Paul Vigna of the Patriot-News writes that Black Ankle, Serpent Ridge, and a number of other Mid-Atlantic wineries are investing in Iberian grapes, particularly the white Albarino. I can personally recommend Serpent Ridge’s Albarino, and I often see it in stores. The Spanish grapes are a nice change from the French grapes we commonly see.

In a separate article, Mr. Vigna reports about Knob Hall’s winning awards for its Chambourcin, another unfamiliar grape.

Speaking of Serpent Ridge, Carlo de Vito of East Coast Wineries notes the winery is profiled in Vineyard and Winery Management.

Mark Cascia Vineyards is expanding with the help of a state grant.

Mr. de Vito also reposts Dave McIntyre’s Best Regional Wines of 2011. I will confess to nearly squealing when I saw Slack’s Montepulciano on the list (Black Ankle’s Slate, the 2011 MD Governor’s Cup winner, is also on there). Montepulciano has always been a favorite, but a guilty pleasure because no one was doing it locally. Then came Slack. (And their Danny Boy Danny. But that’s another post entirely.)

CBS, ABC and WBAL (thank you, Terroirist) note that Maryland wineries are seeing more business now that shipping is allowed. Surprise!

The surprise, though, is that only the Baltimore Business Journal comes out and frankly says Maryland will benefit from the permit fees and extra tax revenue.

Baltimore Business Journal also does a nice write-up of the start of Old Westminster Winery.

I attribute to living in the DC suburbs, but I’m already sick of this year’s election. If you’d like a different take on things, check out Tom Wark’s analysis of how wine-friendly the Republican candidates are (although this came out before the Iowa caucases).

Not Maryland, but W. Blake Gray tries a DIY wine making product.

As always, check out the Maryland Wineries’ Association’s news site for even more items of interest. Maryland’s Office of Tourism also has a Wineries section, with events going on year round.

You can read the entire bill and its amendments here on Congress’ official site. (all documents are PDFs). The amendments don’t address alcohol shipments, but they’re interesting to see from a procedural point of view. S.1789 seems to set up USPS alcohol shipments much the same way Maryland now regulates shipments: deliveries must be initiated by a licensed industry entity who work out a contract with the Post Office, and individuals taking deliveries must present photo identification.

Open Congress confirms that the bill has only been introduced; beyond proposed amendments listed on the website above, no legislative action has been taken.

What would happen if we were able to get as strong a voice behind S.1789 as we had behind Maryland’s shipping law? (In fact, if you go to Open Congress’ site above, you can send your legislator a letter for or against the bill.) While Congress is notorious for not getting anything practical done, distributors themselves would be able to ship through USPS, and increasing state approval of wine shipping sets precedents (Massachusetts and New Jersey are considering legislation similar to Maryland’s in 2012). So I’m not sure S.1789 would face the same obstacles that our Maryland law faced.

Where do you stand on this bill?

With that cheerful image in your minds, I present a couple new things I’ll be trying in 2012 to break myself from my rut:

Sparkling Wine from Great Shoals: The Spencerville Red Apple got rave reviews in Colesville Patch this past fall, and I tasted some really nice sparkling wines at Eat Drink Go Local in Silver Spring last November. I usually don’t care for sparkling wines, so a trip down to Great Shoals is in order.

Sparkling Cabernet from Serpent’s Ridge: Thanks to Paul Vigna for alerting me to this one. I’m not huge on sparkling wines, as I said above, but if it’s from Serpent’s Ridge, it’s worth a try.

Oaked Chambourcin from Layton’s Chance: Layton’s Chance announced this in October, but I haven’t gotten down to see them yet and taste it. I’ll admit, though, that since I do like oaked wines (!), this isn’t really taking me out of my comfort zone.

The Mason-Dixon Wine Trail: Paul Vigna detailed this in September, but I haven’t been able to get up there. While I’ve been to Boordy and Fiore, I haven’t been to many Pennsylvania wineries, and I’d like that to change.

