Wine of the Redwoods

In Northern California, traveling up highway 101, you pass many small towns. Many of them are nondescript. But every now and then, you recognize a familiar name. It gives one a sense of deja-vu to distinguish a name and see a cluster of houses nestled amongst hills and the occasional plot of land covered with vineyard. This is how I felt as I passed the little city of Ukiah in Mendocino County.

This area of Northern California, just south of the giant Redwood forests, has a completely different atmosphere than the more popular, lower, sunnier Napa and Sonoma valleys. It produces many amazing wines, but due to its distance from any large city and lack of young Stanford-educated marketers, Mendocino wines are much less notorious, and consequently, more affordable.

Driving north from Ukiah, there is a smattering of wineries as the Pacific Coast highway climbs into the forests. One winery, in a strange, hexagonal building beside the highway, caught my attention one late-morning. Stopping by, I was pleased with their large assortment of wines and pleasing ambiance.

This winery, known as Girasole Vineyards, had one wine for which I was particularly fond. Their zinfandel, of the old, full-skinned, red variety, is delightful to the senses – more so than almost any other zinfandel. The aroma is soft, smooth, slightly fruity, with a subtle hint of oak. The first sip settles just as velvety on the tongue as the scent on the nostrils. A mouthful brings a warm sweetness and pleasant, light spiciness with a minor bitterness in the aftertaste. The wine is clean, smooth, and healthy – possibly attributable to the fact that, as the winery boasts, its wines are made with organic grapes.

If you find yourself in Mendocino County, stop at Girasole vineyards. If you are looking for the Zinfandel, find the bottle with the bright yellow label covered in sunflowers, and enjoy this relaxing wine.

A Rare Hybrid

Driving from North Texas to Southeast Oklahoma, there is little change in the terrain. Eventually, Choctaw casinos and low, rocky, Oak-strewn hills grow out of the grasslands. There, on the verge of this gentle transition in topography – in the middle of Choctaw territory – rests the oldest, quiet little winery in Oklahoma.

Cimarron Cellars, now twenty-six years old (ancient by Oklahoma standards), grows very few of its own grapes. The vineyards that inspired the first Oklahoma winery were sold off long ago. But the winery still exists and makes some of the best wine in Oklahoma, much of its wine from local grapes. They have a wide variety of wines, many of them with charming local names like "Sooner Red" and "Cowboy Cabernet." They also have wines made of rare varieties, and the name on the bottles austerely states the grape variety. The wine that I will expound upon is one of the latter – the Vignoles.

You are probably asking, as I did, what the hell is a Vignole? Well, Le Vignole is an obscure island in the Adriatic Sea – completely unrelated to the grape variety, Vignoles, as far as my research finds. Vignoles, the grape, is a rare and complex hybrid also known by the name Ravat, which it inherited from its creator, J.F. Ravat. It is found in very few areas, most notably the Finger Lakes region of New York and in Missouri, along the Missouri River.

Usually, grapes are rare because they are unpleasant to eat or they make terrible wine. However, after imbibing some Vignoles wine, I was pleasantly surprised. Like most white wine, it is best served chilled. Immediately after it is poured into the glass, it has little smell. However, as it warms, it emits a light scent of flowers and sour apples. A sip really draws out the sour apples, and also gives a hint of pineapple. A mouthful brings out its true sweetness with a light sourness on the tongue. The aftertaste is warm and sweet, but with a hint of butter.

The wine is incomparable to another semi-sweet wine. Its effect on the palate is pleasant, but different. If you are fortunate enough to find yourself exploring the wine regions of Oklahoma or Missouri, I certainly recommend trying a Vignoles wine.

An Exploration of A New Wine World

Introduction

It seems that so many aspects of life have the natural force to come full-circle. A young boy leaves home because he finds it boring and sees little opportunity in the area. He travels the world, quenching his thirst for experience and beauty, only to return to his home and see it through new eyes. Then his home is full of rare beauty unbeknownst to the rest of the worst and a multitude of opportunities waiting to be cultivated.

I recently returned to my home state of Oklahoma and found, much to my delight, that there are now over fifty wineries across the state. The industry there is uncoordinated, fledgling and disparate, but a great diversity of grapes – it turns out – grow well and some great wines are made in Oklahoma.

