Dave McIntyre's WineLine

Regional Wine Week - half way point

If you haven't yet checked out REGIONAL WINE WEEK on DrinkLocalWine.com, you should. We've got harvest updates on the Finger Lakes and Niagara from Lenn Thompson's New York Cork Report, plus a post from Paul Vigna on how the bad economy has some prime Pennsylvania vineyard land languishing on the market. Rémy Charest has reported on the current scandale in Canadian wine - a legal loophole that allows wine from elsewhere to be labeled "cellared in Canada". Brian Kirby is scouting out some exciting developments in Maryland. And Richard Leahy writes about wines produced from goofball grapes that will surprise you with their quality.

Remember - Think Globally, Drink Locally. And support Regional Wine Week by visiting DrinkLocalWine.com!

Loudoun County - DC's Bedroom Community AND its Wine Country!

Loudoun County in Northern Virginia has been experiencing the same growth in number of wineries as the state overall. Three of those - Tarara, Boxwood and Sunset Hills - are leading a new wave of quality improvements. Read about new and exciting developments in DC's Wine Country in my feature in today's Washington Post Food section.

And here is my video with Todd Thrasher, sommelier of Restaurant Eve in Alexandria, Va., discussing our favorites from a tasting of 28 Loudoun County wines. Warning - the video is long, about 10 minutes, and I never really figure out what to do with my hands. And someone should give Todd a tissue. But after all, this was only 2 days after I got my nifty new Flip videocamera, so I was really really new to this.

The Vintner and the Herbalist

"White wine with fish, red wine with meat" - remember how that used to define wine and food pairing? It's still fairly safe, if unadventurous. Wine lovers will often tell you to match wine not with the meat, but with the sauce, or the seasoning. These flavors, after all, are often the accent that determines how food speaks to our palates. 

In this video, I speak to Mary Watson DeLauder, a noted sommelier who is revered (for the lack of a better word) in the Virginia wine industry for her support of the Old Dominion's wines, about how different herbs affect the flavor of wine. We're at Corcoran Vineyards in Loudoun County, with winemaker Lori Corcoran. Listen as Mary identifies the "magic" herb that complements nearly every wine, and as she and I deal with flying hair. And just for titillation, Mary even cusses! Hey, it's the Internet! We can say anything!

A Smokin' Albarino

One of the most exciting wines produced in Virginia is not a Viognier, and it's not a Cabernet Franc or Petit Verdot, either. (Though there is definitely some excitement with those three grapes in the Old Dominion!) No, the wine that really gets Todd Thrasher, award-winning sommelier of Restaurant Eve in Old Town Alexandria, Va., excited is an Albarino from Chrysalis Vineyards in Middleburg, Va. Watch this short film clip to see why Thrasher should be writing wine reviews .... I mean, "a smokin' representation of what Virginia wine can be." ... I can't top that.

(There's more discussion of the Chrysalis Albarino in our lengthy dialogue about Loudoun County wines, to be posted later this week right here on Dave McIntyre's WineLine.)

This is Regional Wine Week. Click your way regularly to DrinkLocalWine.com to see updates on local wines from around the United States and Canada.

Regional Wine Week Starts Tomorrow! (Oct. 11, that is … )

Regional Wine Week starts tomorrow, Sunday, October 11, and we’ve got an exciting lineup of bloggers and writers who will be writing about their local wines and wineries they’ve experienced on their travels around this great land. Remember, wine is now made in all 50 states – not just the West Coast! You might not know that if you rely only on the major wine publications, so let’s light up the blogosphere with reports on “wine from around here.”

So where will you be able to find these scintillating and fascinating reports, you ask? They will be linked at DrinkLocalWine.com, the Web site “Wine Curmudgeon” Jeff Siegel and I created last year for the first Regional Wine Week. Bookmark it and return throughout the week (and afterwards!) to see what new articles have been posted. Then you can discover some of the underground wine writers who are chronicling your local wine scene. If you're a Washington Post reader, you'll find my feature on Loudoun County, Virginia, wines in Wednesday's Food section.

Jeff and I will also try to remember to update our Twitter feeds #dlw09 and alert our Facebook friends and fans of DrinkLocalWine.com of new postings throughout the week.

Just as a tease, I will report on my recent visit to a winery that makes this singular boast on its welcome sign:

Can you guess? Leave a comment if you think you know. Then check in here and at DrinkLocalWine.com to find out.

It's Harvest Time!

The grape harvest is in full swing throughout the Northern Hemisphere. In my column today in The Washington Post, I give insights into how harvest is progressing in Bordeaux, Virginia and California – plus my monthly “Recession Busters” recommendations of eight terrific wines that cost $10 or less.

And don’t forget that next week is the second annual Regional Wine Week, during which bloggers around the country will write about “wine from around here, wherever ‘here’ might be.” These will be linked at DrinkLocalWine.com. Look for my Washington Post Food section feature next week on the quality explosion in Loudoun County, Virginia.

