DLW13 wrapup – We trended over Tiger Woods!

DLW 13 is now history. This is a cliché, but I have to say it: This year’s conference was the best ever. Not only did we shine a light on Maryland wine at a conference with about 150 people, but we had a great tasting at Baltimore’s Camden Yards with about 400 people all eager to try local wines they had never tasted and in some cases, never even knew existed. (More on that in a moment.)

Of course, DLW is always a social media event, and our tweets and updates quickly became the leading trend on Twitter – above even Tiger Woods and his two-stroke penalty at the Masters or Kobe Bryant’s ruptured Achilles tendon. We realized something was happening when advertisements began popping up on #dlw13 and #mdwine. We don’t have the figures yet about how many “impressions” and retweets the conference generated, but once again we had people chiming in from around the world, retweeting and showing their support for Maryland wine. One of those was Jancis Robinson, no less. Not bad for some kids from the sticks.

The Twitter Taste-Off is always my favorite part of these conferences. This year, we opened it to the general public on a greater scale than we had before, and the crowd was terrific. Not only did they get to taste some Maryland classics, like Boordy, Basignani and Elk Run, but also some of the new guard, including Black Ankle, Slack and Port of Leonardtown. Millstone Cellars was there with some fascinating ciders and meads that were crowd favorites. And those who came got to taste a bit of Maryland’s exciting future – two wineries that are not even open yet were pouring their new unreleased wines. These were Big Cork and Old Westminster wineries (I wrote about them a few weeks ago when I was able to taste the wines prior to the conference.) I heard a lot of people raving about these wines, especially Old Westminster’s 2012 Chardonnay. (Here’s Paul Vigna’s take on the tasting at PennLive.com.)

The crowd filled the room at the Warehouse at Camden Yards in Baltimore for the Drink Local Wine Twitter Taste-Off, April 13, 2013

We also asked participants to vote for their favorite white, red and alternative wines. The winners were Black Ankle for its 2011 Albarino, which really rocked; Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyards for its delicious 2010 EVOE, a Bordeaux-style blend; and Millstone Cellars for its Ciderberry, a tasty cider made of Rome Beauty and Stayman Winesap apples and flavored with raspberries. Yum!

Ed Boyce of Black Ankle Vineyards holds the winning white.

These wines may have won the vote, but the real winners were the wineries who supported our effort and offered their wines – DLW13 helped elevate Maryland wine’s profile among writers, bloggers and consumers.

Finally, a shout-out to Kevin Atticks and his crew at the Maryland Wineries Association, our main sponsor, for making the conference such a success. Without the hard work of Kevin, Briana Berg, Jade Ostner and a bevy of interns, the conference could not have been carried out so smoothly. We left with such a good feeling that we’re already thinking of doing it again someplace else next year.

DLW13 approaches – with some love from Jancis Robinson

In case you missed it, Jancis Robinson mentioned Drink Local Wine in her recent Financial Times column about the revolution in U.S. wine that she and Linda Murphy chronicled in their new book, American Wine: The Ultimate Companion to the Wines and Wineries of the United States.

Someone’s watching me!!

Robinson’s column touches on many of the points she made in public appearances during a recent U.S. book tour, including a discussion I moderated at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History. Yes, we tasted American wine under the thirsty gaze of an African elephant.

The mention was especially gratifying as our fifth annual Drink Local Wine conference is only a few days away – this weekend in Baltimore. After shining a light on the wines of Texas, Virginia, Missouri and Colorado in past years, this year we are spotlighting Maryland.

And there’s more exciting news: With the help of DLW President Michael Wangbickler and his colleagues at Balzac Communications, we’ve launched a new DLW website. This will help us continue to fulfill DLW’s original purpose, to spotlight writing about local wines throughout the United States.

Even more exciting – the Grand Twitter Taste-Off at Camden Yards this weekend is sold out, a testament to the excitement Maryland wine drinkers feel for their local vino. It should be fun.

 

A nice lineup for DLW13 – in less than 2 weeks!