My wife and I, forsaking filial duties for a couple of days during this Thanksgiving vacation, toured ten wineries throughout the state and picked our favorite wine from each location. The next series of wine blogs will document those ten wines.

Stone Bluff

About fifteen miles southeast of Tulsa, Oklahoma, atop rolling hills overlooking the Arkansas River valley, sits the Stone Bluff winery. Named after the small community about two miles away, this winery just had its ten year anniversary, making it one of the oldest wineries in Oklahoma.

Its owners take great pride in their knowledge of wine culture. They admit that Oklahoma wines are much younger than those of other states, they also humbly tell you that they know very little of the great wines of the world – but this winery has a culture and class all its own. From its brass countertops to its wood corks to its simple, clean labels, one is filled with a sense of satisfaction immediately upon entering the winery's tasting room.

The owners will greet you with a smile and mildly wait for you to ask for a tasting, at which point they will inform you that you may try four wines for three dollars – a charge that is retracted if you should purchase a wine. The deal seems fair, but once you try a wine, you realize that you got the better end of the bargain. At Stone Bluff, there is a wine for everyone.

The winery makes a great deal of its wines from its own grapes. Two such wines, which are worthy of mention, are the Cynthiana and the Viognier. Those were the wines that we decided to buy, after much deliberation. Their wines range from very dry reds to very sweet blushes and whites, and they even have a very nice port.

The first wine of theirs that I will tell you about is the Cynthiana. The Cynthiana, also known as the Norton, is a native American grape, which grows primarily in the Southeast, and is cultivated there for its resilience to disease, but also flourishes in the drier regions of Oklahoma and Texas.

It is a very unique grape, making it difficult to compare to any other grape you might have tried before. At first whiff, you will get a strong sense of cranberry recently harvested from the bush along with a hint of alcoholic spiciness. The smell, though unfamiliar, is quite intriguing. You just let it hit your lips – and again, that cranberry overture! It is sour and warm and sweet, with a bitterness that tugs at the tongue and spiciness that tickles the inside of your cheeks. Swish it around in your mouth and take a gulp – now there is a hint of something familiar, that warming sense of Merlot or the sweet, easiness of the Pinot Noir. But the aftertaste pulls you back – this is something new altogether.

A full glass later, your stomach is filled with the warm, fullness that it gets after a Bloody Mary. Your mouth may purse and tingle some from the cranberry taste that still lingers. All you can do is shake your head and smile – it is a taste unlike any other and quite fine once acquired.

A warning, however. Do not take the Cynthiana lightly. There are so many nice wines at this winery – the Terre Rouge and V, just to name a couple – that, if you enjoy easier, more mainstream wines like my mother, you might want to try those first. The Cynthiana, while lovely, is for more experienced wine-drinkers on a quest for the exotic.

The Frankenstein Grape

Powerful and complex, lording its dominion over an entire region – there is, in fact, only one grape from South America which I adore. It was transported from the Old World in the 19th century – nearly dead, amputated from its mother vine, a young sapling traveled across the Atlantic, wrapped in a damp cloth by its loving protector, an old Argentine agriculturalist. The sapling, desirous of more dry sunlight and warmth than its native Bordeaux could provide, thrived after taking root in Argentine soil.

The sapling grew into a powerful, twisted vine; and the farmer spread this forefather vine across his new vineyard. The vine flourished, living a quiet country life in Mendoza Valley for decades. It rarely gained any fame outside of its new homeland. But when an early frost decimated its European cousins, pushing its family into near-extinction in the 1950s, the quiet Argentine grape grew in importance. It was a surviving remnant of one of the first six varietals of Bordeaux wine, after all – it was descended from royalty.

Over the past fifty years, this grape – the Malbec – has soared in popularity. It's sweet, plum-like smell, combined with a tart and robust taste, make this dark red beauty an immediate favorite among wine-appreciatives. The Argentine grape, while embodying that warm, rich sensation given by wines of the Bordeaux peninsula also brings a unique dry tartness, much like a Spanish Rioja. It is either a unique adaptation to the New World or a fortuitous preserve of an Old World grape which now thrives in Argentina.

