A
s I was reading through my backlog of blogs, I came across my favorite Caveman, Mike Wangbickler, who reminded me that this week is the second annual Regional Wine Week.
I’ve long been an advocate of shopping locally to somehow, in some tiny way, support my local merchants. It can be challenging and expensive in some arenas, and just plain fun in others. Living on the Left Coast, I am an hours drive from at least 5 world class wine regions, and this affords me a bit of luxury when drinking locally. Yes, I know it will cost a bit more to support a small business, but isn’t it worth it?
Regional Wine Week is the genius of WineCurmudgeon.com‘s Jeff Siegel and and WineLine”s David McIntyre (also of the Washington Post) who gathered a few wine writers to talk about their respective regions’ wines at the same time. With 40 participants talking about their local juice, it was a great success and spawned the DrinkLocalWine.com website.
DrinkLocalWine gives readers a single source access point to read about different wine regions. They are aggregating the psots during Regional Wine Week, and is really opening up doors for some lesser known areas producing areas in the US and worldwide.
For me, it’s too easy to pick Sonoma or Napa. I live in San Francisco, the hotbed of technology and wine, where there are at least 5 wineries in the city limits, and many more using coop facilities and there are at least 20 member producers of the SF Wine Association. I’m going to drink local this week, starting off with Vie Winery, maybe a little Sol Rouge, and perhaps sipping a bit of Blue Cellars. I don’t have any AP Vin sadly, so you’ll just have to write about that yourselves!
I encourage you to go out and find somethign produced locally, and even better, owned locally. If I could raid my friend Andy’s backyard for his Garagiste syrah I would, but sources tell me this might not be the best idea.
I hope to read some entertaining posts!
Great article Thea. It's now Sunday Day 8 of Regional Wine Week. I know it ended yesterday, but I needed the extra day to fulfill my goal. That was to drink 7 different Finger Lakes NY wines in seven days. (7 wines I never had before). Enjoyed the entire week of wines. Can't wait to do it again. Maybe next week.
[...] Why not ALSO participate in regional wine week? Try out being a locavore by eating locally produced foods and be a locapour with what you drink! Learn more about Regional Wine Week from Thea Dwelle aka @WineBratSF from her blog post here. [...]
[...] Why not ALSO participate in regional wine week? Try out being a locavore by eating locally produced foods and be a locapour with what you drink! Learn more about Regional Wine Week from Thea Dwelle aka @WineBratSF from her blog post here. [...]
Thanks Thea. It's easy for us in California, but folks in other parts of the country should support their local wineries. For those interested, I just published a blog post on wines from the Midwest.
Mike
Thanks for the kind words about our efforts. It's good to know that even in California you understand what we're trying to do.
Ouch "EVEN" in CA
In the Bay Area we're definitely focused on such efforts. Great idea and let's keep it going!
That sound? Those are my tires screetching Liza! I'll bring my VIE L'Intruse! tehehehe
Gretchen – I am so behind I have like 1000+ posts that someday. When i'm in bed for a week, i'll read giggle!
I flew to Seattle for coffee, so I am not the best advocate of anything local, but whoo hoo Thea for the reminder! And I have one bottle left of the AP Vin! Come on over!
Ummm yeah. How's THAT carbon footprint? hmm?
Oh good, I am not the ony person who is behind on their rss feeds