What is “interesting” about Washington winemaking is that many wineries are located in and around Seattle, even located on islands in the Puget Sound (Andrew Will)
Non-estate Washington wine is par for the course and shipping the grapes hundreds of miles is a big part of the equation as are many other factors in the beautiful PNW.
What is the norm industry wide for grape trucking etc…
What’s the furthest grapes are shipped??
What’s optimum in this regard for grapes or more difficult to quantify (the juice)??
The furthest is probably half-way across the country.
Sometimes it’s as actual grapes themselves, sometimes it’s as juice.
Gruet sources most of their grapes/juice from WashState. Don’t know if it’s as grapes (unlikely), as juice (more likely), or as frmted wine (most likely),
to put the bubbles in it in Albq.
I know of some CO and KS wineries who source grapes from Calif.
And, of course, during prohibition, grapes were shipped all the way by rail to the EastCoast for home winemakers.
Tom
I know that at least two wineries in Indiana that have in the past shipped juice and/or must from California and Washington. I not aware of either of them having shipped grapes.
Quite a few Virginia wines use CA grapes. The winemakers have told me that is to meet demand since they don’t have enough estate or other local grapes to meet the demand. In some cases, the wine are branded differently than the regular winery wines.
Gray, I think that fact is simply driven by population proximity. If these wineries could get the tourist traffic at the same levels over in Central and Eastern Washington, they’d do it in a heartbeat. Hell, rent would sure be lower! Many less-enthusiastic wine fans (compared to we Berserkers) simply aren’t willing to drive for 3 hours+ from Seattle to taste and buy wine, but they’re certainly willing to drive 30 minutes NE to Woodinville.
I believe many of them crush and “make” the raw wine near the areas where the grapes are grown and then truck the juice to age it in barrels (or the like) or bottle here around Seattle at their tasting rooms and wineries.
Definitely done. I’m not impressed with the results. They almost always get prunish and over-ripe tasting. Certainly, the grapes have passed the time of best practices by the time they get across the country.
Chateau Musar ships from the Bekaa Valley one hour over mountainous roads to Ghazir, about ten miles north of Beirut. Maybe not the longest trip, but certainly not the safest.
I can’t imagine any serious vineyard wanting to ship its fruit that far, and then wine making talent is not really in Brooklyn, is it, save for Bob Foley who uses Long Island fruit AFAIK. There is a winery in Las Vegas I visited a few years ago on the day some of the fruit arrived from CA “vineyards”, seedless grapes (I tasted some out of curiosity).