Photo: Catena 2007 Malbec from Argentina

Sláinte

Moist, heavy clouds sit haughtily on crags above the moors. A rocky beach is littered with dark green sea-weed, washed ashore by the rough, black sea. A dark city of red brick and grey stone stands stalwart against the wind and rain, a warm pub being the only comfort from the cold and damp. Thick cattle move lazily over fields of emerald verdure. A broken castle is torn apart by the thistle and covered by the yellow-flowered gorse. This is the land of the Burren, the Cliffs of Moher, the ancient Baile Átha Cliath, Temple Bar, the hills of Cork and Kerry, and Giant’s Causeway. This is Ireland.


When people think of this ancient place, they might think of Celtic symbols, rolling green hills, tattered castles, or pubs, but few ever think of wine. And there is a good reason – grapes will not grow here! But thousands of years ago, people from this area fashioned a wine in a similar way to their continental counterparts – but fermented their alcohol from honey. They called the intoxicating alcohol mead.


Mead is a delicious drink. Its smell only slightly resembles honey. Rather, it smells more of a mixture between humid, tropical flowers and a cool, damp rum cellar. Its taste is sweet and warm, both smooth and sticky while drinking, but dry in the aftertaste. With only a casual observance of the glass, one could mistake the color and texture for a Chardonnay or other moderately colorful white wine. But one sip would give this wine away as something unique and rare to the palate.


Though the drink is originally from Ireland, it is rarely still found in that country. It is about as rare to find as the famous, highly-alcoholic, home-brewed Poitín. Only the older Irish really recall the days of honey-based wines and moonshine sweetened with honey.


But while the drink is losing its popularity in its homeland, it is gaining prominence in other areas of the world. It is increasingly popular in the Northwestern portion of the United States, where many varieties of honey can be found. For you see, like any grape-based wine, mead can come in a variety of tastes due to the type of flower the honey-bees gathered their nectar from or the fruits that the mead is fermented with or aged with in the barrel. Many new tastes of mead are just now being crafted in areas thick with honey. It is an exciting time for this unique, ancient-yet-still-developing wine – and well worth a taste.

photo; orange honey mead, from Ring of Fire, Homer Alaska

Signs of the Antebellum or the Postpauper?

A grid of two-lane roads serve both as interstate highway and local tractor path between the hot, steamy, relatively poor states of the American South. There are few interstate highways in the South, and a view of the local environs is mostly concealed by tall pines and sycamores – purposefully left in thick bunches alongside the roads either to protect the roadway users from unsightly residences or to protect residents from intrusive “fur’ners”. So the South is best seen from those local two-lane roads, which are sometimes the only choice of conduit between two areas of sizable population.


Imagine yourself driving along those back-woods roads of the Deep South. The sun is punishing the land – the only quenching relief is the shallow, sandy creeks that feed the swamps and lakes. Every now and then a critter crosses the road in front of you, and sometimes an unrecognizable, lifeless creature lays in a mess on the side of the road. Every half hour, you pass through a cross-roads with some old, crumbling buildings. Every hour, you venture into a little town with a few nice houses built from old money and a dilapidated main street with over half of the buildings unoccupied. Signs of economic tragedy are everywhere – a mossy trailer-park, a sun-bleached “for sale” sign, a cemetery with grass growing to the top of the tombstones, a Wal-Mart parking lot full of old, rusty trucks covered with Confederate flags, signs along the roadside telling you to pray to God for better times (or otherwise, go to hell).


Sometimes, these roads seem desolate and hopeless. But every few hours of wandering, you come across a little jewel. Sometimes there is a town that has retained its splendor of a century-and-a-half ago, and then there are a few cities restoring their old downtowns, and then there are the rolling fields of cotton and peanuts and the orchards of peaches and pecans. There is hope in this place. And there is a little secret that only the locals know about – Muscadine wine.


You laugh? How dare you!


I am as serious as the Frenchmen that first tried to ferment this New World grape in Spanish Florida five-hundred years ago. It is a grape unlike anything that Europeans had ever seen - its vines withstood the rot and fungus that infected all of the European varieties that the French and Spanish first tried to cultivate.


