When I invited Oz Clarke, the prolific and genial British wine writer, to my house to taste some wines from the Eastern United States, I didn't want to overdo it. He was coming fresh from the airport after a flight from London after all, and the man would be tired.
I needn't have worried. After more than 30 wines, lots of local cheese and homemade bread, a lengthy meal and a few ballads, I was the one waving the white napkin of surrender. Clarke is not only a laserlike palate - he's a raconteur who has never forgotten his professional training in theater. That helps him write entertaining and engaging books about wine, and it gives him amazing stamina at the dinner table. Excerpts of our discussion about wines near and far are in my column in Wednesday's Washington Post Food section. And don't forget my monthly list of Recession Buster wine recommendations.
After I posted here and on The Washington Post's All You Can Eat blog castigating the Park Hyatt for not including any local wineries in its June Masters of Food & Wine Event celebrating local agriculture, the hotel promptly added one.
The day after my post, representatives of the hotel approached Boxwood Winery in Middleburg, Va., and asked them to participate. The winery immediately accepted, said Rachel Martin, Boxwood's executive director.
The Park Hyatt D.C.'s Blue Duck Tavern is a terrific restaurant, and Chef Brian McBride does a great job featuring local ingredients. Local wines are underrepresented on the list, however, and they were left out of the initial lineup for the June.
The lineup for the event includes some top-name West Coast wineries, including Brewer-Clifton, Melville, Caymus, and Duckhorn. But for an event celebrating local agriculture, it seemed fitting that at least one local winery should be involved.
This week, the Park Hyatt Hotel chain announced that it would bring its annual Masters of Food and Wine event to Washington this June 17-20. Chef Extraordinaire Brian McBride of Blue Duck Tavern in the Park Hyatt in the West End will welcome chefs, sommeliers and winemakers from around the country for a weekend of food and wine that will “focus on the commitment to local farmers and to supporting sustainable agriculture,” according to a company press release. They will visit the Dupont Circle FRESHFARM Market and Virginia's “esteemed” Chapel Hill Farm in Berryville, which raises an heirloom variety of veal called Randall Lineback.
Will they be visiting any local wineries? No.
Will any local wineries be participating in the event? No.
Who is the wine headliner? Dan Duckhorn, of Napa Valley's Duckhorn Vineyards. An eminent name and hard to fault, especially given the obvious cute tie-in to Blue Duck Tavern. But hardly local.
This is a restaurant so committed to local farming that it wants you to know the name of the rancher who slaughtered the lamb you are about to eat. But its commitment to local wine consists of a few good but desultory selections buried in the list at markups (3x retail) guaranteed to render them mere window dressing.
The Park Hyatt is not alone in this hypocrisy. Alice Waters, the doyenne of the “eat local” movement, has organized a series of dinners in DC the last two years to preach the eat-local gospel. Each time, she has served only California and Italian wines.
The locavore movement in DC-area restaurants ignores important advances in local viticulture that should make us locapours as well. This conundrum was a major topic at last weekend's DrinkLocalWine.com 2010 Conference at Lansdowne Resort in Leesburg. The conference, which I helped organize along with Jeff Siegel, a Dallas-based wine writer who blogs as The Wine Curmudgeon, focused on how local wineries can get their message out without relying on the “winestream media” of the major wine mags, as well as how to convince locavores to become locapours.
On that latter point, Todd Kliman, wine and food editor of Washingtonianmagazine (and a friend and former editor of mine), argued eloquently that local wineries should not focus on the Holy Grail of wine lists – those at the top-tier restaurants such as Citronelle or CityZen. Such restaurants are designed to impress international and expense-account clients, and so will naturally focus on top-end wines with international fame and high point scores. Local wines will find little room to infiltrate their wine lists.
Interestingly, Kliman derided area restaurants for touting their Randall Lineback veal while ignoring local wines. One restaurant he praised for featuring local wines was Baltimore's Woodberry Kitchen, whose chef, Spike Gjerde, will be participating in the Park Hyatt event. Such restaurants in the middle tier are better target for local wineries, Kliman argued, because they are innovative and often dedicated to the local farm movement to a greater degree than high-end restaurants.
(Kliman is the author of The Wild Vine, a history of the Norton grape to be published May 4 by Clarkson Potter. One of the more endearing parts of the conference was when Bruno and Jane Bauer, two Norton fans from South Carolina, revealed that they had trekked up here in their RV just to meet Kliman, having obtained an advance copy of the book on eBay. “Every winelover should read this book,” Bruno Bauer said.)
