that if she knew it was dangerous.

But the lack of having knowledge about the airplanes, she doesn't know, so she thinks it's all right.

- [Janet] Internationally, tens of thousands of aviators belong to the EAA, an organization aimed at keeping such air shows flying.

Steve Wright explains EAA's function.

- That's the Experimental Aircraft Association.

It's a national, or actually, it's an international organization composed of people that are enthusiasts, pilots, and who have an interest in building or restoring antique aircraft, building home-built airplanes, restoring military vintage World War II aircraft, classics, the '50s and '40s aircraft that were manufactured is just, it's a hobby.

The number of experimental airplanes in the United States and throughout the world right now are doubling every five years.

It's an extremely fast-growing hobby.

- [Janet] Gary Allen feels that this hobby has a very important role for non-aviators.

- I'm a member of the EAA Warbirds, and us fellows that are in that all keep up these airplanes at our expense.

For the history, you got to understand, when I was a kid, it was not uncommon for me to see a P-51 or for me to see a locomotive going down the track behind my house.

But for a kid today, he's never seen a locomotive and he is never seen a P-51 and he wouldn't see a P-51 or a T-34 or an L-19 or a B-17 or A-24 if it wasn't for the fact that we were trying to preserve them.

And that's the reason we do it.

I get more satisfaction.

I was seeing mostly air shows with him, and help school day, like one day will be school day, and they'll bring little kids from the first grade all the way up through high school.

I like to see a little kid see something that he hadn't seen and know that I had a part in helping restore that and keeping that for him to see.

- [Janet] Have you found that this avocation of yours helps keep the little kid inside of you going?

- [Gary] Oh, certainly, certainly.

I try not to let my working interfere with my aviation.

And we all got a little boy in us.

I think the only difference is the expense of our toys.

- [Janet] New high-tech toys stood sleekly alongside well-preserved antique ones.

Nashville businessman John Baugh is president of EAA Warbirds and own several vintage military planes.

One might wonder if modern aviation makes classics obsolete, - Believe it or not, but most of the technology of that has come from the home-built movement.

We've got in the United States right now, there's 18,000 aircraft being built at home or in garages or in hangars, from that, a lot of these home-builts or we call them experimentals, such as the airplane sitting next to you in the high carbon fiber was taken from the home-built movement.

The stealth bomber, some of the harrier and some of those aircraft.

A lot of that, just like in race car business, a lot of the things that happened in automobile industry happened through racing.

- Richard Arnold displayed undoubtedly the most unusual aircraft at the show, a blimp, grandchild of the Zeppelin, and cousin to the Goodyear Blimp.

Everybody's familiar with the Goodyear Blimp.

How does this blimp compare in size and the way it operates?

- Well, it operates basically the same principle as Goodyear.

They're both filled with helium.

They both have two airbags inside that are called balinese that are filled with outside air, and that pressurizes the skin of the ship.

They both have engines with propellers that provide the thrust for movement.

They have tail fins and elevators and rudders to provide steerability and control of altitude.

They both use ballast weight to provide the proper amount of weighting for the day and the atmospheric conditions affect it a lot.

Goodyear is a good bit larger.

It's about 196 feet long, I believe.

And this one's approximately a hundred feet long.

This one's maybe 32 feet tall, 35 feet tall.

Goodyear's probably about 60 feet.

- [Janet] Richard plans to use his blimp much the same as Goodyear, to lease advertising space.

It certainly attracts attention.

- It's so unique.

There's about 13 of these that are operational in the world.

People very rarely get an opportunity to see one fly over, much less walk up to one and touch it and ask questions about it.

So that makes...

I guess that draws them in.

They've been coming all day, and I've had people say, "I came out here just to see this."

- [Janet] A warning about such air shows as this one at John Tune.

With so much enthusiasm and information available, you could find yourself building an airplane in your own backyard.

- What beautiful aircraft, and I'm sure many of those are still flying today.

The Experimental Aircraft Association still holds many shows around the country.

You can see a calendar of events on their website, so you can plan your trip.

Now for our final story this episode, we'll head west to Paris, Tennessee.

Way back in 1958, a woman named Sally Lane started a farm of a different sort.

Al Voecks visited in 1995 to check on the Sweet Harvest.

- 37 years ago, a lady by the name of Sally Lane Jones started satisfying the candy cravings of people in Paris, Tennessee, and all of Henry County for that matter.

News of what she called her candy farm soon spread.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Sally Lane has since moved from Paris, although she does still live here in Tennessee, but her candy farm still exists, and it's been in the same location for the past 37 years.

