I say American wine, you say…California. And well you should as the Golden State does represent almost nine out of every 10 bottles of wine made in the USA. But if I ask you to think beyond the obvious, most will reflex respond the Pacific Northwest (Oregon and Washington), then likely NY state, and from there some will say Virginia and others likely Texas. The fact of the matter is that all 50 states do indeed make and sell wine commercially in America and many are making better and better wines all the time. Add into the mix that increasingly good bottles are emanating from Canada (the Okanagan Valley and greater Niagara area of Ontario) and Mexico (hello Guadalupe Valley) and it’s easy to understand the excitement surrounding the North American industry. Continue reading »

In chatting with some aspiring wine enthusiasts over the weekend I was delighted to inform them that all fifty states are now producing wine- what a far cry from a decade or so ago.

I began teaching about wine in 1990 for the trade, and had a class that I instructed called ‘Wines of America”. Now as then, California dominates/dominated the landscape being responsible for nine out of every ten bottles of wine made in the USA driving the majority of American wine sales. I’ve read differing statistics but now-a-days, that number is closer to seven out of every ten bottles sold, with California still maintaining a vinous stranglehold of sorts.

Yet, things have changed. Those initial classes I offered up in the 90’s always began with the question of how many states in the USA made wine commercially. I recall that the answer started in the low 30’s in that first offering and gradually climbed as the American wine industry grew and matured. The rest of the Pacific Coast is well established and has always been a contributing part of that answer. Washington and Oregon indeed have very healthy and thriving industries in wine and have for decades. The growth in quality, number of wineries and the like has been staggering. The Pacific’s dominance now meanders deeper and “internationally” to the north (Canada’s Okanagan) and the south (Mexico’s Guadalupe valley in the Baja peninsula). Continue reading »

I was up in Seattle recently speaking at the wonderful and annual event, Taste Washington, a two-day gathering celebrating the state’s cornucopia of wine and food. I missed last year and was amazed at how many more wines there were this time around. Some of which I had never heard of before prior to stepping up to a tasting table. The state’s now 540-plus wineries seem to be expanding virtually at a daily rate and many of the new wines are simply incredible. I was especially heartened to try a number of really superb Rieslings during a seminar I participated in called ‘Riesling Rocks the Rim’, a snapshot of the state’s offering and a demo on how they pair well with Asian dishes.

The wines in the seminar, six of them, represented an selection of dry and off dry styles and from wineries that ranged from larger producers to smaller ones. The food, an assortment of five offerings from the menu of the celebrated Wild Ginger restaurant, provided an apropos assortment of taste profiles (heat, salt, sweet etc.) from which to platform Riesling’s ability and proclivity to pair up nicely with these non-western offerings. While all the wines were quite tasty (no duds in the chosen six), I was especially enamored by a couple: Continue reading »

I was having breakfast with a Bay Area friend of mine who is a big muckety-muck in the world of data research, mostly for the wine trade but also for tech businesses like Microsoft. He does like wine much more than wifi! We were chatting about what’s hot, what’s up and coming, and he asked me for my ‘crystal ball predictions’ for places that are not yet on the radar screen of the drinking public. That means, to him, neither South Africa (coming but still not arrived yet in the USA) nor Austria (already here) or Greece (ditto but not nearly as established). What he was curious about were those players that we can expect to see come up from nowhere over the next few years. Here’s my answer about the places I think we’ll be hearing more from in the near to mid-term:

Uruguay- Still lost in the shadows of Chile and Argentina, there are some lovely wines, mostly red and mostly based on the Tannat grape (being of Madiran and Irouléguy fame in Southwestern France) that are quite tasty if not difficult to come across outside of Montevideo! Look for Juanico, the largest region and the name of one of the more prominent wineries (along with Bouza, a standout winery in some of my recent book tastings).

Portugal- But not Port which has a good and loyal following and whose wines are globally recognized and vintages followed. What I think is up and coming are the table wines that come from the Duoro (yes, where Port is made but more still table wine is made than Port- 60/40) and also the interior Alentejo, the region of Dão, the Minho (home of Vihno Verde and more..) and other spots like the Ribatejo and Estremadura. No, the Continue reading »