But though it was first cultivated by Europeans, this wine’s personality is clearly Southern. Its drawl is sweet and soft. It makes one think of easy times and cool nights watching the moon’s reflection on smooth water. Sounds of Savanna’s riverside quay, Charleston’s market, Mobile’s port, North Carolina’s tobacco fields and Birmingham’s iron mines echo through the mind with one sip of this sweet nectar. Its rich, sweet smell calls on one to remember Southern food – sweet tea, sweet potatoes, collard greens, fried okra, fried chicken, pulled pork, and corn bread, while also presenting a hint of that sweet, musky smell of an old, cold French cellar where distilled Cognac is aging in oaken barrels.


It is an adventure in itself to find one of the few little wineries that make Muscadine wine. As far as I know, there are currently eight in Alabama (mostly in the hill-country of the northern part), one in the southern, least-populated part of Georgia, a few in the northern part of Florida, and quite a lot in the Yadkin Valley area of North Carolina and Virginia. If you happen to find yourself wandering through one of these areas, I highly recommend capturing the essence and hope of the South with a glass of cold blush or white Muscadine wine.

Photo: Carlos, white Muscadine, from Chautauqua Vineyards, Florida

O, Canada!

Very few people think of Canada when they think of wine. And though most of Canada is land better suited for wheat, rhubarb, animal grazing, boreal forest or muskeg, there is a hidden valley in Western Canada that produces some of the best wines in the world.

This valley is one of those little miracles of nature. It is just far enough away from the ocean to be dry, but it is close enough to stay temperate throughout the year. Mountains block the arctic winds from freezing the area too thoroughly in the winter, and a natural lake system gives the land enough ground-water for orchards and vineyards. The first settlers of the valley from a European descent quickly noticed the area’s grand ability to bear fruit. But it was only a few decades ago that farmers began to plant grapes.

The grapes, especially (but not exclusively) those of a white variety, make some of the most delicious wine on earth. Anything from Merlot to Sauvignon Blanc to Pinot Grigio will grow in this valley. But this writer’s favorite pick of the region is the Pinot Blanc.

The Pinot Blanc is an in-between grape, and therefore, rarely anyone’s favorite. It smells of fresh, spring-green flowers, but the scent is not as developed and classical as a Riesling. When you breathe it in, you breathe in a cool breeze on an early spring evening. Its golden color is neither dark nor light – but that perfect tone that glistens with its own incandescence when condensation has just begun to stick to the sides of your glass. It has the acidity of a Chardonnay that grabs the tongue, but it is light like a Sauvignon Blanc, refreshing on a hot summer evening.

This poor grape is highly understated. It can go with so many foods and so many situations, but it never grabs the taster. It only soothes and fits with your mood – it aims to please like a desperate lover. And like a desperate lover too malleable to your whim, you will cast her aside after one bottle.

I know you.

But if you will only have one bottle of this perfectly suitable wine, you must have a bottle from the Okanagan Valley. The Pinot Blanc here is of such high quality that her simple, agreeable, affable personality might entice you to come back to her again and again.

Photo: Pinot Blanc 2007, Calona Vineyards, Okanagan valley, Canada

The Gypsy of Grapes

If you travel north on US Highway 101 from San Francisco, you will remark upon the cool breeze, the crisp sunshine, the marked contrast between the semi-arid, scrubby, evergreen and brown, Mediterranean flora and the lush, rolling, tall and strong vineyards. You will revel in the beauty of the countryside and the quaint northern Californian towns as you pass through Sonoma County, and then you will notice the terrain begin to change. The fields strewn with small, scrub-brush will turn into short forests as you climb in elevation and latitude – you are seeing the beginnings of the ancient forests of the Northwest. Just here – past Santa Rosa, as you dip into the draws on the north side of Alexander Valley – an interesting little mystery awaits you.

Here, in a few vineyards, an old secret – an old taste - is kept alive. This grape was introduced to America in the early 19th century. Its popularity grew and waned in various locations, and then nearly disappeared. It was kept alive in the Central Valley of California by various horticulturalists – who then experimented on the grape and turned it into a rosé.

