If you’ve been following my podcast (and the associated blog) for a while, you know that I’ve come out strongly in favor of varietals that are hybrids between American and French grape strains. I admit, I started out dubious about these varietals, having listened to far too many sommeliers deride these grapes as foxy, unwholesome, and lacking in character. But over the years of doing this podcast, my views have changed. I am now a firm believer in what Ethan Joseph of Iapetus Winery calls “The Triumph of the Hybrids.”
Here before us in this episode is another example of this triumph. Aromella, first bred in 1976, has only recently emerged into the spotlight. Indeed, it is so new that my trusty Wine Grapes book by Jancis Robinson does not even mention it. It is so new to the market, in fact, that the 2017 vintage that Sophia, Peter, and myself imbibe in this episode from Harvest Ridge Winery in Marydel, Delaware, may well have come from the first ever single varietal release of this grape outside of the Finger Lakes!
In case you’re curious, Aromella is a cross between Traminette and Ravat 34, which are two other hybrid wine grapes. Traminette’s parentage includes the vinifera grape Gewurztraminer, which explains the bright floral character we noticed on this vintage in question. The title refers to Peter’s lament that nothing good comes out of Delaware, though in the end, he was convinced that this wine was an exception. Enjoy!
It turns out Peter was wrong: there is one good thing that comes from Delaware at least: this delicious bottle of dessert wine!
Diamond is a grape you might know better than you think. You may not have heard of this hybrid varietal, but there is a decent chance that you might have tasted it… but not in wine. Also known as Moore’s Diamond, this hybrid cross between Concord and Iona is, along with Niagara, one of the main grapes grown by Welch’s for use as white grape juice. If you know us in this podcast though, you know full well that we are all about trying some of the odd and unique wines made from varietals not commonly found along the beaten path.
Enter Lenn Thompson of The Cork Report. Along with the stellar blog, Lenn has a fantastic wine club focusing on some of the wines from off the beaten track, and in the February shipment came this fantastic bottle, the 2018 Diamond Petillant Naturel from Fossenvue Winery in the Finger Lakes AVA of New York. Also called the Eighteen-Forty-Eight (the year in which a famous Woman’s Suffrage Camp in Lodi, NY was created), Lenn described this wine, saying, “Even if you’re not typically a fan of ‘weird’ grapes, I think you’re going to dig it.”
We here at the Make America Grape Again Podcast are fans of ‘weird grapes,’ as well as strange wines in general (just look at our back catalogue which contains such wonders as Dandelion wines, Tomato wines, and amber wines made of La Crescent from Vermont, just to name a few), so of course, I dragged my friends kicking and screaming into drinking this bottle. It started out a little weird, and a little funky, but opened up to become something amazing and fun, and we’re glad we recorded that time to share with you all. Enjoy!
The Fossenvue Winery 2018 Diamond Petillant-Naturel was a fantastic exploration into an unfamiliar grape.
When we last visited the Cowboy State for our intrepid podcast, Gary couldn’t find a drop of wine to share and discuss, so we chose to examine some Bourbon misconceptions instead. And, while Bourbon is quite delicious, there is a major problem with it. Frankly, it’s not wine. Not even close. After all, one could argue that bourbon is just extremely purified cornbread, aged in oak. (Not me, of course, but some people do.)
But never fear. We’ve got wine for you this time. Table Mountain Vineyard, located in Huntley, Wyoming, was planted in 2001 as a result of a research thesis gone completely wild. Today, the vineyard spreads across about 10 acres and contains approximately 10,000 vines, spread across several varietals. They also make several different fruit wines and honey wines from local sources. I ordered a couple of bottles; their Frontenac Reserve and Frontenac Gris, and saved them in my stash for a while. I then was lucky enough to receive an email from Tim Michaud, who said:
“I listened to your podcast on Wyoming wine, featuring a Wyoming bourbon. Wikipedia is way off on their info. I’d love to chat with you some about our wine industry. I’m a brand-new grower. My wife and I planted 900 vines that we expect to come into production in two or three years. Some of our vines went into the ground in 2019, and the rest in 2020. Due to our research before planting, we’ve become fairly knowledgeable about the wine industry in our state.”
