North Carolina Wines Coming of Age

by Liz Dodder

Don’t let the Southern accent fool you, North Carolinians know their wine making. Having borrowed Virginia’s growing wine spotlight in recent years, but now boasting some 26 wineries throughout the state, North Carolina wines are beginning to stand on their own legs, as well as gain national respect.

North Carolina has a long history of wine-making and is the home of the Scuppernong grapes, a variety of the muscadine grape that makes a very sweet musty wine. However, Virginia has more recently been leading the South in making respectable wines which rival those of Napa and Sonoma Valleys in California. As North Carolina farmers are being incentivized to convert their tobacco crops to grapes, grape-growing and wine producing is gaining ground, and the wines are beginning to show it. With the success of favorable new tax laws pushed by the North Carolina Grape Council in 1987, wineries have been springing up rapidly all over the state. North Carolina is now 13th in grape production and 14th in wine production in the US.

With the state’s history of muscadine wines, this agricultural area was relatively new at European or standard variety grape growing and wine making, and has begun to grow along with the local wine drinkers. Slowly, the favorite musadine and sweet dessert wines are beginning to bring these wine drinkers to the wineries’ tasting rooms and local wine festivals, where they can help expose locals to traditional wines like chardonnays, sauvignon blancs, even merlots and cabernets.

Not even rainy weather and a field full of mud could keep local wine drinkers away from the 3rd annual North Carolina Wine Festival, held each year in June. This year, 18 of the state’s 26 wineries showed up in slickers and boots to educate drinkers and offer tastings to more than 10,000 attendees. Lines were long at wineries like Duplin Wine Cellars and Hinnant Family Vineyards, where the only wines offered were muscadine, sweet or dessert wines. But, many of those same sweet wine drinkers were interested in tasting at other wineries, sipping whites like Chardonnay, Riesling, Seyval Blanc and the local favorite, Viognier. This grape is quickly gaining popularity with drinkers as well as the necessary acreage with vineyards, especially in France, Australia, California, Virginia and North Carolina. It’s beginning to challenge the monopoly of Chardonnay in the supermarkets, and it’s about time.

Smiling employees at one winery pronounced this local wine “vee-uh-NAY”, while very helpful pourers at another called it “vee-ON-yay”. Standing ankle deep in mud didn’t dampen the clear, crisp, Sauvignon Blanc-like taste and subtle fruit nose of the Viognier. No matter how you say it, this wine is a winner, especially from Shelton, Hanover Park and Windy Gap wineries, all of whom have won awards for their Viognier wines.

Other reputable North Carolina wines are the award-winning Shelton Riesling, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, Hanover Park Viognier and Dry Chambourcin, Black Wolf Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, and Windy Gap Viognier and Chardonnay. These wineries range from a home-based winery housed in what looks like a double-wide trailer with a tasting room on the back porch to a large luxurious manor with an adjoining cheese shop and surrounding vineyards built expressly for this purpose. You can find them all in the Yadkin Valley, in the north east part of the state, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. This valley enjoys a climate similar to that of Burgundy, France and is the home to 8 wineries, with 6 more on the way.

Shelton Winery boasts it’s the largest estate winery in the state, and uses the highest quality method of making wine: gravity flow. Windy Gap, on the other hand, could be one of the smallest and most intimate wineries, where you can relax on their patio, pet the basset hounds which inspire the wine’s names and discuss wine with the owners, whose inspiration came from a desire to get back to nature, simple comforts and good food and wine. Mmmmm… The valley also includes wineries named after a childhood pet cow, dreamed up on vacation in France and whose grapes were planted along the Yadkin River as long ago as 1972.

As North Carolina wines age and winemakers gain knowledge, we can only expect better results. But, you’ll have to put on your best southern drawl to enjoy them, especially if the name looks difficult to pronounce.

Links:

Yadkin Valley Wine Trail
www.yadkinriver.com/yadkinvalleywinetrail.htm

North Carolina Wine Council
www.ncwine.org