Aliceanna Winery: One of Maryland’s newest, it’s in Baltimore City. But because regulations prevent tastings on site, this is one I’ll be looking for at festivals.

New Maryland Wineries: Detour (western Carroll County),

So imagine my pleasant surprise when I hear that Harris Teeter, opening a store in McHenry Row in Baltimore in December, might also be selling wine. Matt and I really like the Harris Teeter in our neighborhood; it’s clean and well stocked, without being too pricey. It has a lot of the international or organic foods you might expect at a specialty store, but also has your basic bread and butter. But wine?

The first person to answer my emails was Adam Borden, the president of Marylanders for Better Beer and Wine Laws, who commented on the original article linked above. He clarified that Harris Teeter would manage the Cellars, which is the wine shop in question, but the shop would be a separate space with its own entrance. That’s pretty much the information posted in this update.

I contacted Harris Teeter’s corporate office and was referred to Mark Sapperstein, who owns the Cellars. This is Sapperstein’s first store, so he wasn’t sure how common this set up was. However, Sapperstein would own the shop and take care of licensing and running the shop, while Harris Teeter would manage it. He said that there wouldn’t be much partnership between the two shops, but rather that the shops would merely be next to each other, much like most grocery store and liquor store relationships.

Harris Teeter seems to have a decent amount of information about wine on its website, with an established wine club and a showcased wine of the week. It may not sound like much, but it’s more than what our local liquor shop has. And it’s better than “wine product” (thanks to David White of Fermentation for that link).

There is a sampling event on Tuesday, December 6th at 5:30 pm at the new Harris Teeter, located at 1700 whetstone way, Baltimore, Maryland 21230. It sounds like I’ll get more of a feel for the set up that evening.

Anyone else hear about this new shop opening up? What wines would you want to see in your local grocery shop?

Honestly, I’ve had a very mixed experience with the clearance aisle. Our local wine and liquor shop will coordinate wine tastings on Friday and Saturday nights, but Matt and I have found it’s usually the cheap wine they’ve put on sale and are trying to move. We usually don’t take a bottle. In fact, until we stopped going altogether, it was usually an exercise in not spitting out bad wine.

But I’ve heard some great success stories. My mom’s liquor shop routinely has folks order a case and then decide against it, so the store owners crack open the case and sell it at a discount. I’ve seen wineries discount prior vintages to make room for newer bottles, and brought home some rather lovely wines as a result.

There is a fair amount of buzz (bad pun, sorry) about inexpensive wine on the blogsphere; the Frugal Wine Snob and The Wine Curmudgeon’s $10 Wine Hall of Fame come to mind.

But I haven’t seen much about discounted wine or fortuitous accidents. What have you found? Winemakers, have you had experiences like the ones Mr. McNichols describes?

Events

Regional Wine Week wraps up, and Jeff Siegel finds a skeptic with a pretty good point.

David White of the Terroirist asks you to Uncork for a better cause than your own thirst.

News

Evan Dawson of the New York Cork Report describes this vintage’s challenges. Maybe the world is ending?

The Vineyard Wife creates the red badge of locapours. Courage optional.

Kyle McNichols of Palate Press sees the silver lining in accidents. This might get me into my local wine shop more, since I don’t have a whole lot of reason to go in.

Not local, at least for Marylanders, but Lettie Teague writes in the Wall Street Journal about what Bordeaux is. A helpful article for anyone as mystified by French wine as I am. (It’s from France, right?)

I never thought I’d say this, but even the wineries are getting a head start on Christmas. I’ll be lucky to swing by the grocery store next Monday to get candy on the way home.

And, if sometimes you just need a cold one, try Distillery Lane Ciderworks.

Somewhere in the last month, with cold rain coming through town, we got it in our heads to try mulling some wine. We’ve mulled mead before, and had mulled wine at fall tastings, but hadn’t tried it on our own.

We’ve seen folks use a pot on the stove top or packaged mulling spices; most wineries seem to leave the wine in the bottle and stand the bottle in some water in the slow cooker. We just poured our wine into our slow cooker, added some spices if the wine wasn’t already spiced, turned the slow cooker on to low, and waited for the aromas of mulling wine to permeate the house.