Needless to say, once I finally saw this email in my inbox (ah, if I was only better at remembering passwords…), Tim and I started plotting to do a podcast over Zoom. This is my first official Zoom Podcast, and there will be more to come in the future. Joining us is his wife, Alissa, and of course my drinking assistant Megan. Oh, and Pippin joined in this one too; my feathered companion. All of us had a bottle in common: the Frontenac Gris; Megan and I drank the Reserve Frontenac on our own while we also spent some time discussing that varietal. Enjoy!
Not every wine is perfect. In fact, not every wine can be perfect. Indeed, one could make a strong argument that it is the imperfections in a wine that can make a vintage stand out above its peers. But sometimes, those flaws can turn a fantastic vintage into, well, sour grapes, if not vinegar itself.
So it was the case with the bottle of the Trendsetter that I acquired. (I believe this bottle was the 2018 vintage; I cannot quite recall.) I had been excited to drink this Kansas blend for a while. The WineHippie herself had brought this bottle with her for me. The blend of the Trendsetter consists of Norton and Chambourcin, about 50% each, from Twin Rivers winery in Emporia, Kansas. However, something had gone wrong, either while I stored it, while she transported it, or during the winemaking process itself.
And you know what? Shit happens. It’s not a big deal. This is 2020, after all! You have to make do with what you can. And with such a stunning label (modeled on Maud Wagner, the first female tattoo artist in America), we just couldn’t let this one rest.
So we decided to make the best of it, and talk in this episode about something I had been meaning to talk about in this podcast at some point, anyway: Wine Flaws. This way you know when the wine in your glass is flawed, and what caused it!
Take a listen. Guest stars are James Callahan and Anna Schneider, of Rune Winery in Sonoita AZ. After all, who best to teach you about wine flaws than a winemaker themselves, right?
The 2018 Trendsetter from Twin Rivers Winery in Emporia, Kansas, is our touchstone for discussing common flaws in wine.
Over my holiday hiatus, I was thinking recently about what 10 varietals might define the overall Wine industry in the United States. Would it be defined by which grapes are grown by highest amount of acreage? What about grapes that may not tip the scales in terms of total acreage, but have found themselves to be widespread around the country? Would it be defined by which grapes have had the largest influence in the history of winemaking here? Would it be defined by grapes used to make historical vintages that alerted the Old World to the New?
I haven’t quite finished that list yet, but I will say that Norton, a grape we’ve metseveral times before on The Make America Grape Again Podcast, should qualify for that top ten list. After all, any indigenous American varietal that manages to have its own Riedel Glass is definitely important. This glass, unveiled in 2009 at Les Bourgeois Winery, indicates the importance that Norton has to the wine industry in the American Midwest. As a matter of fact, the vintage we drink in this podcast comes from Les Bourgeois. Kim, a longtime Norton aficionado and friend of mine, has for years been trying to convince me that Norton is actually worth my time and energy to understand, but I have been tragically dubious. She comes from Missouri, where this grape is, unquestionably, the king of the local industry there.
I first became convinced there was something to Norton with our first ever episode, featuring a Norton from Kentucky, but when she brought this vintage over, I was truly smitten. Take a listen, and learn about Norton.
Norton has had a prominent role in the wine industry in the midwest for generations: the 2008 Premium Claret from Les Bourgois in Missouri proves it.
It’s pretty freaking cold everywhere you go east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada right now, so it seemed like as good a time as any to talk about Ice wine. Our main wine focus of this episode is the 2017 Creekbend Vidal Blanc Ice Wine from Oliver Vineyards in Bloomington, Indiana, though we drank this alongside the 2009 Golden Icewine Valley from Changyu in Liaoning, China, and the 2017 Late Harvest Vidal Blanc from Arizona Stronghold Vineyard, sourced from Bruzzi Vineyard in Young, Arizona. The latter, of course, isn’t an Ice wine but is still a varietal Vidal Blanc.
