USA Today, the nation's newspaper, dropped at hotel room doors across the land every morning, last week endorsed the regional wine movement with a travel feature on 10 "local" wine regions to visit. This is a great idea - if your business or pleasure takes you to St. Louis, consider a detour to Hermann. Heading to New York? Linger awhile in the Finger Lakes. Taking your family to Washington, DC, for some American history, or Charlottesville, to see Jefferson's Monticello? Guess what? Wine country is just around the corner.
The article is also a tribute to Regional Wine Week and DrinkLocalWine.com, as Jeff Siegel and I were interviewed about emerging wine regions across the country.
Here's a great way to start Regional Wine Week: I received my copy of Oz Clarke's Pocket Wine Guide 2011 yesterday - it's a fun, handy reference volume with short entries on wine grapes, regions and producers around the world, with vintage charts, liberally peppered with bons mots from the effervescently witty Oz. I always enjoy reading his introduction, which this year warns against complacency by wine drinkers in the face of anti-alcohol activists who don't distinguish among drinks.
Then he describes what wines excite him lately. There are some unpronounceable Turkish varieties, and he's hot for Slovenian Furmint and even Cabernet Sauvignon from Jordan. (The country, not the Sonoma County winery.) He's rediscovered Chardonnay from California, New Zealand and Australia, and while he doesn't seem to share my love for Argentina, he gives a begrudging nod to Torrontes.
And then there's this:
"My most thrilling discovery in the USA this year has been the wine from vineyards spread around Washington, DC, in particular those of Virginia, whose sumptuous, scented Viogniers are world-class. A perfect partner for the leaner, racier delights of New York State."
Some disclosure is in order here. I contribute entries on the Eastern United States to this book, and I hosted (and wrote about) Clarke when he visited the Washington area earlier this year and shared his opinions on some local wines. When I met him, though, it was clear he was already quite familiar with many wines from the Mid-Atlantic region and particularly jazzed about Virginia Viognier.
Don't forget to check out DrinkLocalWine.com this week for more postings on regional wines!
Does your impression of Virginia wine date back to an unfortunate taste 10 or 20 years ago, in a store or at a sweltering festival somewhere in hunt country? Mine did, but I kept tasting, as Virginia wines kept getting better. Unfortunately, I'm not at all convinced that most people have continued to taste and keep an open mind about Virginia wine.
That's why I hope you'll enjoy my column in today's Washington Post, in which I highlight some interesting trends in the Virginia wine industry - it's growth over the past decade, with an increasing emphasis on quality; it's success in new markets, both among younger, tech-savvy drinkers and overseas; and the increasing focus on vineyard-designated wines that express and develop Virginia's terroir, unique from that of France or California.
This is Virginia Wine Month, as declared by the Virginia Wine Folks. And next week is Regional Wine Week, as declared by Jeff Siegel (The Wine Curmudgeon) and myself at DrinkLocalWine.com. Be sure to check in regularly for the best blogoscribbling about wines "from around here, wherever here happens to be."
I'm a big fan of New York wines. Riesling from the Finger Lakes seems to get better every year, especially as winemakers continue to carve out a distinctive style that speaks of the region's terroir. Are they particularly German? Well, maybe not, though some definitely have that mineral oil quality (many wine lovers call it petrol or diesel, but I think mineral oil seems more positive a reference). The ones that send me over the top when I taste them have bracing acidity and an almost unbearable lightness of being, an ephemeral characteristic that leaves flavors flitting across your palate with surprising complexity, even if the initial impression may not carry depth. If I had to point to a German region and insist on making the comparison, I'd say Finger Lakes Rieslings (at least the ones that excite me the most) remind me of the delicate wines from the Mittelrhein, which admittedly is not Germany's most revered wine region. (Though I love that delicacy!) So perhaps it's best just to say that New York is carving out its own identity with the grape.
Of course, I have a soft spot for Seneca Lake, which is the middle finger. (Ba-da-boom!)
Some of my favorites? Hermann J. Wiemer and Dr. Konstantin Frank are the most classic. The ones that I find especially enticing come from Fox Run, Anthony Road and Red Newt. Chateau Lafayette Reneau had a wonderful Riesling that won Best in Show at the Atlantic Seaboard Wine Competition once, and at this year's judging I flipped for what turned out to be the 2009 Dry Riesling from Glenora.
New York is not limited to the Finger Lakes, of course. Long Island is making some delicious reds, and this region is also establishing its own style and character - the better wineries are no longer trying to make Pomerol, they're just happy making the best damn Long Island merlot they can.