As for how to get around the winestream media and its focus on Bordeaux and Napa Valley, the answer was social media. Jen Breaux Blosser, of Loudoun County's Breaux Vineyards, described how she uses Facebook and Twitter to forge relationships with customers and advertise special sales. During February's snow storms, when no one could get to the winery, she offered blizzard discounts – order now, pickup after the melt – and managed to make money even without people coming to the winery. Jim Corcoran, of nearby Corcoran Vineyards, told me that Internet coupons have significantly increased traffic to Corcoran's tasting rooms.
The highlight of the DrinkLocalWine.com 2010 Conference was the Twitter Taste-Off, in which nearly 30 wineries from Virginia and Maryland poured two wines each for about 100 participants, including wine bloggers and writers from across the country.(See my video at the bottom of this post to get your own taste.) Tasters were able to Tweet live, and you can still follow them on #DLW10 and #DLW10VA. Statistics of how many tweets were tweeted by how many twits to how many followers are not yet available – apparently the contractors enjoyed the wine too much. But a secret ballot revealed the crowd favorites to be the Breaux Vineyards 2002 Merlot Reserve for Best Red and Media Favorite; the Chrysalis Vineyards 2008 Albarino for Best White; and the Michael Shaps 2008 Viognier for Peoples' Choice.
Richard Leahy, East Coast editor of Vineyard & Winery Management magazine, commented that the victory for the Breaux 2002 Merlot Reserve demonstrated how well Virginia red wines can age, especially considering the strong competition from so many reds of the excellent 2007 vintage. I was thrilled at the consistently high quality of the wines from both Virginia and Maryland.
Local sommeliers should take note. Your customers have.
You can read other participants’ accounts of the conference at DrinkLocalWine.com.
There’s still time to register for this Sunday’s DrinkLocalWine.com 2010 conference and Twitter Taste-Off in Leesburg, Va. This conference – for bloggers, Tweeters and wine lovers of all kinds – will highlight issues facing local wineries in the Mid-Atlantic, plus the chance to taste wines from about 25 of the best wineries in Virginia and Maryland.
The conference is modeled after the one held last August in Dallas, which of course featured Texas wines. The Twitter Taste-Off is a real treat and not at all as silly as it sounds. There will be free WiFi onsite so anyone with a smartphone or a laptop or – gasp! even an iPad! – can instantly tweet each wine review. All the tweets will be displayed on a big screen at the event and of course will become part of the Library of Congress’ Twitter archive! It’s a great chance to taste these wines and meet some winemakers, and of course it’s a great opportunity for the wineries to generate some Twitter buzz on the Internet.
Registration is $65 in advance, $75 at the door, and includes three panel sessions discussing Virginia and Maryland wine, social media and the wine industry, and why locavores aren’t locapours. You also get lunch and the afternoon Twitter Taste-Off. A full conference agenda, plus a list of participating wineries and attending media members and the all important registration link, are available at DrinkLocalWine.com.
This year's Virginia Governor's Cup - for red wines, at least - was awarded last Friday to King Family Vineyards for their 2007 Meritage, a stylish Bordeaux blend grown in vineyards just northwest of Charlottesville. Fifteen wineries took gold medals in this year's competition, which serves as a nice snapshot of Virginia's wine industry, which now stands at 157 wineries. Here's my column in today's Washington Post.
Wines are now made in all 50 states - but would you know that by looking at a typical wine list or store shelf?
Andrew Stover, the hyper-energetic millenial generation sommelier at two hip Washington D.C. restuarants, is trying to change that perception. Working with a D.C.-area distributor, Stover is bringing high-quality and high-value wines from aorund the US to the DC-area market. These include Arizona Stronghold from Cochise County, Arizona, and Sawtooth Vineyards from the Snake River Valley in Idaho.
Let go your prejudices. I did - I'd never heard of Maynard James Keenan, the rock star behind Arizona Strongholds. I didn't let that stop me from appreciating these delightful wines.
Another winter storm is preparing to sock the Mid-Atlantic region this weekend, but the vines out at Glen Manor Vineyards near Front Royal, Virginia, don't mind - they'll be snug under the white blanket as long as the temperature doesn't drop too far.
While winter is a quiet time at wineries, our vintner friends have already begun the important work that sets the stage for the next crop. You can read how Jeff White of Glen Manor is enjoying the winter calm in my Washington Postcolumn. You'll also find my monthly "Recession Busters" recommendations of six wines that are as friendly to your wallet as to your palate.
Could this be the year Maryland residents get the right to order wine online? Hopes are high that the Legislature might finally pass legislation legalizing direct shipping of wine to consumers. I explore this issue in today's column in The Washington Post.
After I wrote this, someone told me only 15% of wines on the market are actually distributed in Maryland through the normal three-tier distribution channels. That is market forces. But why should state law restrict us from reaching out of channels for the others? That's not fair.
