NYTimes: Wineries Of The MidWest..

Hard to believe PaulB didn't beat me to this. It'll make his day!!
Tom

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/us/19wine1.html?hp&ex=1163912400&en=ce6d7e665b4c195a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[James Roscoe]

Tom,
My wife just came back from Iowa and brought me an Iowa wine as a sort of gag (or is that "gag") gift. Maybe it wil be better than we thought. It was a little over ten bucks. I can't remember the hybrid variety. I will open it in the next few weeks and report back.
Cheers!
James

Tom, I've "enjoyed" two wines from Iowa back in 2000:

2000 Little Amana Winery Strawberry Wine Iowa. Excess sugar and water method. Intense aroma and taste of strawberries, light acidity, not too sweet. Very nice strawberry wine. T4*.

2000 Little Amana Winery Plum Wine Iowa. Deep red color, with a light plum aroma and flavor, quite sweet, and not very interesting. T2*.

It's an interesting article -- this fellow is making money from raising grape vines and selling them to other farmers. We tried the same approach with llamas in Wisconsin a few years ago. Lovely animals, actually, hard to kill for meat, and other folks had the same idea.

But maybe the long glacial ridge running north and south through the heart of the 100 acre site would make some really good wine. I'll talk to my brother and see what he thinks. The foxes sure like the site.

Hope springs eternal with farmers -- and I do like wine, at least in principle.

Regards, Bob

Speaking of llamas, don't forget Ogden Nash:

A one-l lama
He's a priest.
A two-l llama
He's a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
That there is
No three-l llama...

The New York Times Crossword proved Nash wrong -- a few days ago they published a three-lllama -- a fire alarm in Brooklyn.

Regards, Bob

Tom, many thanks for finding that article. It was a most inspiring read.

I've long felt that this trend that we now see happening in the American heartland is what needs to happen, i.e. North America needs to develop its own indigenous wine culture from the ground up. I truly feel that unless some kind of breakthrough in grape genetic engineering takes place across the board and very quickly (which I doubt) and we see researchers churning out new clones of vinifera with cold hardiness and disease issues genetically resolved, the grapes that will be the building blocks of the new American viticulture will be the increasingly recognized new-generation extreme-cold-hardy hybrids that are perfectly suited to a continental climate. Why, just this past week I have received e-mails from two growers in central Ontario (again, a rather continental climate) who wrote that they are pulling their viniferas (Zweigelt, in this case) once and for all due to incessant fungal disease and poor plant acclimation. They will be planting the new-generation hybrids in their place.

Of course, as all these little steps take place, the evidence that viticulture is in fact possible all across our continent with the right varieties will slowly start to dawn upon the wider wine establishment, versed until now almost exclusively in an only-vinifera-matters mindset. The mentality will change, but the change must first develop its own inertia - and this will take time.