But unlike its more popular brother distilled with more sugar and less skin, the wine made of this grape in its pure form, in a region that supports its proper growth, tells a story as mysterious as old European folklore. When you taste wine of this grape, you are immediately thrown back in time – you are drinking the same wine that fortified both Dracula’s Wallachians and the Ottoman Turks before going into battle against one-another. If you enjoy this wine with some prosciutto and bitter cheeses, you are thrown into a small, noisy Sicilian café two centuries ago – you can smell the salty air and dusty walls; you can hear the excited voices and busy cobble-stone street sounds.

The wine tastes strong, tart, and warm. It grabs at the tongue and tells you a story. Though its origins are unknown and its existence is continually threatened by the fickle tastes of Americans, it is not afraid. Its motto is carpe diem, and Latin may very well have been a familiar tongue to it.

And all of this mystery and excitement comes from a grape that grows not two hours north of San Francisco. The grape – should I tell you? – fine, it is the Zinfandel. Not the so-called “white” Zinfandel. It is simply the less popular, less flamboyant original, old-world grape that came over from somewhere around the Mediterranean and now resides somewhere in America. And it patiently waits to take you on a trip back to other lost worlds.

Photo: Francis Coppola, Zinfandel, from California

There’s Good Wine, and Then There’s Table Wine

A cheap, standard, red table wine is a necessary evil for simple, easy dishes like pasta, pizza, or anything else starchy and matched with a tomato base. But the great downfalls of a table wine is the incessant acidity that seems to grapple with digestion instead of aiding it, and the fact that if you drink too much of it, you will wake up with an incredible, numbing head-ache.

One can immediately label themselves a beginner when it comes to enjoying wine by declaring that they enjoy a “nice” wine from certain areas. For, you see, there are certain areas of the globe where a “table wine” is not actually a table wine, but something to be aged and enjoyed. In a cheap French convenience store, for example, a unique, robust, and beautiful wine can be found for less than five dollars. But there are other areas where a “fine” wine is nothing more than an over-priced table wine. I know this reveals my inherent bias and gross ability for the over-arching generalization. However, a word of caution: do not be “that guy” or “that gal” who says that they love a good Cabernet or Merlot from Chile or a good Shiraz from Australia. In my experience, those grapes do not enjoy that environment.

Sure, those grapes grow in abundance in those respective areas. But they do so grudgingly. Their flesh takes on the bitterness of their demeanor, and the juice produced harbors little sweetness, rendering the alcohol too powerful to the tongue and stomach. A certain smokiness bites the back of the throat, and it is called a specific “taste”. It is a common characteristic found in many poorly located wines. South Africa, Chile, Australia, and California all seem to want to force certain grapes to come from their areas – grapes that do not want to be there – and in doing so, create a wine that is angry at the drinker. And yet, most beginner wine-tasters feel comfortable with these types of wine.

My theory is that these grapes, taken out of their native soil, exposed to unfamiliar environs of all sorts, rebel in a standard way. The wine they create tastes the same, regardless of the region. And a beginner, feeling comfortable with the standardized taste, feels comfortable with the familiar – and declare with fervidity that they enjoy these wines the most.

I am not saying that all grape varieties from these places are plain and standard. Far from it! However, I think the places previously mentioned are young at the art of wine as a region, and still have a knack for mass-producing wines that should have never existed in the first place. This being said, that familiar standard taste of the “forced vino” is convenient if found at a cheap price for hot, spiced wine in the winter, a socializer at parties, and, of course, as a cheap accompaniment to a simple, warm, meaty, tomato-based dish of food.

photo; pizza with VEO Grande from Chile

River-chilled Riesling

Since I first tried Riesling at a winery in New York while I was in college, I have adored the grape. It is versatile and able to flourish in many different climates. It is always tangy and sweet – when it is dry, the tang is what bites the sides of your tongue; when it is fermented with more sugars, the sweetness of it tickles the back of your tongue. It is best served chilled, and when it is, it tastes like a sour apple jolly rancher.

One of my favorite Riesling growing areas is Washington. Though the grape is originally from the borderland between Germany and France, it thrives in the Columbia River valley of central Washington. This grape grows up around big, straight pines and hardwoods, it hears the rushing, cold waters of the Columbia River, and it is familiar with the thrilling delight that a warm sun can bring after a chilly night.