The annual Drink Local Wine conference will be in Baltimore on April 13 – now less than two weeks away. There’s still time to make plans to join us at the Tremont Hotel for the conference and lunch and the Warehouse at Camden Yards for the Twitter Taste Off, sponsored by Bottlenotes. Schedule and registration details are here.

Last week I journeyed to Timonium, just north of Baltimore, and the offices of the Maryland Wineries Association to taste wines with Kevin Atticks, the MWA’s executive director, and his staff – Briana Berg, who is doing a lot of organizing work for the conference, Jade Ostner and Vivian Perry. Our goal was to select some of the wines to be featured at the Twitter Taste-Off.

It was not an exhaustive tasting – wines that have won gold medals at various state competitions are more than welcome without additional screening. These were (to me at least) relative unknowns, so it was a great opportunity.

And I’m happy to say we’ll have a nice lineup. And not just grape wines, but hard cider and flavored meads even.

The wines that got me most excited were from two wineries that haven’t even released wines yet. We had some delicious barrel samples from Old Westminster Winery and Big Cork Vineyards. Old Westminster makes a bracing chardonnay that contrasts perfectly with so many flabby examples from the east – this is chardonnay in the Linden, Boordy, and Michael Shaps category. There was also a delicious cabernet franc that was all the more impressive because it came from the incredibly rainy 2011 vintage. These wines catapulted Old Westminster Winery and its young winemaker, Lisa Baker, to the top of my “Ones to Watch” list.

Big Cork was already on my list because it’s the new project of Dave Collins, former winemaker across the river at Breaux Vineyards in Virginia’s Loudoun County. The 22-acres of vines Dave planted two years ago in Rohrersville, Md., will produce their first crop this year, but he’s already made some delicious 2012 reds from purchased fruit. I was particularly enamored of three from Cool Hollow vineyard, especially the meritage blend that got a thumbs up from our group for inclusion in the Twitter Taste-Off. It will join an equally exciting cabernet sauvignon from Mountain Creek. These wines will make for an impressive debut for Big Cork Vineyards.

With such exciting wines to taste, how could you pass up the chance to join us in Charm City?

Drink Local Wine 2013 – on iWineRadio.com

Last weekend I had the pleasure of talking again with Lynn Krielow Chamberlain of iWineRadio.com, an Internet radio program available online and through iTunes. Of course, we discussed the upcoming Drink Local Wine 2013 conference to be held April 13 in Baltimore and featuring Maryland wines. There really is a revolution going on in American wine, and you can experience Maryland’s contribution that weekend, for a modest investment of a few hours and a small admission.

You can hear my conversation with Lynn, in which I discuss the emergence of a multi-state wine region that spans Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and southern Pennsylvania, as well as her interviews of Briana Berg of the Maryland Wineries Association and Rob Deford of Boordy Vineyards, Maryland’s most historic winery. But most of all, I hope you’ll join us at the Tremont hotel and Camden Yards in Baltimore for Drink Local Wine 2013!

The RdV Salon Experience

RdV Vineyards has helped raise the national profile of Virginia wine since it offered its first wines for sale two years ago.  But vintner Rutger de Vink has always chafed at the marketing side of wine, acknowledging freely that he prefers to spend time in the vineyard. The winery has no tasting room, unusual in a region where the vast majority of wine produced is sold at the winery.

This spring, RdV is offering an exclusive “salon” tasting for groups of up to 10 people, which de Vink describes as “getting our toes into the water on how to integrate the public into RdV.” The first salon was held on on Saturday for food and wine journalists.

After a meet-and-greet over flutes of Thibaut-Janisson Brut, a Virginia sparkler, we were given a brief tour of the winery by office manager Andrew Camp. First stop was the display of a core sample of fractured granite taken from the vineyard. “We call this our French drain,” Camp said, because the fissures in the rock siphon off rainwater and help the vines shift from vegetative growth to reproductive efforts – ie., ripening the grapes – during late summer.

The centerpiece of the salon was a brown bag tasting of four wines: The RdV Lost Mountain and Rendezvous, matched up against a Bordeaux and a California wine, all from the 2009 vintage. The latter two wines will vary from tasting to tasting – for our example, they included Chateau Lynch Bages and Caymus Special Selection. This is similar to a tasting de Vink used when releasing his initial wines from the 2008 vintage. The tastings will be conducted by Kevin Switz, a sommelier at the famous Ashby Inn in nearby Paris, Va.