As it turns out, over half of the ice wine vintages made throughout the world are made from Vidal Blanc, because of just how hardy this grape is. Vidal Blanc (also known simply as Vidal), is a complex hybrid cross between Trebbiano (also known as Ugni Blanc) and Rayon d’Or. Vidal is very winter-hardy and produces surprisingly high sugar levels in cold climates. This aspect, combined with the natural tendency of Vidal Blanc to have moderate to high acidity, makes this varietal a favorite in harsh climates across the Northern Hemisphere, even being grown as far north as Sweden and Norway. Since these climates are prone to freezes, it makes perfect sense that the Icewine tradition would tend to find a home wherever Vidal Blanc is grown.
The secret of Ice wine is that it is produced from grapes that have frozen while still on the vine. The sugars and other dissolved solids in grapes will not freeze, but the water within the grapes does. This means an incredibly concentrated grape juice results; the must is pressed from these frozen grapes, which results in a smaller amount of more concentrated, very sweet wine. Only healthy grapes kept in good shape are used for this wine; none of them may be infected with noble rot. Furthermore, time is of the essence, since re-thawing the grapes will cause them to spoil quickly since ice crystals destroy cell walls. Thus the harvest must be completed within a few hours on the first morning that is cold enough. The result of all this hard work is a wine with refreshing sweetness, balanced by high acidity.
Ice wine production is risky for several reasons: the frost may not come at all before the grapes rot, or are otherwise lost, for one. The production also requires the availability of a large enough labor force to pick the whole crop of grapes within a few hours, at a moment’s notice, on the first morning that is cold enough, often before sunrise. This results in rather small amounts of ice wine being made worldwide, making ice wines generally expensive. The bottles used for ice wines are generally small, holding only 375 mL of wine, as befitting this small production. The increased production of ice wine has been dramatically assisted technological inventions in the form of electric lighting, driven by portable generators, remotely-controlled temperature alarms, and the invention of the pneumatic bladder press.
While there are some indications in the writings of the world’s first wine critic, Pliny the Elder, along with the poet Martial, that the Romans were making vintages in this style on occasion (probably in Northern Italy), the first ice wine that we definitely know about was made in Germany in 1794. The story goes that the winter had been harsh, and some wine growers had the idea to leave grapes hanging on the vine to use as fodder for their animals; when the growers noticed that these grapes after being frozen yielded a very sweet must, they were pressed anyway, and a wine revolution slowly began. Only six 19th century vintages with Eiswein harvests have been documented, and there seems to have been little effort to systematically produce these wines. Over time, with the technological developments listed above, ice wine production became more common… but at the same time, growers in Germany, the region where this wine style was invented in the modern era, have noticed that in the last few decades, good ice wine vintages have been less common. Many vintners have cited climate change as the cause of this decline.
The first ice wine produced in the United States was made in the Finger Lakes region of New York in 1981 by Great Western Winery. Today, Michigan leads the charge in creating ice wine in America; as an example in 2002, six Michigan wineries alone produced over 13,000 half-bottles of ice wine. The US law for ice wines specifies that grapes must be naturally frozen; the TTB declares that “Wine made from grapes frozen after harvest may not be labeled with the term ‘ice wine’ or any variation thereof, and if the wine is labeled to suggest it was made from frozen grapes, the label must be qualified to show that the grapes were frozen post-harvest.”
Our main focus for this episode, the 2017 Creekbend Vidal Blanc Ice Wine from Oliver Winery, is only the second vintage of ice wine produced by this vineyard. Ice wine is a difficult endeavor, after all…
While more famous for being the heartland of country music, Tennessee actually has a thriving wine industry. The Volunteer State is home to one of the largest wine industries in the American Southeast, with just shy of 50 vineyards and tasting rooms. Our wine focus for the state is the White Zinthiana Blush from Amber Falls Winery, located in Hampshire, Tennessee. This wine is made from 100% Zinthiana, which is a cross between the Cynthiana clone of Norton, and Zinfandel, recently released from UC Davis.