Knowing that this grape grows in rugged, scenic land is important when deciding how best to consume it. In all of my research, I believe I have stumbled on the best way to enjoy a bottle of Riesling from Washington. First, you get out of the city. If you live in a city in the northwestern part of the United States, then you already have an advantage, but any city close to a river that runs through a wooded area is fine. Drive out of the city, and get off the highway. Take the smaller back-roads until you find a crystal-clear, shallow, rushing, cold river or creek. Then hike along the river until you find a nice place to start a fire along the banks – preferably someplace where you can get a moderate amount of warm sunshine, but you have a few trees to block the wind.

Now, your first priority once you’ve found the perfect place to enjoy your wine is to make your wine the proper temperature. Take your bottle down to the creek-bed and find an eddy where you can leave your bottle without worrying that it will wash away. Once that is done, start your fire. Once your fire has some healthy, glowing embers and is emitting some real heat, take out the bratwurst you brought, skewer them on the straight stick you just whittled, and roast them in the fire. Once the skin in brown and just beginning to crack, put the brat on a potato-bread bun and put plenty of spicy brown mustard on it. By now, your wine should be chilled. Retrieve your wine from the creek and enjoy it with your brat.

Then enjoy another brat with your second glass.

Just imagine, you are enjoying the same wine and meal that an Alsatian family might have enjoyed on the banks of the Rhine hundreds of years ago. But you are in your own area of the world, enjoying it your way.

Remembering the Old World, but expressing the New

Over the past four centuries, grape varietals have immigrated to new worlds with their human co-nationals. And like their compatriots, they have tested the soils for something familiar to their homeland and sunk their roots in regions which they find comfortable. However, though the new worlds might seem vaguely familiar, there is a difference. There is something strange and wild in the air and soil and water – something that takes adapting to.

The Americas, though abundant with “vinelands,” had very few grape varietals that could be turned into wines to match the quality of their European counterparts. Other new worlds, such as Australia and New Zealand, had no native grapes. But when immigrant horticulturalists introduced European grapes, some varieties flourished.

One such vine was clipped from its cool, moist habitat on the rolling hills around the Rhine. Its last glance of the Alsace was of its native village – it saw the tan, Germanic buildings with steep red roofs, backed by lush forests one last time before it was covered with cool, black soil and tossed aboard a ship. When the vine next saw daylight, the air was dry and salty, the sun was warm but the breeze was cool and refreshing. The little vine had sprouted roots, which were sunk into loamy, brown soil overlooking a blue, South Australian bay.

In its first few years, it could not bear fruit. It struggled to survive in this new land. But eventually, its roots became strong enough to dig deeper for water, its leaves spread wider to gather the sun and keep the heat through the cold, desert-like nights – and it adapted enough to reproduce.

The fruit, however, tasted different. The usually sweet grape had become dry – the wine kept its flowery aroma, but instead of a taste that matched schnitzel and sauerkraut, it now matched boiled crab and artichoke hearts dipped in butter. Its soft, easy-going European personality had transformed – now it is wispy, vibrant, and out-going. This dry riesling from South Australia tries to keep its Alsacian heritage alive, but belies its new world roots.

The Secret Treasure of the Hidden Willamette

After leaving Corvallis, heading north, the Willamette River veers off to the East. We question our navigating ability and wonder if we are actually in the increasingly famous Willamette Valley of Oregon. Are these rolling fields – filled with wheat and barley and bright green alfalfa, cut into squares, wrestling for dominance with the tall, thick hardwoods – are these fields really associated with the Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris we have been hearing so much about?

Then, finally, there is a sign for a winery pointing up a long, winding road. We decide against it. We are running out of time – the afternoon is half passed and we have not tried a single wine from the region. We need a tighter concentration. It is five miles to Amity and we decide to try our luck with the auspiciously-named village.

Sure enough, Amity boasts more than one winery in its tiny city limits. And – oh, sweet relief! – we see one such winery occupying a recently renovated old mill building. We park alongside an open field and take a moment to breathe the fresh air and marvel at the sunlight dancing through the tree boughs and casting hazy shadows in the too-green grass.

