Helping The Daily Meal understand local and the best U.S. wineries
by Wine Curmudgeon Posted On
How do we know that regional wine is firmly part of the wine mainstream? When a hip and with it on-line magazine, edited by Colman Andrews — one of the most influential people in the food world — lists the 101 best U.S. wineries and 13 are from The Other 47. And, even more impressively, the editors knew so much about drinking local that they don’t even need to ask the most qualified regional wine experts in the country for their input.
Call it just another day at the office for the Winestream Media.
Do not take this as poor mouthing on my part. I’m more grateful than I can write that our work with Drink Local Wine made a difference, whether it’s Eric Asimov’s endorsement of New York wine or Food & Wine’s Ray Isle, who is as open minded about regional wine as he is about cheap wine. And when local gets the kind of play it did from something as high profile and as 21st century as The Daly Meal, I know how far we’ve come.
Or think that I need to rant about the regional wineries on the list. Like all such efforts, it’s perfectly imperfect. Yes, it’s missing a couple of Texas producers, including Brennan and Pedernales, who should be there, and that no one from Missouri made it speaks to the list’s shortcomings. (Full disclosure: One of the Texas producers in the top 101 is owned by someone who criticizes me regularly for my lack of wine knowledge, and has done it in a comment on the blog, and one of the writers who helped pick the list recently told a Texas winery official that the next time I got my facts right about Texas wine, it would be the first time I did so.)
Rather, it’s the frustration that once the Winestream Media gets hold of something, there’s only one way of doing things, and that’s its way. In the end, that becomes self-defeating, as anyone who has ever read the Wine Spectator knows. “Scores are good because they are, and everyone we know agrees with me. So how dare you question us? Because we don’t know you and we don’t want to know you.”
Hence the need to consult people who understand what’s going on with regional wine from a national perspective, which is mostly lacking with the people who helped pick this list.
That no one asked for my opinion is one thing. I’m in the middle of the country, and, as several of my pals have pointed out more than once, my location and my inability to play nicely with the other children works against me when important people on either coast need experting. But that isn’t the case with Doug Frost, MS, MW, and maybe the smartest regional wine person in the world. No one called Doug, and that’s like writing about baseball and not understanding that the game is nine innings long. And how about Linda Murphy, who wrote the book about the subject? Or Dave McIntyre of the Washington Post, who co-founded DLW and is the country’s leading authority on Virginia wine. Or Andrew Stover, who owns a distributor that imports regional wine to the East Coast and has probably more wine from the Other 47 as anyone in the world.
I emailed Andrews at the Daily Meal to ask him about this, but never heard back. Hopefully, he and I can talk soon, and I’ll update the post. Until then, check the list out, look for wineries in your area, and give them a try. Drinking local is what matters, a lesson I hope the Daily Meal keeps in mind when it does the list next year.
More about regional wine:
? Texas wine at the crossroads, one year later
? One more sign local wine has made the mainstream
? Drink Local Wine, regional wine, and the growth of local
Who was it?
” and one of the writers who helped pick the list recently told a Texas winery official that the next time I got my facts right about Texas wine, it would be the first time I did so.”
Names, not insinuations.
Not sure what email address you used, but I never got anything from you. Feel free to contact me at the email address attached to this comment, and I’ll try to explain our methodology. In the meantime, though, I should point out that there are about 8,500 wineries in America today, and while I understand local pride and am a firm believer in recognizing and encouraging fine winemaking anywhere it may occur, the fact is that we probably could have published a list of the 101 Best Wineries in America based in Napa or Sonoma or maybe even Washington State alone. I encouraged our panelists to consider good wines from elsewhere in the country, which they did, because I wanted our story to make the point that all the good wine in America isn’t from the West Coast. But, hey, sorry, the overall majority of it IS. Did we miss a lot of good wineries in Texas? Of course we did (I’ve been drinking Texas wines for years, and for six or seven years was a speaker and/or attendee at the Texas Hill Country Wine & Food Festival, and know how much good stuff there is there). Did we slight Missouri? Sure. And Ohio and New Jersey and North Carolina (whose McRitchie Winery makes a sangiovese that blows most California versions out of the water) and a bunch of other places. But the point of this list wasn’t to recognize everybody in the US who makes good wine; it was to single out the best ??? and the facg that two Texas wineries made the list at all should be more than enough to satisfy any Texas wine-lover. And incidentally, re our choice of panelists, we didn’t recruit participants according to their place of residence or specific area of expertise; we chose Mr. Chalk because he is a regular contributor to our site, and the same is true of other wine writers we reached out to.
Thanks for the comment, Mr. Andrews. Who knows where email goes in the cyber-ether?