This is an episode that I’ve lost into the ether a few times and even mentioned as lost in another episode, but somehow mysteriously re-appeared. I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (or take it inside the city walls)… so the last time it emerged into my files from the depths like some sort of cryptid, I made a copy. Now that the backstory of this post is done… let’s talk about content.
We’ve talked about Rosé a fewtimes on this podcast before, and we’ve also talked about Cabernet Franc on this podcast before… and now it’s time to look at the center of the Venn Diagram. In this episode, Megan, James, Adam, and I sip on different Rosé wines made from Cabernet Franc coming from Washington (Dama Wines), Delaware (Harvest Ridge Winery), as well as two French vintages. The French vintages we drank in this podcast to compare to our American bottles were sourced from the Chinon AOC and from the Saumur AOC; this last bottle was a brut sparkling wine. Most of these bottles were acquired by yours truly, though the Washington bottle was gifted to me by Isla Bonifield.
I hope you enjoy our exploration of Cabernet Franc Rosé. This will not be our last exploration of this grape. I am planning later this year on recording an examination of bottles from across the Mid-Atlantic region of the US which should prove to be a lot of fun. In the meantime, pull up a chair and join us at the table!
¡Bienvenidos amigos, al episodio cincuenta y dos del podcast Make America Grape Again! ¡En este episodio, volvemos a hacer uva de México con el Rosado 2017 de Casa Madero, la bodega más antigua del Nuevo Mundo!
Okay, sorry for my horrible Spanish there. Welcome to Episode 52 of the Make America Grape Again podcast, where we’re going to sneak across the border and explore the 2017 Rosado from Casa Madero, which happens to be the oldest winery in the New World! Founded in 1597 as Hacienda San Lorenzo, Casa Madero has been producing wines intermittently in the Parras Valley of Coahuila over the course of the last 422 years. There have been times when the vineyard was left fallow, but the winery is currently producing again. I wanted to do at least one Mexico bonus episode, so I was stoked to stumble across this bottle randomly at Total Wine in Phoenix.
The 2017 Rosado is made from 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, and for more information on production, we do a ceremonial reading of the tech sheet in this episode. (I should also note that I will have at least one more Mexico episode in the future… probably.)
Mexico is a wild frontier for winemaking, with only about 7,700 acres under vine. As I mentioned above, the history of Mexican wine begins with this winery. Winemaking here, and in other vineyards in New Spain produced such fantastic vintages that King Charles II decided to prohibit the production of wine in Spain’s colonies, except for the making of wine for the Church in 1699. This prohibition stayed in force until Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821. Naturally, this meant that from the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th, most wine production was done by clergy. The Santo Tomás Mission, founded in Baja California in 1791 by the Jesuits, reactivated larger-scale production of wine in Mexico. In 1843, Dominican priests began growing grapes at the nearby Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe del Norte mission, located in what is now called the Valle de Guadalupe.
Today, the Valle de Guadalupe is largely touted as the premium wine-producing area of Mexico. No longer just a gag in Frasier, vintages of wine from this are, along with the neighboring San Vicente and Santo Tomás Valleys produce 90 percent of all Mexican Wines. The region has become famous for wines made from Nebbiolo, Mission, and Zinfandel. Part of the reason for this region’s popularity is the ease of travel to this area from tourist ports and towns in Baja Californa, such as Ensenada. In addition to the wine regions in Baja, wines are also being made in Durango, the aforementioned Parras Valley in Coahuila, Aguascalientes in Zacatecas, and Queretaro in Central Mexico. Wine Folly does have a brief intro guide and overview of Mexican wine on their website. In short, Mexico is producing some good wines, and those vintages are well worth exploring.
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.
Welcome to episode 41 of the Make America Grape Again podcast, featuring the Buckeye State, Ohio. Featuring one of the more unique flags of a US State, Ohio has a long and lauded history with the American Wine industry. It is fitting, therefore, that the bottle we have chosen for our first Ohio episode: the En Plein Aire pét-nat from Vermilion Valley Vineyards, is somewhat of an homage to that storied history. This sparkling wine, made as a méthode ancestrale, is a field blend of roughly 75% Pinot Noir, and 25% Muscat Ottonel, with minuscule percentages of Lemberger and Müller-Thurgau, sourced from their vineyards in the Lake Erie AVA. For those who are new to the natural wine game, this method, known also as pétillant-naturel, allows the initial fermentation to finish inside the bottle without any additives, imparting a gentle carbonation by trapping carbon dioxide; there is no addition of new yeast for a secondary fermentation, nor disgorgement (unlike with Champagne and other sparkling wines of that ilk).