“Our objective isn’t to say that RdV wines are the best, but to show that wines express their place of origin and to demonstrate that RdV belongs to be among these world-class wines,” de Vink said.

No one in our group was willing to dispute that point. All four wines were delicious, with the Caymus easiest to identify as the Californian because of its ripe, dried fruit flavors. What turned out to be the Lynch Bages was powerful and minerally, with what de Vink described as “purity that floats like an arrow over your palate.” The two RdV wines were light on their feet, spicy with red fruit flavors, and quite elegant. There’s no pressure in these tastings, so we weren’t asked to reveal our rankings or guesses. (I would have mixed up the Lost Mountain and the Rendezvous. I guess I just need to taste them more often.)

RdV just won two gold medals in the Virginia Governor’s Cup competition for its 2010 Lost Mountain and Rendezvous, which won’t be released until late summer. De Vink even acknowledged that the 2010s are not his favorites, coming from an unusually warm and ripe vintage. But he expressed admiration for his fellow vintners in the Old Dominion.

“I’m very proud of what’s happening in Virginia,” he said, noting that the state is increasingly being recognized as a premium wine producer. “I was in San Francisco recently and people weren’t asking me what’s happening with RdV, they asked what’s happening with Virginia.”

The salon tastings will be held at 11 am and 2 pm on Saturdays through June, with reservations required. The cost is $60 per person, or $50 if you are a member of RdV’s “ambassador” program. Details here.

Drink Local Wine 2013 – in Baltimore April 13

You can drink local wine any day, but you should Drink Local Wine on April 13.

Okay, punning aside, the annual Drink Local Wine conference is fast approaching. After convening in Texas, Virginia, Missouri and Colorado, we are converging on Baltimore next month to explore Maryland wines. Complete conference information and registration is available through the link above or clicking on the logos.

Maryland’s wine industry is somewhat overshadowed by Virginia’s, but the Free State has also enjoyed major growth in the number of wineries and in quality since the turn of the century. From just a dozen wineries in 2000, today Maryland has more than 60. Many of these are along what I call the Piedmont Arc, the eastern side of the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountains, stretching arguably from the mountains of northern Georgia up through western North Carolina and into Virginia, with its biggest concentration of wineries around Charlottesville and in Loudoun and Fauquier counties in Northern Virginia. You can follow the trail of wineries through central Maryland into southeastern Pennsylvania and even central New Jersey. In Maryland, there is also another geographic influence – the Chesapeake Bay. Several new wineries have sprung up in southern Maryland and on the Eastern Shore, taking advantage of the maritime climate. Looked at in this context, Maryland’s wineries are part of the emergence of an exciting new wine region.

Barboursville Earns Top Bling for 2009 Octagon

Virginia’s wine industry gave itself its annual report card Thursday, and Barboursville Vineyards was named valedictorian – its 2009 Octagon red blend won the Governor’s Cup.

The 2009 Octagon won this year’s Virginia Governor’s Cup

The trophy was presented to Barboursville winemaker Luca Paschina by Gov. Robert McDonnell tonight at a ceremony in Richmond. It’s the fourth time since the Virginia Wineries Association started the competition in 1982 that Barboursville won top honors, making it the Old Dominion’s most celebrated winery, as well as its most commercially important.

It’s also a gratifying win for Octagon, a merlot-based blend of Bordeaux varieties that Paschina first created with the 1998 vintage. He has promoted it as the type of icon wine Virginia needs to produce to prove its worthiness as a world-class wine region, but despite commercial success, Octagon has not traditionally fared well in competitions.

“It’s not the most soft, polished and smooth wine,” Paschina told me in a phone interview last week. “I don’t fine it or do micro-oxygenation” – a popular winemaking technique that softens a wine’s tannins – “so the wine is a bit more assertive at a younger age and takes a bit longer to show well. It does really well at table with food, but in a wine competition it comes off as aggressive.”