We first tried Linganore Winecellars‘ Steeple Chase. It’s marketed as a semi-sweet red, good with chocolate, but Matt added whole cloves, a cinnamon stick, and a little nutmeg. It was almost dessert in and of itself – sweet and fruity.

We liked it so much we next tried their Spicy Regatta, on the advice of Lucia Simmons, Director of Marketing at Linganore, although only with a stick of cinnamon, since it’s already spiced. This is the wine Linganore suggests for mulling. This had more subtle flavors than the mulled Steeple Chase and a smoother finish; Matt, who likes drier wines, seemed to like this more than the Steeple Chase.

Our next endeavor was Boordy‘s Spiced Wassail. Like the Spicy Regatta, it was already spiced, so we only added a cinnamon stick. It was similar to the Regatta, pretty smooth on the tongue, with a deeper finish.

Given our success with the Steeple Chase, I wondered what other sweet reds might be good for mulling. At the Maryland Wine Festival with friends, I tasted Running Hare Winery’s Jack Rabbit Red, and bought a bottle to bring home and mull. Even more than the Steeple Chase, it was obviously not created for mulling, but rather as a table wine. However, the unabashed fruitiness meant it went well with spices, and it was almost like a party version of a mulled wine.

So I’m now curious to try various meads and compare them, especially with the spiced meads coming out of Orchid Cellars. Given our success with the table reds, I’m curious to try other blends and even dessert wines.

What wines have you mulled in the past? Is it a custom for you, or a special event for the holidays? Has anyone mulled dessert wines?

Local bloggers are celebrating Regional Wine Week, an outgrowth of DrinkLocalWine.com, itself started and spearheaded by Dave McIntyre of Dave McIntyre’s WineLine and the Washington Post and Jeff Siegel of The Wine Curmudgeon. As part of the festivities, Mr. Siegel and Mr. McIntyre are challenging you to write a 47-word essay on local wine; Wine Compass, Swirl Sip Snark, and others have already taken part. And “you” does mean YOU: bloggers, blog readers, wine enthusiasts, wine drinkers, wine curious, wine skeptical, etc.

That’s my 47-word essay, up at the top. Agree? Disagree? Are you chiming in with an essay of your own, or celebrating Regional Wine Week in other ways?

The Piedmont Wine Trail thanks federal employees with free tastings during Columbus Day Weekend.

DC Wine Week gears up for its debut October 15th, with events all over the city.

David White of Terroirist announces their DC Wine Riot ticket giveaway. Theevent itself is October 21st and 22nd at DAR’s Constitution Hall, and is looking for 20- and 30-somethings curious about this whole wine thing.

The Maryland Wineries Association celebrates Eat Drink Go Local one last time this year, also on October 22nd. (Look for us there!) The MWA lists events all over the state – even at individual wineries – if you can’t make the 22nd.

Tom Wark of Fermentation gives a really good account of exactly what went on before and after Prohibition that made wine shipping so taboo to our state legislature. His point isn’t to present history, though – read on to see where his finger points this time.

Paul Vigna at PennLive.com interviews Linganore’s Anthony Aellen about dandelion wine and other experiments, and Dejon’s John Wilkerson about the first year in business and the need to hold events (which many local government officials should read, if I may say). (And if you don’t follow Paul’s column, I recommend it; he focuses on Pennsylvania but reports on Maryland wine a lot as well.)

Dr. Vino compiles interesting wine news from beyond our state borders: GQ’s wine tips, Virginia wine in Garden and Gun, and bacchanal in Montmartre.

A look at wine shipping in action: the ShipCompliant blog links to and explains the most recent Direct Shipper Excise Tax Return form. “This is the form that licensed direct shippers submit quarterly to pay their state excise taxes and report their shipments to consumers in the state.”

To brighten your day after a look at tax forms, a story from Frugal Wine Snob. What would you trade for a bottle of wine?