The operation today is under Jerry and Jean Peterson's name.

And while the names have changed and even the area has changed somewhat, some things have remained constant, such as they make candy the old-fashioned way, by hand.

- [Jerry] We moved here from Southern California and was looking at Tennessee and came back here and looked at it and bought it, and trained us and started working.

And it's all still handmade, cooked in the same copper kettles.

Nothing has changed other than we've added some new ones, new candies.

- [Al] The training soon paid off.

And today, Jean and Jerry make over a hundred different types of candy.

But even with all the variety, there is no doubt as to what the signature candy of Sally Lane's really is.

- [Jerry] That being our mints, which is our trademark, the pink and green mints, we don't sell hundreds of pounds of those in a year.

It's tons.

- Tons of them?

- [Jerry] That's no exaggeration.

It's an ice cap with peppermint flavoring in it.

And then also it has the, the pink one has a little crunch in it, which it's another candy we make and grind up and put in it.

- [Al] As far as your chocolates are concerned, what's your best seller?

- Kentucky Lake Frogs, - Right.

- [Al] Kentucky Lake Frogs.

What is a frog?

Same as a turtle?

- [Jean] It's similar to a turtle.

Turtles is a trademark, so you can't call it a turtle.

You have to come up with your old name.

This is why like you go to Gatlinburg or someplace, they'll have them bear claws or the millionaires in Texas, that kind of a thing.

Something that's regional.

- [Jerry] Chocolate, caramel, pecans.

And we also make them in white chocolate, which is our snow frogs.

Our candy also is not loaded with preservatives.

We just make candy up as we need it.

So we might make this one today and that one today and several different ones one day.

And then we make everything up just as we're going to need it.

- [Al] There's chocolate everywhere you look.

The mints of course are legend, but you'll also get some of the best peanut brittle in the state.

- [Jerry] I believe a lot of the factor is that you're putting hand ingredients in it.

It's being done with pride.

We're not a big store where we take a lot of pride in what we're making, it all being handmade.

Just the hand touch.

It's not being done by a machine, it's all being done by hand.

We'll be pouring this on the table now.

Burns can be very bad, but a candy burn is really bad because it just sticks to you and burns right in.

I read an article one time about a man who was interviewing people for making candy, and he says, "I pay more attention to their hands than their resume.

Because if they have a lot of candy burns on their hands, I know they've made candy."

- Do you have burns?

- Many.

Many burns.

Those two knuckles are peanut brittle.

That's licorice.

What I'm doing here is that I'm cooling it, also, I'm stretching it out a little bit.

Once it is rolled out with the rolling pin, the best peanut brittle that you can make is peanut-thin.

Now what we're doing here is stretching it all out before it starts setting up, which it is doing.

You work on the biggest pieces first, and then we'll go back over it and then start breaking up the smaller pieces.

This is hot enough that you could not possibly do this without gloves on.

A girl came in here about seven, eight years ago, and said that she had worked here 18 to 20 years ago.

And we still use the same little hammer to break up our peanut brittle with that had a broken claw on it.

And I came down here and got it and I said, "Do you mean this one?"

So this little hammer has been breaking up the peanut brittle and coconut brittle for over 30 years here.

If it ever should break, I'm going to frame it.

And as you can see, it's all handmade.

- [Al] As with anything else handmade, it's always best right out of the oven, or kettle if you prefer.

These days when we're maybe a little more health-conscious than we had been in the past, has this affected the candy market?

Are people concerned about this?

- [Jean] Yes, they are.

They're still buying candy.

A lot of people will take it as a treat though.

They have worked hard all week or all month and like this is a treat.

And they come in and they want just a small amount of candy, just kind of as a reward for treating themselves well otherwise, as far as the health market goes.

And then we have some people that come in and want something that's sugar-free or fat-free or low-fat trying to, you know, they want something as far as the dessert goes, but they don't wanna necessarily want a lot.

- If there is such a thing as a chocoholic, well this is where you have to be, because if you can't satisfy your craving at Sally Lane's, then you've got major troubles.

There's only one problem, however, where do you start?

Think I'll probably have one of these, and then we'll have one of these, and I gotta have a frog.

- Yum.

I can almost taste the sweets.

And the best part about this old segment is that you can still visit Sally Lane's Candy Farm.

They're still making candy in Paris all these years later.

Sounds like a great weekend trip.

Well that's all the time we have for this episode.

Thanks for joining me as we travel back in time in the Crossroads Vault.

Be sure to check out our website for more great old stories, and I'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) (gentle music)