This wine, as you may also have guessed from the name, is a Southeastern take on the whole “White Zinfandel” phenomenon of semi-sweet pink wines known as blushes. (A general rule of thumb: pink wines with under 1% residual sugar are labeled as rosé; anything over that tends to get labeled as a blush). Zinthiana is a varietal that I had never even heard of, and it is always fun to meet a new grape; I’m kind of boggled at how to classify it, because while it is technically a hybrid cross, it’s not quite like some of the other hybrid varietals we’ve looked at over the course of this podcast, like those in our previous Iowa episode for example.
The state of Tennessee was home to a reportedly vibrant wine industry in the 19th century that was greatly impacted when that old bugaboo and nemesis, the Volstead Act, was introduced in the early 20th century. However, unlike in much of the Southeast, amateur winemaking and grape growing continued to thrive in the region, which allowed for a renaissance to begin starting in 1980 with both Highland Manor Winery and Tiegs Winery opening in that year. In 1985, the state legislature passed the Tennessee Viticultural Policy act, which greatly assured the stable development of the industry; perhaps this state support is why Tennessee has so many more wineries than most of its neighbors. Like elsewhere in the American South, humidity and associated grapevine diseases are the major challenges associated with viticulture in the region, so many of the varietals grown here are growing French hybrid and native grape varietals, but the state does have some Vinifera varietals grown in higher elevations. So far the only AVA in Tennessee is the small portion of the Mississippi Delta AVA that extends into the southwestern part of the state.
I acquired this bottle from the winery website, myself, for this podcast. We actually acquired two bottles: one for Gary and one for me. If you like this podcast, Gary and I would greatly appreciate it if you rated us on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use, and please do remember that we have a Patreon which can be found at https://www.patreon.com/TheMakeAmericaGrapeAgainPodcast. (I know that I haven’t been terribly good at putting things on Patreon, but I promise I will try harder for season two. Speaking of, while we have indeed completed fifty states, there are still three more episodes coming to wrap up season one, so we are not done yet!)
The White Zinthiana from Amber Falls Winery in Tennessee is our 50th wine of the podcast. Zinthana is a hybrid cross of Cynthiana and Zinfandel, and is our introduction to the “blush” concept.
Iowa may be a state that is associated in pop culture with endless waves of corn and soybeans, but the Hawkeye State has a vibrant wine culture too! Our first wine from this state that we will be looking at is the Iowa Candleglow White, from Tassel Ridge Winery, located in Leighton. The Candleglow White is a non-vintage dry white blend of La Crescent, Brianna, and Edelweiss grapes grown in Mahaska County, Iowa.
We have met La Crescent before during our exploration of the Tectonic from Iapetus Winery, but Edelweiss and Brianna are new varietals to the Make America Grape Again podcast. Like La Crescent, both Edelweiss and Brianna are complex, cold-hardy, French-American hybrid varietals. Both of these varietals came into being as a result of Elmer Swenson, and the University of Minnesota’s cold-hearty grape breeding program. Indeed, the genetic history of these grapes is pretty tangled, as seen in the diagram below.
The Pedigree of Brianna, like that of many complex mixed-heritage varietals, is mindbogglingly complex.
Growing wine in Iowa is filled with challenges. Warm summer days can create conditions conducive to promote fungal vine diseases, while the extreme cold nights of winter can kill many other grape vines; this is why there are relatively few plantings of Vitis vinifera in Iowa, versus complex hybrids and native American varietals.
There was some viticulture in Iowa prior to prohibition, but records are spotty at best. Prior to 2000, there were only thirteen wineries in the state, and eleven of them were in the Amana colonies, which was a religious communal society which had originated in Germany and settled in Iowa in the 1850s. These wineries benefited by a native wine law which passed after Repeal, which allowed them to sell wines to anyone. It was in the year 2000 when the Iowa Grape Growers Association was formed, and this group wasted no time in creating an action plan for the growth of the wine industry in the state.