And more and more New York wines are now reaching the D.C. area market, which means they are making enough to distribute wines outside the state. This was the topic of my Washington Post column last week. This column was particularly gratifying because it engendered considerably more response than I usually get, through e-mails and phone calls. Most of them said something like, "Nice column, but you didn't mention my favorite ... " That means readers are aware of New York wines and looking out for them, whether on their travels up north or now on their local retail shelves.
For more information about New York's wineries, go to uncorknewyork.com, the website of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation, or to Lenn Thompson's New York Cork Report. Don't forget Regional Wine Week coming up Oct. 10-16 on DrinkLocalWine.com!
Calling all wine bloggers: Don't forget the third annual Regional Wine Week, next week, Oct. 10-16. Not that you haven't been writing about your local wines all year, but this is the time to draw extra attention to the exciting wines "from around here, wherever 'here' happens to be."
Here's info on the week at DrinkLocalWine.com, which will post links to as many articles as we can find about local wine. The website is also a one-stop portal for readers interested in learning about wines from anywhere in the U.S. - or at least those areas that you don't normally read about (as in, the West Coast).
But DrinkLocalWIne.com is more than just an interesting collection of articles about wines you may never find on your local retail shelves. If you are planning a trip somewhere, say to Philadelphia or the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania, check out DrinkLocalWine for articles by Paul Vigna or David Falchek for suggestions on what local wines to seek out while you're there. Headed for New York City? Even if you aren't able to get to wine country in the Finger Lakes or Long Island, on DrinkLocalWine.com you can find links to Lenn Thompson's fine New York Cork Report and other scribblings about the Empire State's vino.
It's not just a wine website, but also a travel resource.
Last week, The Washington Post's Food section won the Best Food Blog award from the Association of Food Journalists. If you haven't been reading All We Can Eat on the Post website, you should. I'm proud to be a minor contributor to this fine, award-winning product. Congratulations also to Jane Black, the Food section's outstanding staff writer, for her feature award, and to Jason Wilson, the Post's spirits columnist, who won an award for his blog, The Smart Set - for a wine article, no less!
When I wrote about my tasting party with Oz Clarke, the gregarious and hilarious British wine writer, several readers chastised me for not revealing Oz's reactions to the individual wines. So he was kind enough to send me some tasting notes of his favorites. Keep in mind that we tasted probably 30 or so wines that evening ranging up and down the East Coast of the US, but centered on the Mid-Atlantic region. Here are the ones that stuck in Oz's mind:
NASSAU VALLEY VINEYARDS (DELAWARE) CHARDONNAY 2006 AND CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2007
These Delaware wines were new to me. I really liked the lean, stoney fruit, even a little leafy in the red, and the restrained alcohol. I’d countenance a very light hand with the oak, but this is a promising newcomer.
BLACK ANKLE VINEYARDS VIOGNIER 2009 AND LEAF-STONE SYRAH 2008(MARYLAND)
With a name like that, you just know I’m going to love the wines, though my fantasy about the exact turn of the black ankle may not be entirely based on fact. These are restrained, reserved styles from Frederick County in Maryland and good examples of Maryland’s late but youthful charge on the Eastern wine scene. Or should I say, re-charge; I have fond memories of Byrd Chardonnays from the 1980s.
MICHAEL SHAPS PETIT VERDOT 2005 (VIRGINIA)
Virginia just loves to play hard ball. Most wine regions steer well clear of Petit Verdot – too tricky to ripen, too tannic, can’t pronounce the name, blah, blah. But good ’ole Virginia thinks – hey. Warmish climate, humid, rain in the fall – Petit Verdot, thick skin to avoid rot, needs the heat. We can do that – and they do. Lovely dark fruit, pleasant tannic grip, a smudge of oak. Welcome to your New World home, P-V.
Now. Is that R silent? Some people call it Rekatsiteli, the Finger Lakes boys call it Arkatsiteli – but that R, – that P in Russian – isn’t it silent before a consonant? I learnt a bit of Russian – admittedly from a book published in the 1930s when presumably most decent Russian linguists had been incarcerated – so that I could sing Mussorgsky better. I then realised that Mussorgsky isn’t one of those guys you can sing better unless you’re born in deepest Siberia with a throat as wide as a 100-year-old pine tree trunk, so I sort of lost interest. But I still think the R/P question is silent before a consonant. I’m going to pronounce it Katsiteli. And Horton, God bless the fact that they’ve probably planted a row or two of every vine variety known to man – produce a really classic, full, apple puree example only matched in the East by Frank’s Finger Lakes classic that I tasted a few days later.