What can we do about it? Write to your state delegate or senator in support of direct wine shipping legislation. Support Marylanders for Better Beer and Wine Laws. Post a comment here or on my column on washingtonpost.com. But don't stay silent.
The number of wineries in the United States continues to grow, reports Wine Business Monthly. The total at the end of November was 6,223, up 122 over the past year. That equals the 6% growth pace of 2008 and shows some resilience in the wine industry despite the bad economy. To be sure, the “launch” decisions for many of these new wineries were probably made in better times, and the growth was much more modest than the explosive 10% in 2007 and 15% in 2006. But still, we need to drink even in hard times, right?
“We had explosive growth in past years; but if wineries grow 5 percent a year, that’s still pretty good growth,” Bill Nelson, president of the U.S. wine trade association WineAmerica, told WBM. “These are still big numbers. At 5 percent a year, the number of wineries doubles in 15 years.”
While I and other bloggers and writers have trumpeted the rise of “regional wines,” the magazine reported that California continues to have about half of the nation’s wineries, a figure that has remained steady over the past four years. California has 3,047 wineries, followed not so closely by Washington state with 564, Oregon with 453, New York with 229, Virginia with 163, Texas with 157, Pennsylvania with 141, Ohio with 120, Michigan at 104 and North Carolina at 101.
The WBM article did not give last year’s rankings, but Virginia’s growth has been phenomenal in 2009 and I’d wager the Old Dominion overtook the Lone Star state last year. These rankings overall show the vitality of the wine industry in the Eastern United States.
Over Christmas weekend, my family held our annual "Wine Camp." This is an extremely vinonerdy exercise in which we pour several wines blind and say, "Tell me what this is." Over the years, it has taken on an air of one-upsmanship and competition, and it is always a helluva lot of fun.
My main protagonists are Dave Johnson and Ed Oldfield. Dave is my brother-in-law's brother-in-law, a relation twice-removed by marriage; Ed is Dave's close friend. Both are prominent doctors in the Hampton Roads-Norfolk region as well as avid wine collectors. They both are extremely skilled at finding exclusive wines of small production and (usually) high point scores that are not widely available - their network of retailers and winemakers across the country is impressive. One year, Dave wowed us with a $20 Aussie Shiraz that had everyone opening their wallets, while Ed, a devoted Dooniac, stunned with a bottle of 1984 Bonny Doon Vin Gris de Cigare - the inaugural vintage of the original Rhone Ranger wine.
Naturally, I can't compete in this crowd, so I bring outlandish wines that no one will expect. Last Spring, I surprised Dave and Ed with a delicious Dragon's Hollow Chardonnay from China, of all places. (Being a wine writer gives me the advantage of some unusual samples.)
This year's lineup included Isabel Sauvignon Blanc 2002 from New Zealand, still showing well without the stewed asparagus flavors old NZ SB can get. A 2000 Hunter Valley Semillon from Rothbury Wine Scoiety (my offering) was not as fully developed as I would have liked; it had appealing lime flavors and still tasted young, but was not harmonious. (I went back to it 3 hours later and thought it delicious, but by then I had been enjoying about ..... THIS many wines, so who knows?)
Dave then opened a 2006 Poets Leap Carmina Burana Cask Aged Riesling from the Long Shadows project in Washington state's Columbia Valley. I guessed the wine and the winery, but only because its Riesling character was obvious and I knew Dave's fondness for Long Shadows. (It pays to know your adversary!) Ed then opened a Retour Pinot Noir 2007 from Oregon, which matched nicely the Carabella 2005 I had brought.
You get the picture - the evening continued through the 2005 and 1996 Quilceda Creek Cabernets, and a Cab Franc comparison of Horton Vineyards "Tower Series"2007 and a 1985 Channing Road from Napa. Ed showed his Doon colors with a 1986 Old Telegram.
I had a surprise wine in reserve and was despairing that the evening was getting late and I wouldn't be able to present it against so many stellar, older wines. Then Dave brought out a young California Syrah, a Tensley 2008 Colson Canyon - lush and opulent with abundant fruit and high alcohol (over 15%) noticeable but not enough to dominate the wine. I saw my chance and brought out my ringer. It was similar, and yet clearly different in style - more earthy and dense, less obviously fruity than the Tensley. Dave and Ed immediately pegged it as Syrah, young, aged in French oak, and from California. My brother-in-law thought Washington state, figuring the concentration in the wine indicated Columbia Valley.
"You are all right except for one detail," I said, pulling the bag off the bottle. "It's from Maryland." I showed them the Black Ankle Vineyards 2007 Leaf Stone Syrah.
Such games are not what wine is all about, but they are devilishly fun and a great way to experience wine. I suggest some other ways of exploring the grape in my column today in The Washington Post, along with my monthly Recession Buster recommendations.
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