As its name suggests, Sugarloaf Mountain in Maryland’s western Montgomery County is not much larger than a loaf of sugar. Even the condemned Sisyphus wouldn’t have minded rolling his boulder up Sugarloaf’s measly 1,282 feet over and over again. But the hill’s easy hikes are no longer the only draw that brings people out to the vicinity of Comus, Md. These days, a recently renovated restaurant and a new winery are attracting city dwellers to the rural countryside between Germantown and Frederick.

Less than a 45-minute drive from D.C. up Interstate 270, Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard sits in the short shadow of the short mountain, just down the road from the well reviewed Comus Inn restaurant. Long owned by the O’Donoghue family, the winery is a former farm — part of a nationwide trend of farmers clearing crops in favor of vineyards, no matter what the climate and no matter what the soil.

Maryland’s rich soil, extreme seasonal temperatures, and Draconian shipping laws make the Old Line State a nightmare for would-be vintners who aim to produce quality wine as opposed to marketable local swill. Some, like Baltimore County’s stand-out Basignani Winery, rely on solid techniques and unfamiliar French-American hybrid grapes, which grow better in these parts, to make the most of a tough situation.

But with a professed focus on traditional “Bordeaux-style wines,” SMV appears at first glance to be following the money by bottling well known varietals, which tend to make for poor wines here in the mid-Atlantic. As an indication of what it will make in future years, the winery imported major grapes — cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and chardonnay — from California for its first vintage because its own vines of the same grapes were too young to produce satisfactory fruit. A recent visit left us wondering whether the young Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard will right the ship by introducing Maryland-friendly grapes into the mix before it’s too late.