Is Viogner Temecula Valley’s destiny?

I have lived in Temecula for close to five years now, and when I first arrived, the wineries were growing everything and anything under the sun. Quality was all over the map, and I had more misses than enjoyable bottles.

Fast forward five years, quality is finally becoming an issue, and part of that is planting grapes that perform well in our hot environment. Yes I realize we have a very large diurnal temperature range…but at 1:00pm standing in the field at 110 degrees…I am thinking that cool climate grapes are not in their ideal environment.

At any rate, the Rhone and Southern Italian wines are starting to show great promise in the valley and are much better suited to this environment than their cold viticulture counterparts. The one variety I have been keeping my eye on is Viogner.

A few years back, the few samples of Viogner I had in the valley were flabby and flat, but with enough structure that you could tell that once there was some more viticulture and cellar experience that this was going to be a good wine.

This year I have tasted most of the offerings in the valley, granted not a huge number are producing Viogner yet, however the experience is starting to show. If winegrowers could ever choose a white to rally around and specialize in, this is the one.

Looking forward to next years releases.

Are sub ten dollar wines the future of North American Wine?

Over the last few years starting with the infamous Two Buck Chuck downright cheap wines have appeared on the retail store shelves. At first these wines were little more than plonk, or oddities, however with the judicious use of science and large-scale manufacturing techniques, this wine is here to stay, and the quality keeps improving. You can now go to any grocery store in California, and without any difficulty find a perfectly drinkable bottle of wine for under $3.00.

The purpose of this article is to look at this huge market segment from the eyes of a small to mid sized winery and the economic implications that growth in this segment will bring to the market.

Time for the next round

Sub Prime Loans were child’s play, now it’s the middle and upper middle class that are about to slam into the windshield.