Excellent New Wine Regions

October 20, 2007

While California’s Napa and Sonoma valleys have attained status rivaling that of France’s Bordeaux and Italy’s Tuscany regions, other vineyard-rich areas have quietly gone about the business of building their reputations and are emerging as serious contenders in the competition for awards and tourists. Globally, they include Switzerland and Tasmania. In the United States, they include the home of 10-gallon hats, Texas, as well as the likes of New York and… Maryland? You read correctly.

Christine Ansbacher, a certified wine educator and author of “Secrets from The Wine Diva,” likes East Coast wines so well that she talked Martha Stewart’s personal chefs into featuring Italian varietals from Virginia, Maryland and Rhode Island at a wine dinner for 100 next month at Al Forno in Providence, R.I. “Emerging wine regions are more like Old World wines in that they have moderate alcohol and better acidity, so they’ll taste more lively and refreshing [than California wines]” Ansbacher says. California wines, she believes, can be “food bullies” because they tend to be heavier and more full bodied.

The Chesapeake State has teamed up with Pennsylvania to create the Mason-Dixon Wine Trail. And in Loudon County, Va., they can’t print wine guide brochures fast enough. What’s going on here…and in Oregon, New York State, and Texas?

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