Regional Wine Week may not change the way we think about wine or life, but if it prompts readers to give a little more thought to their local wines for dinner - and not just as novelties to be purchased once a year at a festival - then it will have been a success.
RWW is underway now at DrinkLocalWine.com, a modest little Web site conceived by Jeff Siegel, "The Wine Curmudgeon," and myself. You won't find much content there, just two brief manifestos by Jeff and me, plus links to a host of writers around the United States and Canada who are writing this week about wines "from around here" - wherever "here" might happen to be for them.
If you go to the site now, you can click to Charmian Christie's evocative post on the fruit wines of Niagara. You can also find Rob Hagman's treatise on Pollak Vineyards, which he calls "the future of Virginia," as well as Richard Leahy's account of a 20-year retrospective tasting of Virginia's best, held last week in Richmond to mark the 20th anniversary of Virginia Wine Month. The Old Dominion is developing a successful wine tradition, and we've got it on DrinkLocalWine.com.
You'll also find Richard Leahy's account of Tierce Riesling, a cooperative effort by three wineries in the Finger Lakes to develop a terroir-based style of Riesling. It's a grape this region has long been noted for, but one that has struggled to develop a consistent style and flavor profile. Tierce is on the cutting edge.
Regional Wine Week includes some major wine writers from top publications. Sandra Silfven has already posted on the Detroit News Web site about her favorite wines from Michigan and Ohio. On Thursday, Gil Kulers will report on the emerging wines of Georgia in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Scott Greenberg will profile Maryland's Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyards in the DC Examiner. On Wednesday, I will highlight emerging trends in Virginia and Maryland in The Washington Post. Later this month (editorial schedules being what they are), Bill Daley will report on Illinois wines in the Chicago Tribune and Lou Marmon will feature some Maryland wines in his column for the Gazette papers in the DC area.
I hope you'll revisit DrinkLocalWine.com throughout the week as we post new links to posts about Colorado, Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York - and somewhere near you.
Got Wine? It's not just from California anymore.