The group decided that the three main things which were needed were favorable legislation and basic education relating to viticulture. Within a year, the team had gained the involvement of the Iowa Department of Education involved, along with some basic assistance from Iowa State University. A year later, funding for viticultural research and promotion became a reality with a five percent tax on wine. In 2003, the team created a ten-year plan, with the aid of interested parties, and within a mere four years, 62 wineries had emerged in Iowa.
Today, despite the challenges of growing in the harsh conditions of the high plains, the state of Iowa contains 100 commercial wineries, with more than 300 vineyards that cover approximately 1,200 acres. There are no American Viticultural Areas that are solely in Iowa, but Northeastern Iowa is included within the area covered by the Upper Mississippi Valley AVA.
This bottle was kindly provided to the podcast by Greg Gonnerman of Laramita Cellars, who also guest-starred in this episode. He acquired it from the Tasting Room directly.
The Candleglow White from Tassel Ridge Winery in Iowa is a dry white blend of La Crescent, Edelweiss, and Brianna, sourced from Iowa vineyards.
Welcome to Episode 47, focusing on a state that I think has one of the best flags in the country: Maryland. In this episode, we will be focusing on the 2017 Vin Doux Naturel from Old Westminster Winery, located in Westminster, MD. This particular bottle was one of three chosen by the winery as part of a #Winestudio event for the month of June. Mind you, all three of the wines involved in the series were fantastic; especially the Cabernet Franc. I’ve also been to their tasting room before and have picked up bottles and cans from this winery specifically for this podcast… which may well still appear in future episodes, or I may just drink them on my own without sharing.
All that being said, the opportunity to review a dessert wine and talk on the podcast about the intricacies of making dessert wines along with the various styles thereof was too good a chance to resist. And so, here we have the 2017 Vin Doux Naturel, a dessert wine made of 100% estate-grown Valvin Muscat (a cross between Muscat Ottonel and the hybrid Muscat du Moulin, for the record) which was fermented with wild yeasts and fortified during fermentation using neutral grape spirits distilled from estate grapes. This particular vintage is made in a way reminiscent of wines coming from the Muscat de Beaumes de Venise AOC in France.
Here, as with the Valvin Muscat from Old Westminster, fermentation is stopped by the slow addition of up to 10% of a 190 proof (95%) grape spirit. This additional alcohol basically slowly kills off the yeast, as most yeasts cannot stand an overly high concentration of alcohol. Port, as well as other similar fortified wines, are also made in this fashion. (Madeira is, too, but is then literally baked in hot steam rooms, or historically on the decks of ships; sweeter sherries are made this way also, but then develop a living coat of yeast known as flor while aging in barrel. I really should find American vintages made in both styles, as they are really fascinating wines to talk about and drink, but I digress.)
One can also create a sweet wine that isn’t fortified by halting the fermentation before completion through chilling the wine to the temperature where yeast goes into stasis, and then sterile filtering. A second way of creating a sweet, desert-style wine is by adding sulfites to the wine at a high enough level where the yeast cannot survive, and then sterile filtering. Sterile filtering is important for the production of sweet wines of this sort, because, without filtering, any yeasts that survive will feed on the residual sugar. This will either make the wine ferment to dry in the tank, or worse: if bottled, the CO2 created by the yeast as a result of fermentation can cause corks to pop or bottles to explode from the pressure.
A final way of making a sweet wine that could qualify as a dessert wine is to back-sweeten the wine after it has finished fermenting to dry with a sugar solution or honey. The TTB classifies a dessert wine as any grape wine containing over 14% but not more than 24% alcohol by volume. Citrus, fruit, and agricultural dessert wines must be further identified as to the fruit that was used.
I’ve rambled a lot about dessert wines here, and how to make them, so I’ll have to be brief about the history of the wine industry in Maryland here. The oldest continuously operating winery in the state is Boordy Vineyards, located in the rural region of Hydes, Maryland. This winery was bonded in the 1940’s by Philip & Jocelyn Wagner. Philip Wagner is one of the most important figures in the history of American wines that you’ve probably never heard of, as he quite literally wrote the first major book on the subject: American Wines and How to Make Them. The book was revised and republished as Grapes Into Wine, and it became the definitive book on winemaking in America for decades.
