Silver Mark Cellars emphasizes careful craftsmanship and personal touch
Courtesy of Silver Mark Cellars
Some of the wines available at Silver Mark Cellars in Canonsburg
from outside vertical
Courtesy of Silver Mark Cellars
Courtesy of Silver Mark Cellars
Silver Mark Cellars is open in Canonsburg at 36 N. Jefferson Avenue.
Courtesy of Silver Mark Cellars
Zack Hritz and Jim Ceklosky are co-owners of Silver Mark Winery in Canonsburg.
Silver Mark Cellars emphasizes careful craftsmanship and a personal touch.
Zack Hritz and Jim Ceklosky are co-owners of Silver Mark Cellars, Canonsburg’s newest winery. But they are also co-producers, from grape selection to fermentation, bottling, and finally, to your table at their space on 36 N. Jefferson.
For these two, being so involved in the process is part of the fun and all of what makes Silver Mark special.
According to Ceklosky, it was his wife Susan who got him interested in winemaking. In the early 2000s, she bought him a make your own wine kit.
“The wine was okay,” Ceklosky says with a laugh.
Soon after, he took a trip to the Strip District for grape juice and tried making wine that way, entering the result into an amateur competition. He placed, and winemaking went from casual interest to avid hobby.
At the same time, Zack Hritz had started making wine in Monroeville at a winemaking club. In 2012, the two were introduced by a mutual friend, and in 2013 they began making wine together. They handed their bottles out at events, entered into a few competitions and got some medals. People urged them to start their own business, but both had full-time jobs at the time. In the fall of 2017, they created Silver Mark Cellars.
“We started by taking our wine around to different fairs and gatherings and trying to peddle it that way,” Ceklosky says.
Where does that name come from?
“When Zack and I started making wine in 2013, we had blank bottles we’d hand out to people, with our names scribbled in silver Sharpie pen, along with the name of the wine,” Ceklosky says. “Zack then found out that a lot of silversmiths use a mark to stamp their silver, the way a painter would sign a painting, and so we thought it’d be a nice way to ‘mark’ the bottle.”
When asked about opening a business in the time of a pandemic, Ceklosky explained it took work to keep up with the Liquor Control Board and its rapidly changing regulations. “They’ve been really helpful and diligent about visiting and checking in.”
All of Silver Mark Cellars’ wine is made from grapes from either California, Washington state or South America. The grapes are trucked cross country in about two days and picked up in the Strip District.
“We bring them back to our facility and put them in this machine that’ll de-stem and crush the grapes,” Ceklosky says. “We ferment in the basement of the winery, so people who come in get a good whiff of what winemaking smells like.”
The wine of Silver Mark Cellars is made right under their patrons’ noses, so to speak. It’s the kind of welcome you get walking into a bakery and being wrapped up in the smell of fresh bread and warm pastries, only instead of morning breakfast, it’s cocktail hour.
“Everything happens in the same place,” Ceklosky says. “We crush the wine out back, pump it down to the basement where it ferments, then we’ll press it and age it, then eventually bottle it in the back half of the winery. All of our operations are now in the same building.”
It seems that’s what differentiates Silver Mark Cellars. Winemaking, after all, is not just crushing grapes in a vat and dumping some yeast in. It’s careful and thoughtful work, from the type of grape used to the acidity content to the material it’s aged in. But Ceklosky and Hritz’s artisanal approach alone isn’t what makes them stand out.
It’s the personal touch involved.
“When you come to our tasting room, you see us,” Ceklosky says. “Zack and I are out on the floor, and we’re talking to you about the wines – one or both of us is always there. We’ll really try and inform you about the wine and answer any questions you might have. That’s what’s paid off for us.”