It’s interesting these days to look at the results of wine competitions around the country that are open for entry to national and, in some cases, international wines. These days we are seeing a much larger number of winners from states that are not traditionally thought of winegrowing and winemaking states.
For example in the 2011 San Francisco Chronicle wine competition, which had 5,050 wine entries from 23 states, two sweepstakes winners came from wineries that are outside California, one from Washington and one from New Mexico. Out of the six sweepstakes wines selected only one wine was from Sonoma County and none were from the Napa Valley.
This is getting to be more and more common as wineries from all over the country regularly enter and receive medals for their wines. Of course we are used to seeing wines from California, Washington, Oregon, New York’s Finger Lakes and Virginia on the winners lists, but until recently we have not been quite as accustomed to seeing wines from Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Georgia. Missouri, Michigan and South Dakota to name some of the states that entered wines and won medals. And the medals awards to wineries in these states are primarily for vinifera wines, although some are for grapes not grown on the West Coast and some are for fruit wines.
As I travel so much to wine regions around the United States and Canada it comes as no surprise to me that wines from so many different parts of the US are doing so well. I taste the wines and they are delicious.
Congratulations to all the medal winners from around the country and good luck to the wineries that, though they may not have won a medal this time, might the next.
Keep up the good work!
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