We amble into the winery and a stout young man offers us his famed pinot varieties with a plate of local cheeses. Though the Pinot Gris is light, sweet, and fresh, it does not match the smoky, flavorful cheese. The young owner tells us that he is only at the southern tip of the Willamette wine-growing region. We debate: should we buy a bottle to savor later and continue onwards to try as many different wineries as possible? No. It is a shame to rush a good wine.

We each purchase a glass of the Pinot Noir. The owner takes an un-opened bottle from the shelf – a squat, dark-green bottle with a black and maroon label. He peels off the foil top to reveal a wooden cork and we know that we made the right decision. We spend the next hour – the last hour that the wineries are open that day – enjoying the incredible taste of this region’s most famous variety. The Pinot Noir is a diverse wine – smelling of candy, but burning the nostrils; it is dark and sticky and smooth in the glass; and its taste is tangy and sweet, but nibbles at the back of the throat. It blends perfectly with the aromatic and somewhat bitter West Coast cheeses. It also blends beautifully with the dark chocolate that we find in front of us once our glasses are half-consumed. It is a meal in itself.

The glasses emptied, our minds work at drawing a connection between the Pinot Noir and the local area. What creates such a gorgeous taste? Maybe it’s the cool, salty, wet breezes sweeping over the hills to our West from the Pacific Ocean. Maybe it is the rich, black soil from the old grain farmlands. Maybe it is the sunlight resting ever-so-gently on the grapes growing on those ten-degree sloping hills. Probably, it is a combination of all of these things, mixed with a dash of the local culinary preference and drinking culture. And probably, it is impossible to replicate this exact taste in any other region of the world, because there are so many factors affecting the delicate, powerful taste of the Oregon Pinot Noir.

Photo: 2005 Pinot Noir from Amity Oregon, USA

Coelho winery, 111 5th St, Amity, Oregon 97101

Thought in front of THE Alaskan wine

In front of us sits a silvery white wine, resting in a glass stenciled with the name of a winery visited years ago in opaque, romantic lettering. It smells like candy – a powerful taste of peach with a fruity, bitter aftertaste – a taste reminiscent of rolling the pit of some tree-grown fruit in our mouth after all the flesh is gone. It reminds us of our youth – picking a peach or apricot from a wild, hillside fruit tree and tasting the beauty of nature. It is a local wine.

Usually it is not unique to find a nice local wine – where we grew up in Oklahoma, the Viognier grape sprang up, lively and green, from the rocky, brown soil; when we lived in Alabama, the locals had nearly perfected turning the disease-resistant, plump Muscadine grape into a desert wine; and when we lived in Europe – well, anything would grow from Syrah to Merlot to Sangiovese to Cabernet to any type of Pinot we could name. However, this specific wine that we sip now, which we know only a few other people on earth have enjoyed, is unique because it is from Alaska. It was not just fermented or bottled in Alaska, it was grown in Alaska. And to us, that is what makes a wine local; the roots of the vine tasted the local water, the minerals from the local soil nourished the fledgling fruit, and the skin of the fruit basked in the local sunlight.

So how, then, do we judge a wine? This is always the question debated at the beginning of any prose on Dionysus’ libations. Is it through the color of the wine when observed with a soft background light at a forty-five degree tilt; or is it the stickiness of the liquid when we swirl it in the glass? Is it the scent that our nose gets when shoved into the glass; or is it the boldness, or the smoothness? Some experts say that the best wines are the ones that we, the taster, enjoy the most. In some ways, this simple statement is quite agreeable to us. We are always right. But let’s go one step further. Let’s say that a great wine is one that is so perfect, so powerful, so distinct that, like a great song or a exquisite dish of food, it reminds us of some far-off place or time. That the wine, due to its unique qualities that it gathered from the local elements, holds a memory in its tiny, transparent, fragile glass body.

Now that we all agree, let’s agree that this journal not follow a specific grape or hold one region superior to another. Rather, we will delve into the qualities that make a wine great for its region. And as we traverse the land, creeping from one region of the world to another, we will change how we describe the wine. We will taste the local sun, the local soil, the local water – and forever, we will be able to take a bottle of superior wine from that region, taste it, and recall the funny, exciting, and beautiful times we had there in those golden days of our past.

photo: Peach Apricot Wine from Bear Creek Winery, Homer Alaska