Wine Blogging In Charlottesville
I am rather excited to report that I’ll be headed to Charlottesville, Virginia, tomorrow to take part in the 2011 Wine Bloggers Conference. About 300 of us wine bloggers are gathering, and, judging by the agenda, either the spit buckets or the bloggers will be completely loaded the entire time.
I am particularly looking forward to “The Other 46” tasting, which highlights wineries from states other than California, Washington, Oregon and New York. Every state in the country now has at least one winery, and many of them produce some pretty darn good stuff.
We’re also touring some of the wine country around Charlottesville, which, I must admit, I barely realized existed. But Virginia boasts more wineries than any state other than the four mentioned above. It’s an impressive comeback for a state that had but 15 acres of vineyards when Prohibition was finally repealed. If the Virginia Wine website is to be believed, the state has had great success with vinifera grapes grafted onto American rootstocks. I’m looking forward to trying some local Viognier, Cabernet Franc and Norton; varieties noted as doing particularly well in the Virginia terroir.
I’ll try to keep my reports from Virginia as concise, lucid and properly spelled as possible, but it all depends on how many wines are just too good to end up in that spit bucket.