And lastly, to end on a sunny note, Frogeye Wine posts beautiful views of the sunset from the farm. I guess I’m a wee bit sentimental after all.

As an aside: I’ve been passing on more news, more events, more frequently via Twitter (I know! So 2010 of me!). Follow us @vinotrip on Twitter.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve gotten curious about these competitions. Particularly at established wineries, I often feel I enter the tasting room to see a whole row of be-medaled bottles. How big a deal are competitions if every wine at every winery has won an award?

I was lucky enough, though, to speak to Sarah O’Herron, one of the proprietors of Black Ankle Vineyards recently. Why not go to the experts?

And experts they do seem to be. Ms. O’Herron said that Black Ankle has won the Governor’s Cup three of the four years it has been producing wine, and now only do that competition. This competition is coordinated by the Maryland Wineries Association, although Black Ankle gets invitations from plenty of other competitions, many privately run. However, with a small production and their focus on the Maryland wine market, entering other festivals isn’t always worth the extra publicity. Indeed, most of Black Ankle’s customers are already familiar with the Maryland Governor’s Cup.

I was curious. I’ve entered peach preserves in the state fair before, but what’s this competition like?

First, once a winemaker decides to enter a competition, he or she takes care of an entry fee and sends in the wine. For Black Ankle, the Governor’s Cup is a little easier because “we can just drop off the wines in Annapolis,” explained Ms. O’Herron. She hasn’t judged competitions herself, but judges may be wine writers, restaurant staff, or other industry experts. They taste and rate each wine, tabulating the results to find the wine with the highest score, and assign medals from there. Competition staff will call or email with results before the public announcement is made. Of course, the Governors’ Cup results are conveniently announced only a few weeks before the state wine festival. In fact, Ms. O’Herron told me that, several years ago, participation in the festival was a requirement for participation in the competition (they’re both run by the Maryland Wineries Association). At this point, though, the festival gets so much participation the requirement has been relaxed.

Actually, I hadn’t remembered seeing Black Ankle at the last few festivals I’d been to. I’d heard that they just didn’t have enough wine to sell it at festivals in addition to the sales at the winery, but was that just hearsay?

“We don’t have enough wine to go to festivals,” Ms. O’Herron confirmed. As an estate winery, only using grapes grown on their own acreage, they can only grow so many grapes and ferment so much wine. “You pour so much wine at festivals,” and many festival goers are not looking for higher end wines, including the dry reds that Black Ankle is known for. Black Ankle will have wines at the premier tent, though: “if our wine won [the Governor's Cup], we should be there.” Further, participating in a festival means printing banners, setting up tables, acquiring tents, finding pourers, etc.

But it’s a lot of fun if wineries do go. “And it normally works great for other wineries,” said Ms. O’Herron, noting that each winery has its own marketing plan.

And Black Ankle itself is expanding. They doubled their plantings this spring, and hope to harvest in 2013 and release those wines in 2014 and 2015. A subsequent return to festivals such as this weekend’s event in Westminster is possible, but it depends on whether the market leaves enough wine to go to festivals.

It’s a shame: I remember Black Ankle being some of the first dry reds I truly liked, and I haven’t been to the winery in a couple years now. But Black Ankle does distribute to about 150 stores and restaurants. And while I’m waiting to get back up to the winery in Mt. Airy, roughly four dozen other Maryland Wineries are participating in this weekend’s Maryland Wine Festival.

I hope to see you there this weekend! (The Baltimore Sun rates it the number one thing to do this weekend.) The weather is supposed to be about 70 degrees and sunny. Don’t forget sunscreen, water, and a snack; eat well before you go, or plan to get food from the many vendors there. Also, if you forget your wine tote, I’ve noticed a lot of wineries now carry their own, so you can get one on site. Try a wine you don’t think you’d like, and find something you’d like a bottle of.

As one last note, I highly suggest carpooling to one of the satellite lots at Carroll Community College or Carroll County’s government offices park and taking a bus in, and please, please, drive only when sober or designate a driver.