Is Wine Really an Agricultural Product?

Of course it is, but society doesn’t always acknowledge that fact. If it did, you’d probably see more wineries selling their products at farm markets. But that’s not so easy here in the Washington, D.C. area. I explore the topic – along with a move to make it easier for Maryland wineries to participate in farm markets – in my column today in The Washington Post. Check out my videoblog as well, including interviews with Sarah O’Herron of Black Ankle VIneyards, Mitch Berliner of the Bethesda Central Farm Market, and Amanda White of Willowcroft Farm Vineyard.

From the Post column, click on the link for recommended wines to see my personal faves from the recent Virginia wine festival at Bull Run Regional Park, sponsored by the Atlantic Seaboard Wine Association.

Black Ankle, by the way, recently won the 2009 Maryland Governor’s Cup for best wine in the state for their 2007 Crumbling Rock Bordeaux blend. Not bad for a winery that only opened for business last year, and also won the Governor’s Cup for their 2008 Crumbling Rock before they’d even built their tasting room.

Regional Wine Week Coming, Oct. 11-17

Calling all wine bloggers! The second annual Regional Wine Week will be October 11 through 17. This is the week we encourage all wine bloggers, newspaper columnists, radio or TV talking heads, to feature “wine from around here – wherever here happens to be.”

Regional Wine Week was created last year by Jeff Siegel (The Wine Curmudgeon) and myself to highlight the impressive growth in quality of wine that is not made in the usual places (such as California, Oregon and Washington State.) This year we are hoping to get 50 or more bloggers to participate, and we will link to their posts on DrinkLocalWine.com. By leveraging Facebook and Twitter, who knows how many people we’ll be able to reach!

So if you blog about wine and would like to participate, please let us know. If you know someone who blogs about wine, please forward this post as an invitation for them to participate.

This is an exciting time for local wine – the Eat Local movement is beginning to realize that Drink Local is a logical part of any reasonable campaign for local agriculture.

The Judgment of DC

It may not have the cachet of the Texas Twitter Tasteoff, but at The Washington Post we conducted our own version of the famous Judgment of Paris, pitting the US vs France in an oenological grudge match. Only we slipped in some local wines without telling anyone.

What did our professional judges – three retailers and three sommeliers – decide? Virginia can go toe-to-toe with the big boys!

Read about it in today's Washington Post.

DLW Conference Gets the Message Out

The DrinkLocalWine.com conference attracted about 70 people from around the country to discuss ways to promote regional wines against market preconceptions and the vagaries of the distribution system. The day culminated in the “Texas Twitter Tasteoff,” which you can follow on Twitter at #dlw09.

The audience at Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts in Dallas included local wine enthusiasts, Texas grape growers and winemakers, and bloggers not only from Texas but from as far afield as Colorado, Arizona, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, and even California, many of whom tapped away at their laptops during the presentations and the tasting. Bloggers were a key audience for the conference – after all, DrinkLocalWine.com was created last year (by Dallas writer Jeff Siegel, aka “The Wine Curmudgeon,” and myself) as a portal site to link to bloggers covering regional wines from around North America.

And bloggers are an idea channel to reach regional wine’s key market – millenials. Richard Leahy, East Coast editor of Vineyard &Winery Management (the best wine magazine you’ve never heard of), made a persuasive argument that millenials are more open-minded about regional wines than older drinkers because they don’t care about which wines are endorsed by Robert Parker or the Wine Spectator and they want to experience wines for themselves rather than let someone else tell them what to drink. Fer Servadou, anyone?

Leahy, who blogs at RichardLeahy.com, also argued that wineries should avoid planting cabernet and chardonnay simply because of their popularity and focus on grape varieties suited for their climate. For our Texas hosts, that meant Mediterranean varieties such as tempranillo or sangiovese, Leahy said.

This ruffled Greg Bruni, winemaker at Llano Estacado, the second-largest winery in Texas (which boasts 177 wineries altogether, despite having fewer than 4,000 acres planted to vines). Bruni said any winery that wants to be commercially successful needs to grow cabernet because the consumers want to drink it.

Indeed, Bruni poured a delicious cabernet during the Twitter Tasteoff – at $12 a bottle it represents a tremendous value. That said, several wineries poured delicious tempranillo. And perhaps in the spirit of harmony, the winning red at the tasting was a tempranillo-cabernet blend from Inwood Estates in northern Texas.

The other winners included a racy and vibrant pinot blanc from Flat Creek Estate, a “port” styled sweet red from Sandstone Cellars, and a nearly unanimous crowd favorite, a “Madeira” from Haak Vineyards & Winery made from an exotic hybrid grape called blanc de bois.

Many people asked me, “Where are you going to do this next year?” Any wine regions want to step up?

The Texas Twitter Tasteoff