It occurred to me that the Vermont wine category has not been thoroughly explored by many of the more discriminant wine fanatics. I’m not saying this is true for all of them, just a large portion. In fact, to the individual who is unfamiliar with wine, there are three places wine comes from: California, France, and Italy. This individual will also tell you something else: If you want good wine cheap, get a Californian.
Well, that is the opinion of someone unfamiliar. First of all, Red Truck (or White Truck or Pink Truck – it’s all the same winery) costs around $12 a bottle. They’re from California and claim to be one of the best wines around for an inexpensive price. You will not, however, find a bottle of Red Truck at a wine store that has any taste. This is one of your typical, what I refer to as, “grocery store brands”. Now, Casal Garcia is from Portugal. You know, that small country that takes up part of that huge square peninsula that we usually refer to as Spain? I was able to get their new rosé at a small local foods grocery store for $8. It wasn’t even on sale. You’ll notice, if you go to that same store for their famous vinho verde, that their white wine is the same price.
Most of the wine that I’ll recommend to you via this blog will be bottles under $15. There will be a few over that I will recommend, and those you’ll want to keep in mind. I also had an opportunity to try a wine once that was over the $200 mark. That was an amazing wine. But keep in mind, price often has little to do with flavor (except in the case of anything over the $150 mark). There are $50 wines that just don’t taste right, and there are $8 wines that are absolutely amazing. They also come from all over the world. Typical good wines from America come from California and Oregon (but there are some others, and we’ll get to those). Outside of that, there are Argentinian, Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, German, Portugese, Chilean, Austrian, and so many more types of international wine.
I have always thought categorizing wine by flavor then by country was the way to do it, not the other way around. However, we move on:
Vermont has several wineries, the most well-known of which lies in Shelburne, appropriately titled Shelburne Vineyards. While I have not been to a tasting there in over a year, the flavors and the memory of my rather “blah” reaction to their wines is still with me enough that I can honestly say I was not impressed. However, the not nearly so discriminant wine fans (aka, the friends I brought to the wine tasting with me) loved their rosé. Part of the excitement in going to the Shelburne Vineyards wine tasting to begin with was the amount of hype at least four of my friends gave to the rosé. After the summer I had with my job at the wine store, I was sorely disappointed in it. (There is a certain amount of discriminance you get toward certain wines when you’ve had better. But I know just as well as anyone that the lower quality wines sometimes have general mass appeal.)
However, discriminance cited, I did quite enjoy the tasting of the wines from East Shore Vineyard at the Shelburne Farmers Market at the beginning of this summer. This wine is made in Grand Isle, Vermont. Of particular interest to me were two of their white wines, Arctic Frost and Summer Snow. Summer Snow is more up my own alley, being a sweeter white wine. However, Artic Frost was just as good. It bordered on sweet with just enough holding it back to be a more generally appealing white wine.
East Shore Vineyards also had a couple of dessert wines available, but don’t hold your breathe on that one. They were quite good for typical dessert wines, but they also cost in the $25 range. While this is the lower end of the scale for dessert wines, you can get my personal favorite dessert wine, a Late Harvest Gewurztraminer, for only $15, direct from Kiona Vineyard. I’ve also seen it for only around $20 at some stores. Not to mention, Kiona’s Late Harvest Reisling is also very popular and just as inexpensive. In fact, I would often suggest that if you want to go for a good dessert wine for less cost, Late Harvest is usually just as good as Ice – just as syrupy sweet – but often less expensive.