SHINDIG 2009 (FINGER LAKES, NEW YORK)
For those toffee-noses who don’t believe the hybrids can do dick shit (sorry, ed - Note from Dave: That's OK, this is the Internet!) this mean, lean, chewy, apple skin and shimmering green flesh tongue scourer is 80% Vidal with a dash of Riesling to pull it towards the legit. side of the blanket.
BOXWOOD WINERY “BOXWOOD” 2007, (VIRGINIA)
Well, some Virginian had to take on the twin Shibboleths of St-Emilion garagiste and Napa Titan. It’s pretty good if that’s your thing – and Virginia is sort of equidistant, so it should be good. (Note from Dave: Boxwood does two red blends: Topiary, which is modeled after St. Emilion - half merlot, half cabernet franc - and Boxwood, which follows a Left Bank recipe based on cabernet sauvignon, merlot and petit verdot. We tasted the Boxwood, because that’s the one I had on hand, but Oz can be forgiven for mixing them up slightly given the sheer number of wines we tasted that night. Besides, we probably talked about the Topiary and how that is the most popular of the two.)
BILTMORE RESERVE CHARDONNAY 2008, (NORTH CAROLINA)
I’ve been looking at photos of that damned railroad pile for so long, and at last I taste the wine. Intair-es-ting. Here come de Judge. (Note from Dave: I don’t understand this. But the wine was pretty good!)
The "drink local" movement is gaining steam. When my buddy Jeff Siegel, aka The Wine Curmudgeon, received a press release last week touting a dinner with cookbook author Diana Kennedy to be held next month at the Modern Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, he immediately asked the organizers if Texas or Mexican wines would be among the "carefully selected" wines for the Mexican menu. The museum's chef emailed him that although the menu had not been finalized, Texas wines would be involved. Maybe Mexican wines, too.
In April, the Park Hyatt in Washington added a Virginia winery to its Masters of Food and Wine program after I criticized the all-California selection for an event touting regional Mid-Atlantic agriculture. The Lettuce Entertainment restaurant group did the same for a Chesapeake Bay-themed dinner at their Wildfire restaurant in Tyson's Corner, Va, scheduled for July 27. Once I inquired about it, they quickly lined up Barboursville Vineyards as a co-sponsor and featured winery for the dinner.
The message is getting some big media play, too. Jon Bonne wrote about "justifying local wine" in the San Francisco Chronicle - "local" meaning California, of course. And Steve Heimoff, a senior editor and very distinguished wine writer with Wine Enthusiast magazine, recently blogged about a plea from a vintner for wine lovers to support their local wineries to help them through hard times. Heimoff lives in California wine country, and "local" for him also means California wine, but the message translates. The vintner Heimoff cited was Oded Shakked of Longboard Vineyards, who criticized restaurants for touting their local produce but ignoring local wines.
And that is precisely the message Todd Kliman eloquently espouses in a withering essay posted last week on The Daily Beast. In "The Locavore Wine Hypocrisy," Kliman takes on some of the most famous restaurants in the country for talking a good local game on their menus and not following through on their wine lists.
Here's an excerpt:
"... if these are heady days for the local cheesemaker, butcher, and
farmer, they're head-scratching days for the local vintner, who has
been largely shut out of the feel-good foodie fad. If the wine lists at
the country's most prominent locavore restaurants tell us anything,
it's that 'what grows together, goes together'—the mantra of the
movement—is meant to refer to what's on the plate, not what's in the
glass. Local and regional wines are seldom to be found."
Kliman, the food and wine editor of Washingtonian magazine and author of the tremendous new book, The Wild Vine, rips apart the most common excuse for ignoring local wines - that they are too expensive and better values abound from California. Chefs are willing to pay extra for organic eggs from chickens just up the road, he points out. And sommeliers are supposed to align their wine lists with the chef's menu, even if it means a little extra work to suss out the better wines from the area. But many somms seem unwilling to take a chance on local wines that don't seem trendy.
"The idealism of their mission statements notwithstanding, what locavore
restaurants are telling us is that quality matters much less than
cachet when it comes to assembling a wine list—the perception that a
given product is the best, most exquisite example in its class," Kliman writes.
Maybe once local wines gain a little more cachet, the sommeliers will wake up. What's interesting to me, however, is that momentum for local wine is coming from writers - bloggers, especially - and consumers, rather than retailers or sommeliers. When I eat out, I want my sommelier to be taking chances and to seek out unusual wines - even if they come from just up the road. Don't treat me with kid gloves - dazzle me.
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.
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