Local wine aficionado, Greville Havenhand identifies some American wines which have come of age:
[Image: Persimmon Creek winery, Georgia]
The forthcoming exhibition of American art at the Gallery (find out more) set me thinking about American wine. It is not surprising that most of us equate wine from that country with California, since the state is responsible for about 97% of United States wine production, although almost every other state has some of its own. As in art there has been exchanges of ideas, methods and people over the years, and like art, it has been mainly, although not exclusively, with France.
Wine making, though, started with the English settlers. As early as 1619, Lord Thomas West Delaware, Governor of Virginia, planted the first vitis vinifera and a law was passed requiring the colonists to plant vineyards among other vegetation. In the eighteenth century, the area around Charlottesville, Virginia saw its most famous men – George Washington, James Madison James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson all growing wine. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was a great wine connoisseur, a knowledge and passion fuelled by his time as Minister to France, when he visited most of the great wine producing regions and bought from the great Châteaux –Lafite, Haut Brion etc., not only for himself but for George Washington. He imported 10,000 vines, strangely from Italy, for his estate Monticello in Virginia. Disease and bad luck meant that he never achieved a vintage. Wine growing and making stuttered along through the years. The Dutch planted vines in New York, where there is a thriving wine industry today. The native American vines such as vitis labrusca produced, and still do, some very mediocre wines with an unpleasant “foxy” taste. There are hybrids such as “Concord “but they are not of the first order.
America almost destroyed, but in the end saved the European wine industry. In the nineteenth century a particularly nasty sap sucking insect, Phylloxera, a native of America, appeared in Europe and destroyed almost 90% of all vines. Since it was endemic in America vines had developed a large degree of immunity and now almost all European vines are grafted on to American rootstock.
Enough of the history, what about the wine? Californian wine came many years after the East Coast attempts. There is some great wine in California – Ridge, Mondavi, Seghesio, and the organic wines from Fetzer and Bonterra. Perversely, though, I am going to say something about a few wines from other States. Virginia was the birthplace of wine in America, and today Virginians are working hard to restore this. Here are many vineyards, but most of them are very small and are not yet in the export business. They claim to be mid way between Europe and California, both oenologically and geographically and I know what they mean. I am particularly keen on the wines from the Williamsburg winery. They make an excellent Merlot but the whites stand out, with a restrained Viognier and an almost Burgundian reserve Chardonnay. Alas you can’t yet buy them here.
Wines that you can buy locally are from the two states which are becoming better known – Oregon and Washington State. Oregon is becoming renowned for Pinot Noir and
my favourites are from Amity Vineyards, founded and run by Myron Redford [right] - bearded, extrovert , passionate about wine and the environment. His wines reflect his character. They are honest, open, oak-free and mainly organically grown.
Further north, Washington State is producing very good wines. A famously eccentric Californian winemaker, Randall Grahm, has sold some of his better known labels and taken over Pacific Rime Vineyards in Washington State. He is running it on Biodynamic principles.
Biodynamics is a sort of super-organic with the moon and the planets thrown in for good measure. Wacky but it works.
(Perhaps I will write about soon.) He is fanatical about Riesling but I recently tasted his Chenin Blanc from a local merchant and found it both unusual and displaying a freshness that one rarely finds outside the Loire. These last are both winemakers strongly influenced by Europeans, but in my wine travels I have met many a young French wine maker who has done his or her stint in U.S. vineyards to enhance their own skills. Not all American wine is over extracted, formulaic branded wine.
New York State has some good wines. Look out for Wöllfers from the Hamptons and Macari from the North Fork of Long Island. One of my most pleasurable recent discoveries was the wines from Persimmon Creek in Georgia. Not the Georgia of steamy Savannah or the metropolis of Atlanta, but from further north. At The London Wine Trade Fair I came upon their stand and Mary-Ann Hardman, co-proprieor with her doctor husband, William “Sonny” Hardman. An archetypal lady from the deep South, energetic, charming with an almost messianic enthusiasm for their wines. They make a Cabernet Franc with none of the stalkiness one often gets in France, but with all the fruit character of this often under rated grape. Their triumph, though, is Riesling. This is a crisp minerally dry wine but more especially their Late Harvest Riesling which has luscious sweetness but a refreshing spine of acid. It is not Alsace, German or Clare Valley but its own being. Sorry, it is not yet available over here but watch for it in top restaurants in places like Los Angeles as well as its own State.
American wine as a whole has come of age. As in art the cross-fertilisation continues apace.
Try the wine: Oregon wine can be bought from the oddly-named but excellent Whirly Wine in Camberwell and the Washington state chenin from Green and Blue in Lordship Lane.
Find out more about Dulwich Wine Society
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