Dan - many, many thanks for this TN. I cannot believe that I am only noticing it now. How did this ever fly past my radar? Must've been the French-sounding name ...
Dry, crisp, well-balanced, non-cloying - this is
exactly what I keep preaching that labrusca wines should be today. The days are gone when North American wine drinkers had soda-pop tastes and expected wine made in a "training wheels" style. North America's non-traditional wine-growing regions have successfully experimented with vinifera and are making excellent white vinifera wines in places as diverse as the Finger Lakes, Michigan, Virginia, etc. What now really should happen is for that admirable and proper dry style to be translplanted into the labrusca realm. You and I both know that successful dry labrusca whites are possible - we make them, after all! But not enough wineries are willing to take that very bold step and introduce bottlings - even very limited, trial runs at first - of
completely dry labruscas to spring on customers at tasting rooms. My experience has shown that people without preconceived notions of what given wines are "supposed" to taste like will try a dry labrusca and never say "by the way, why isn't it sweet?". Getting wineries to change is very difficult given their dogmatic, by-the-book approach to making labrusca, but it's something that I feel
must happen in order for our heirloom grapes to come into the modern century wearing up-to-date clothes. It's time to chuck the bellbottoms and polyester styles already, I say.
