Dave McIntyre's WineLine

Eastern Seaboard Winners Presented

Tonight on Capitol Hill, the Atlantic Seaboard Wine Association awarded its Best of Show and Best of Category awards to winners of the 4th annual Atlantic Seaboard Wine Competition. In the photo below, Gordon Murchie, president emeritus of the association, prepares to make the presentation along with Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA) and Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA), co-founders of the Congressional Wine Caucus (which boasts 250 members and is the largest caucus in Congress).

I blogged about the winner, Newport Vineyards 2007 Riesling from Rhode Island, in July. Tonight's reception gave me an opportunity to taste a number of gold and silver medal winners - with labels visible and no pressure to rate the wines.

My faves? I was impressed by the Doukenie Merlot and Sunset Hills Reserve Cabernet Franc from Virginia, and the 2007 Ring of Fire Red, a Petit Verdot-based blend from McRitchie Vineyards in North Carolina's Yadkin Valley. The Black Ankle 2006 Crumbling Rock Bordeaux blend, which I featured in my August column in Washingtonian magazine, was also showing extremely well.

The high quality of these winning wines shows the impressive improvement in winemaking along the East Coast.  These wines are not novelties anymore. They deserve to be taken seriously as wines - as American wines, with their own expression, style and terroir.

Maryland's New Wave

For the past two decades, Maryland has lived in Virginia's shadow when it comes to wine. Lacking state support, Maryland's wine industry stagnated at a dozen wineries, while Virginia's exploded in volume and quality. The Old Dominion became known for excitement, Maryland for unfulfilled potential.

That is changing. Maryland's wine industry has quietly tripled in size this decade, to 35 wineries. Two of those, Black Ankle and Sugarloaf Vineyards, are changing the way wine is made in Maryland by using international techniques (read, Bordeaux) such has high-density planting. Instead of using the East Coast's notoriously humid climate as an excuse for poor winemaking, these wineries decided to work with those challenges, and they are producing intensely flavorful wines with deep color and impressive complexity.

You can read my account of Maryland's New Wine Wave in the August issue of Washingtonian magazine, on newstands now, or on my Web site, dmwineline.com.

A Winning Riesling from ... Rhode Island!

Winemaking on the East Coast keeps getting better and better! This was on display last weekend at the 4th Atlantic Seaboard Wine Competition, when Best of Show was won by a 2007 Riesling from Newport Vineyards in Rhode Island. This wine featured zesty lime flavors and great acidity - a classic Riesling that had me convinced it was from the Finger Lakes.

I was one of 20 judges that swirled, sniffed and spit our way through 458 wines from 100 wineries in 12 states, and having participated in all four contests, I can say this year’s field was the strongest yet. (Or else my table was luckier than in early years.) The Best of Show taste-off featured 19 wines among the 56 that received gold medals; the judges awarded 117 silver and 153 bronze medals as well. (I wrote about last year’s competition in the October 2007 issue of Washingtonian.)

Can three-quarters of East Coast wines be medal worthy? Yes, if you consider wineries self-select by sending their best and many simply choose not to participate. You can say all you want about these competitions, but they provide a worthwhile barometer of how the market is progressing. That’s precisely why the Vinifera Wine Growers Association sponsors the event.

New wineries continue to do well. Maryland’s Black Ankle Vineyards (profiled in the August issue of Washingtonian) scored four medals, including a gold for its 2006 Crumbling Rock Bordeaux blend. Other local names that figure prominently in the medal lists are Pearmund Cellars, Chrysalis, Horton and Barboursville. Kluge Estate wowed the judges with its 2004 rosé sparkling wine.

Some of these Virginia medal winners will be on display September 27 and 28 at the VWGA’s 33rd Virginia Wine Festival at the Prince William County Fairgrounds in Manassas. If you want to snag a bottle of that Best in Show Riesling, you might need to plan a trip to Rhode Island - but hurry, before it sells out!