Tag Archives: local wine

Wine of the week: McPherson Cellars La Herencia 2009

The key to success for regional wine is not so much about quality or even pricing. It's about producing wine that reflects the place where it is made. Regional wine will never be successful if it's nothing more than a knockoff of what's being done elsewhere — and where it's being done better, as well.

That's why the best regional wine has a sense of terroir, whether it's a New York riesling, a Missouri norton, or a Virginia viognier. The top producers in those states know they have to compete with California, but they have also realized they don't have to do it on California's terms. They can do it on their terms.

That's what we've finally figured out in Texas. There has been a revolution in the past five years, with growers and winemakers embracing warm climate grapes in a way I never thought possible. Today, we have quality wines made with tempranillo, roussanne, syrah, sangiovese, blanc du bois, black Spanish, and viognier — grapes better suited for the Texas terroir than the traditional French varietals. Even the state's biggest producers, who can sell (and need to sell) chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon because they're in grocery stores, are using these new varietals to produce fascinating wines.

One of the best examples of the revolution is McPherson's La Herencia ($14, sample), a tempranillo blend that has the Spanish grape's varietal characteristics yet retains a Texas quality. It's richer and more full than a Rioja, the best-known tempranillo from Spain, with more red fruit. But it's not too fruity or too tannic or too alcoholic, like so many California wines.

Serve this with barbecue, almost any main course with rice (like jambalaya), and even some roast or grilled chicken dishes. Availability will be limited outside of Texas.

7 things you need to know about regional wine

Dlwbutton This is DrinkLocalWine's fourth annual regional wine week, which means all sorts of goodies and festivities at DrinkLocalWine.com, including the 47-word essay contest and voluminous links to regional wine stories, photos and interviews. The blog will be all regional wine this week; but don't worry, it won't hurt.

That's because, to paraphrase my partner in the locapour movement, Dave McIntyre, local wine is no longer a novelty. There are thousands of regional wineries, they're in each of the 47 states that aren't California, Washington, and Oregon, and the quality of the wine has improved dramatically in the past decade. But that doesn't mean that regional is as respected as it could be, or that nearly enough people know about it. So, after the jump, seven things you need to know about regional wine:

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My 47-word regional wine week essay

DrinkLocalWine is holding a 47-word essay contest to promote Regional Wine Week, which starts Sunday. My effort is below. It's not as good as Dave McIntyre's (but don't worry — Dave, my partner in locapour, can't win any of the terrific prizes we have this year). But I think it's better than my haiku last year.

The average August temperature in Texas is in the 90s, and 100 and higher is common. The Burgundy average temperature is 68. What's more surprising: That we have so much trouble growing chardonnay and pinot noir or that it only took 20 years to figure this out?

Texas Twitter Tuesday

Yes, the Wine Curmudgeon is going to tweet live on Tuesday, part of a weekly feature used to spread the word about Texas wine. We'll start at 7 p.m. and will twitter about the Texas Wine Garden at the State Fair, Texas Wine Month in October, and DrinkLocalWine's Regional Wine Week.

Visitors are welcome, so stop by and say hello; we'll be tasting three Texas wines. If you want to follow the fun on Twitter, I'm @wine_curmudgeon, and the event's hash tag is #TXwine. Also, Russ Kane and Denise Fraser, who put this thing together, have set up a Tweetchat room for #TXwine Twitter Tuesdays at tweetchat.com/room/TXwine.

This tweeting thing should be interesting. First, I don't do it very often, so keeping my pungent witticisms to 140 characters will be a challenge. Second, I'm told the Twitter-sphere for this event can get very caustic, and that only the manliest of men and womanliest of women can survive the heckling. Will I be curmudgeonly enough?

Thank you, Texas Legislature, for a job well done

Texas is facing one of the most serious crises in its history, and no, it’s not the wildfires consuming the state, the years-long drought that has helped cause many of the wildfires, or even our on-going budget crisis.

It’s the breakup of the Big 12 athletic conference. How does the Wine Curmudgeon know this is so serious? The Legislature, which usually approaches state government as if it needs to hurry up and get home, open a beer, and sit in front of the TV in its t-shirt, is actually concerned and threatening action. The governor and lieutenant governor even issued statements.

This is the same legislature, of course, that eliminated $4.3 million over two years in state funding for the Texas wine industry. Gone is the money spent on research, including key efforts to determine which grapes are best for Texas. Gone are the marketing dollars that helped make the Texas one of the top wine tourism destinations in the country. Gone are most of the state employees who helped make Texas the fifth biggest wine producer in the country. It was all part of the 40 percent cut to the agriculture department’s budget.

Full disclosure: The state paid me $5,000 in 2010 for two Texas-related wine events, the taste-off against New York and the Texas wine stage at the state fair. But I’d write this post regardless, because it has never been about the money (and I took less money to do the wine stage this year). Instead, it’s about doing the right thing, which I’ve always done and which I’ll always do.

As opposed to the legislature, which has an agenda of its own and which always baffles the rest of us. To the legislature, football is more important than creating jobs or helping an industry grow that has consistently produced jobs, especially in depressed rural areas — and that has a multi-billion dollar effect on the state. Wine apparently isn’t manly enough for the Legislature, which sees college football — corrupt, money-grubbing college football — as the proper venue for its efforts. They deserve each other.

How desperate is the situation for state’s wine industry? Ed Hellman, the Texas Tech professor who heads the state’s grape research funding, is trying to raise the millions of dollars needed to restore grape research through private donors. State funding, he says, has gone away and will never come back. Meanwhile, a group of Texas wine aficionados has proposed to restore the marketing money through another voluntary donation program. What’s next? Selling band candy or holding a bake sale?

What Hellman didn’t note, because he is too nice a guy, is that Texas Tech signed ex-football coach Mike Leach to a five-year, $12.7 million contract before firing him a couple of years ago. That $12.7 million would fund the state’s wine grape program for six years. Aren’t priorities wonderful things?

Regional wine labels: Is a wine where it says it’s from?

When is a wine made by a winery in your state not from your state? More often than you think.

This is the great conundrum of the regional wine business. The best way for local wineries to market their product is to proclaim its local-ness. But, given the way the wine business works, their wine may not be made with local grapes, but with grapes or juice imported from California or even Europe. Confused? It gets worse. Federal law allows wineries to be appropriately vague about whether the wine is made with local grapes.

All in all, regional wine labeling is a maze that consumers (many of whom are baffled by wine labels to begin with) don’t know they have to negotiate. After the jump — how labeling laws work, what to look for on a regional wine label, and why so many wineries take advantage of this gray area.

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