Apologies for the long delay in uploading; life has again been rather rough of late. If you want to help out, you can toss a coin to the Wine Monk over at our Patreon page. Anyway, onto the show!
We’ve visited Florida once already for something rather strange, Avocado Wine, but it’s time we return, and try something equally strange and wonderful: the Blanc De Fleur from San Sebastian Winery. This is something truly unique and astonishing: a sparkling wine made from muscadine varietals, and one with very low residual sugar at that! The gang found this wine to be a fabulous summer sparkler, and we quickly tried to figure out just which Florida Man article to pair this wine with… or even, if this wine was a Florida Man headline, what would it be?
The Blanc de Fleur was made in the Traditional Method, which we discussed in our episode featuring the RJR Brut Cuvée. However, this wine is not quite as dry as the Brut; we never really sat down to figure out where this wine would sit on the scale of sweetness vs. dryness… because this wine was that tasty.
The Blanc De Fleur from San Sebastian Winery in Florida is a fun Classic Method sparkling wine made mostly from Carlos, one of the most common Muscadine varietals.
Welcome to Episode 38 of the Make America Grape Again Podcast, where we explore the wine scene of Florida. While the Sunshine State is known for citrus, beaches, and marshes, it is not widely known for its strong wine culture. Indeed, there is a lot of difficulty growing grapes in this humid, hot climate, meaning that most grapes which are grown in the state are Muscadine varietals. However, this has lead to a lot of winemaking experimentation with other sorts of fruits grown in Florida’s tropical climate; including the fruit used for our wines du jour: avocado. Yes, Avocado. In this episode, Gary returns and hangs out with Megan, James, and myself as we explore both the Sweet Avocado and AvoVino made by Schnebly Redlands Winery, which is located in Homestead, Florida.
The history of winemaking in Florida begins early on with the colonization of Florida by both the Spanish and Huguenot refugees from France in the 16th century, for use as the sacrament in the Catholic Mass. Because of the dank tropical climate and various grapevine diseases and parasites, these plantings did not fare well, and eventually, plantings of Muscadine became more popular… until Prohibition, of course, collapsed the local industry. The commercial wineries of today came about as a result of the Florida Farm Winery Law in 1979, primarily due to efforts from the Florida Grape Grower’s Association. This law reduced the winery license fee from $1000 to a mere $50. In addition, researches in Florida began to develop new bunch grape varietals such as Stover, Lake Emerald, and Suwanee which were more resistant to Pierce’s Disease, and there was also intensive development of new muscadine varietals such as Magnolia, Noble, and Welder. Today there are approximately 20 wineries in the state of Florida. Some of these wineries are making wines from local fruits, or grapes imported from California, but others are using locally-grown muscadine varietals. The state of Florida has no American Viticultural Areas at this time.
These two bottles were purchased by Megan and myself directly from the winery website, and shipped directly for me for this podcast. I’m sad that I didn’t bring up my favorite avocado fact in the podcast; that these trees were originally the food of giant ground sloths and would have gone extinct if it were not for human interaction with this plant. Womp-womp. Lastly, just a reminder that the podcast has a patreon account, so if you like what we’re doing here, a few bucks extra for wine acquisition goes a long way!
Are millenials ruining the wine industry? The avocado toast we used to pair with these two wines suggests that no, we really aren’t.
Make America Grape Again Podcast 