So, why a Sparkling wine to start Ohio off? To answer this question, we must go to the Ohio River Valley around 1825, and visit one Nicholas Longworth. He planted, in the end, over 2,000 acres of Catawba grapes, and ended up producing sparkling wine that won not only national acclaim, but actually beat out titans from Champagne in at least one competition in Europe! The resulting victory lead to a famous poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, entitled “Ode to Catawba Wine.” (I’m thinking this poem may be the subject of a dramatic reading in Season 2.) However, by the late 1850’s, black rot and powdery mildew had destroyed much of these vineyards, and the viticultural center of Ohio had moved to the region surrounding Lake Erie, where at the time, 33,000 acres of grapes and 161 wineries flourished. Alas, like in other states, the grim specter of Prohibition ended this idyll, and to survive, most vineyards were converted to the growing of Concord for juice production–some vineyards dating to this period, such as Meier’s Wine Cellars survive today in this mode. By 1963, only 27 wineries survived, with only half making wine from Ohio-grown grapes. The state was ripe for a renaissance.
Oddly, compared to other states we’ve explored in the course of our podcast, Ohio never needed farm winery legislation to aid that renaissance. Instead, two major organizations devoted to viticulture jump-started this transition. The first was the Ohio Wine Producers Organization; the second was the Ohio Grape Industries Program. Both of these groups have catapulted Ohio wine to the impending super-stardom where the industry lurks at this time. Today, the state of Ohio has over 290 wineries, located within Five distinct American Viticultural Areas: the Lake Erie AVA, the Isle St. George AVA, the Ohio River Valley AVA, the Grand River Valley AVA, and lastly the Loramie Creek AVA. Producing over 3,582,902 gallons, Ohio is (as of 2016) actually ranked 6th in the US in terms of wine production, and 8th in terms of total acreage under vine. Wine Enthusiast actually recently wrote an article about why Ohio wine is something to look out for, as well, so winemakers in the state are making some noise.
This bottle was kindly provided to the Make America Grape Again Podcast by the winemaker himself, Joe Juniper. I reached out to him after a kind couple in the tasting room I work for in Arizona mentioned that Vermilion Valley Vineyards was their favorite winery in the state. Thank you again, kind sir for your contribution, and for joining in on our podcast!
A sparkling wine in the oldest tradition, the En Plein Air from Vermilion Valley Vineyards starts our journey into Ohio Wine.
Welcome, my friends, to episode 20 of the Make America Grape Again Podcast, which will center around Kansas. Our wine today is the 2015 Panape Rosé, from BlueJacket Crossing Winery, located in Eudora, Kansas.
This is a wine made from 100% estate grown St. Vincent grapes from their vineyard on site. St. Vincent was discovered in 1973 in a vineyard in Missouri, growing about 100 feet from where there once had been a row of Pinot Noir. At the time, Chambourcin vines had been growing next to the Pinot Noir. The official parentage of St. Vincent has yet to be established, but it is suspected that this grape is a cross between these two varietals. It was initially named “Stomboli,” due to this varietal’s bright red leaves in the fall and that it was explosively vigorous, but the name was changed to honor the patron saint of the Cote d’Or in Burgundy, St. Vincent of Saragossa.
The fascinating viticultural history and mysterious origins of St. Vincent aside, Kansas provides our main introduction to the major blight across the history of American wine: Prohibition. Lasting from 1920 to 1933 in America as a whole, Kansas was among the first states to experiment with this trend, due to its location at the center of the growing movement. This movement nearly killed the industry in the United States as a whole, and many states have not fully recovered as of yet–or are only recently coming out of its shadow. Today, Kansas has 23 vineyards, totaling about 250 Acres, which is a far cry from the thousands of acres reportedly under vine in 1901, when a work called “The Grape in Kansas” was written by William Barnes.
This bottle was acquired from the winery directly by my friend Tiffany Poth, the Wine Hippie, who also appears in this episode. Enjoy!
The 2015 Panape Rosé from BlueJacket Crossing Vineyard and Winery is a fun vintage made of the mysterious St. Vincent grape.
In episode five of the Make America Grape Again Podcast, we move to the Pacific Northwest and meet one of the most infamous grapes of all: Pinot Noir. (At least, it was after the release of the film ‘Sideways,’ which jumped Pinot sales by a tremendous margin.)
The Willamette Valley AVA of Oregon is world-renowned for producing some of the best Pinot Noir to be found in the New World… but is it, really? This avowed non-fan of New World Pinot Noir puts the region to the test. This episode also provides an introduction to the idea of rosé: how it’s made, why it’s made, and just why is it so damn delicious? The fact of the matter is that in this day and age, rosé is finally cool to drink again. (Thank God! Real Men can drink Rosé now!)
The wine used in this episode of the Make America Grape Again Podcast is the Elk Cove Vineyards 2016 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir Rosé, acquired by yours truly at AZ Wine Company in Scottsdale, AZ.
In other exciting news, I have successfully passed the CSW exam! This means I am now officially certified for drinking and knowing things.
The 2016 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir Rosé from Elk Cove Vineyards provides our introduction to Oregon.
Make America Grape Again Podcast 