Old Westminster Winery is much newer in comparison (planted first in 2011, and is rapidly expanding with the acquisition of Burnt Hill), but is part of the rapidly expanding industry in Maryland which now contributes an estimated $50 million dollars annually to the local economy. Today, Maryland has over 40 wineries, and three AVAs thus far: the Catoctin AVA (named for an Algonquin word meaning “speckled rocks”) is located in Frederick and Washington Counties, while the Linganore AVA, part of the Piedmont Plateau, includes parts of Frederic and Carroll Counties. Lastly, the Cumberland Valley AVA we met in passing extends from Pennsylvania into Washington County in west-central Maryland.
As mentioned above, this wine was provided by Old Westminster Winery for the #Winestudio event. As far as I’m aware, this wine is not available to be purchased by the general public yet, but I plan on acquiring another bottle when it does become available.
In this episode, we talk a bit about dessert wines with the 2017 Vin Doux Naturel; a 100% Valvin Muscat from Old Westminster Winery in Maryland.
Welcome to Episode 40 of the Make America Grape Again Podcast, where we explore the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes: Minnesota. Located at roughly the same parallel as Bordeaux, Minnesota has many challenges due to an often bitterly cold climate. That being said, the 2017 Voyageur from Alexis Bailey Vineyard is a vintage which shows that this state can hold its own against all comers. The 2017 Voyageur is a blend of Frontenac, Marechal Foch, and Leon Millot, sourced from the Upper Mississippi River Valley AVA. All of these varietals are complex French-American Hybrid varietals, adapted to cold-weather climates; a topic we discussed a bit at length back in episode 34. It should be noted here that Alexis Bailey Vineyard is home to the oldest planted vineyard in the state of Minnesota, dating back to 1977, and is the second oldest winery in the state.
The climate of Minnesota is harsh, making viticulture difficult. Prior to prohibition, most winemaking in the state seems to have been focused around fruit wines. It can be honestly said that the history of Minnesota wine truly only begins with the work of Elmer Swenson. Indeed, it might be said that without this man, cold-weather viticulture would not exist. Elmer Swenson started to breed grapes in Wisconsin, thanks to an interest in grapes brought on by his grandfather, along with a reading of T.V. Munson’s Foundations of American Grape Culture. On a whim, Swenson brought some of his early hybrids to a field day at the University of Minnesota Horticultural Research Center. This led to him being hired by the department. The first varietals released from this program were in 1977: Edelweiss and Swenson Red. Many more varietals bred and adapted for cold climates have been released since then, including the Frontenac in this blend.
As mentioned above, Alexis Bailey was the first planted vineyard in the state, and also the first to produce a vintage made entirely of 100% Minnesota-grown grapes. Of note also, The Minnesota Grape Growers Association has had a dramatic role in promoting grape growing and winemaking not only in the state but also in other cold-hardy climates. Hosted annually with the support of both the MCGA and the University of Minnesota, the International Cold Climate Wine Competition is the only wine competition solely dedicated to the promotion of quality wines made mainly from cold-hardy grape varieties.
Today, the state of Minnesota has 70 wineries, and two American Viticultural Areas, including the largest in the United States; the Upper Mississippi River Valley AVA. This AVA covers an area almost 50 times larger than Bordeaux in France; a total of 29,914 square miles (77,477 square kilometers) located along the Upper Mississippi River and its tributaries in northwest Illinois, northeast Iowa, southeast Minnesota and southwest Wisconsin. Minnesota’s second AVA is the far more modest Alexandria Lakes AVA, which is also Minnesota’s oldest AVA.
This bottle was purchased online from the winery website, by yours truly. If you like this podcast and want to throw a few dollars into the bottle fund, you can find us on Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/TheMakeAmericaGrapeAgainPodcast, and there are various rewards available for supporters.
The 2017 Voyageur is a stunning exploration of Minnesota terroir, from Alexis Bailey Vineyard in the Upper Mississippi Valley AVA
Make America Grape Again Podcast 