As a political junkie, wine lover and blue state resident that makes great wine, I've been pondering that if we had two teams - RED states vs. BLUE states for an Olympic Wine Competition of sorts who would win?
Would a RED team from TX make the preliminaries to compete in the finals? How about states like TN (RED in 2004) and NC (RED)?
CA and NY are certainly big powerhouses along with WA and OR for world-class wines. But sleepers like DE (BLUE) and NH (BLUE) are surprising us with a few of their offerings.
Now MI (BLUE) is getting early kudos for their wine production - and then there's those states like NJ, MA, RI (all BLUE) with smaller wineries aimed at local tourism.
And this year there's a possibility that traditionally RED VA will turn BLUE.
In this Wine Olympics who do we have on the RED states team?
If you've been following the story of Caduceus and the launch of the Arizona (RED) winemaking region near Sedona you could possibly add players from NM (RED) - there's a sparkler that's made there that's interesting. Seems to me that the RED states might have to throw in a few ringers from France or Italy to beat out the BLUES.
TIME magazine did a story today on tasting samples of wines from each of the 50 states in the $20 and under category - go to http://www.time.com/time/2008/50_american_wines/?iid=redirect-wine and see the results. If you use their nifty tool, you can sort the wines by top contender in the Excellent, Good, Bad and Undrinkable categories. It's 7 (BLUE) to 5 (RED) on their chart.
Politics aside - TIME discovered what we knew all along. The BLUE states are probably the winners hands down.
We'll see how they do in the other race that's coming down the pike.
Have a Blue or Red state wine to recommend? Send us an email at customerservice@womenwine.com
Have a great Labor Day Weekend!
Julie
