The Wall Street Journal-20080215-WEEKEND JOURNAL- Wine -- Tastings- No Place Like Home- Why Stores That Sell Locally Produced Wines Are a National Trend
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WEEKEND JOURNAL; Wine -- Tastings: No Place Like Home; Why Stores That Sell Locally Produced Wines Are a National Trend
Full Text (1405 words)One of the great joys of visiting Italy is spending time in its regional enotecas, which are kind of living museums of the local wines. You can stay for hours, chatting with knowledgeable pourers and sampling wines from down the road or up in the hills. There are few better ways to get a taste -- quite literally -- of the region. And here's good news: Regional enotecas have begun springing up in America, too.
These specialty wine shops not only are a marvelous way to sample a region's wines at just one stop, but they often have on hand tiny- production wines from local wineries that are so small they're rarely or never open to the public. Invariably, you'll find serious boosters behind the counter, people who are eager to pour you a taste or sell you a bottle of wine made by passionate winemakers in their communities.
A while back, we wrote about a newly opened regional enoteca in the Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, tucked into a little space on the way to Concourses D and E. It's called the Yadkin Valley Wine Bar and it features only the wineries of the state's Yadkin Valley. About 50 wines from seven of Yadkin's wineries are available for tasting right now, for a small fee.
In Santa Cruz, Calif., there's a stylish little shop called Vinocruz tucked off the beaten path in downtown that sells 185 wines from 64 area wineries. While some of the wines on its shelves enjoy pretty broad distribution, such as Ridge, Martin Ray, Bonny Doon and Thomas Fogarty, many others are small-production wines from such family-owned wineries as McHenry, Varner and Cooper-Garrod. As we stood there, surrounded by so many wines that we would never otherwise see, we felt like kids in a candy shop, or perhaps our daughter Media in a great shoe store.
Vinocruz offers tastings for a charge and sells wine by the bottle for the same price wineries themselves charge. Vinocruz is less than two years old, but business is so good that it needs more display space, says J-P (short for Jean-Pierre) Correa, who owns it with partner Jeffrey Kongslie. "A lot of wineries are calling all the time trying to get in here," Mr. Correa says. "We taste all of the wines from every winery and select from their assortment the wines that we really love and would put on our table."
Now, you might not think that an enoteca is unusual for California. Well, how about one in Cascade, Colo., in the foothills at the exit to the Pikes Peak Highway? The Wines of Colorado says it boasts the largest selection of Colorado wines in the state and tasting is free, according to Marvin Parliament, who owns the business and grill-type restaurant with Bruce McLaughlin. Mr. McLaughlin and his wife own Pikes Peak Vineyard and Minturn Cellars, and, under Colorado law, wineries are allowed to have five tasting rooms outside the winery, Mr. Parliament says. According to him, the idea is to allow wineries to buy from each other to stock these locations, thereby promoting the state's viticultural industry. "When we opened 10 years ago, there were 21 wineries in the state," Mr. Parliament says. "Now there are 65, and most of them are represented here." Twenty to 30 wines are available for tasting every day. There is an outdoor dining area overlooking Fountain Creek where diners can drink a bottle if they like (no corkage fee is charged) to have with the grill's food, including Mr. Parliament's famous Colorado Wine Burger.
The Oregon Wine Tasting Room in McMinnville, Ore., opened Labor Day 1980 and says it is the state's oldest tasting room selling wine exclusively from Oregon wineries. Officially known as the Oregon Wine Tasting Room and the Bellevue Market, it's owned by Amity Vineyards and managed by Patrick McElligott, who teaches in the Chemeketa Community College wine program. Amity owns the tasting room under its winery license through a law like Colorado's that's intended to help local wineries market themselves and each other and the state's industry. More than 100 wineries are represented, with about 20 wines open at any time for tasting, from dry whites to dessert wines. When it opened, Mr. McElligott says, the tasting room had "20-plus wines from 12 wineries. Now we have more than 300 from more than 100 wineries. The growth has been rapid with many, many extremely small wineries. Even I have a label, Pinot Nowar."
Some of the room's wines are from wineries so small that they barely have enough to sell and are never open to the public, he says. The business's Web site has a banner headline that says "No Oregon winery is closed to the public here."
"If you don't buy, it's $1 per person per tasting, but I have rarely had that happen. Most people buy," Mr. McElligott says. "The prices on 99.9% of the wines are what the wineries charge; at most, a quarter above. We do not list the prices on a tasting sheet, and I do not tell people the prices until they finish tasting each segment of what they are tasting." If you think what you liked is too expensive (and the Pinot Noirs can be pricey, he concedes) he'll show you a similar wine that costs less. "I prefer to get repeat customers," he says. The market also has a wide assortment of local cheeses, jellies and gourmet crackers.
In Manhattan, the wine store Vintage New York opened in 2002 as part of Rivendell Winery in the Hudson Valley. The state, which now has more than 200 wineries, allows them to sell their wines on site and to open as many as five tasting rooms, a sensible provision like that of Colorado and Oregon. Vintage New York on Manhattan's Upper West Side is a sister store to Vintage New York in lower Manhattan, which includes a wine bar and restaurant called VNY next door. All of the enterprises, which are open daily, are owned by restaurateur Susan Wine and her husband, Robert Ransom III, whose family founded Rivendell in 1987. The stores feature 200 wines from 65 wineries located in four major wine-growing appellations and in many cases charges what the wineries charge for a bottle. For $10, customers get five one-ounce tastes and that fee is refunded with a purchase of $50. "We want people who are tasting to choose a wine to go home with," Ms. Wine says.
The Lodi Wine & Visitor Center in Lodi, Calif., has more than 100 wines to taste and buy, all made from Lodi grapes. The center, which opened in 2000, is funded by the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission, according to Mark Chandler, the commission's executive director. Open daily, the center offers nine wines that change every Wednesday. "Basically, we're trying to keep the nine wines new and exciting," says Michael Perry, manager of the center. The center, which has an interactive educational component to it, features the wines of about 80 wineries. Three tastes cost $5, and beyond that, $1 per taste up to six wines.
This is just a sampling of what's out there. As more regions take pride in what they grow and make, you'll be seeing more of these shops. States could help promote their wineries by following the example of other states in allowing wineries to operate tasting rooms where they can sell their wines and the wines of their wine-making neighbors. Look for one of these shops near you and drop in to taste some delicious local pride.
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Melanie Grayce West contributed to this column. You can contact us at [email protected].
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Save the Date
REMEMBER that Saturday, Feb. 23, is Open That Bottle Night 9, when all of us, world-wide, finally pop the cork and celebrate the memories that flow from that wine we've been meaning to open forever. For more on OTBN, including an archive of past columns and photos, pairing ideas and recipes, and an index of some of the events planned for this year, go to wsj.com/OTBN. If you are planning an event or your restaurant is participating in some way, perhaps by waiving corkage fees for OTBN bottles, drop us a note at [email protected]. What should we open on Open That Bottle Night? We've winnowed our list down to five possibilities and you will choose the bottle. To vote, go to wsj.com/OTBN.
