Dave McIntyre's WineLine

The Virginia wine community gathered in Richmond earlier this month for a day-long conference of celebration, introspection and good old fashioned pick-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps cheerleading. With the unwieldy title “Virginia Wine Trade Intensive,”1 the sessions aimed to remind sommeliers, retailers, distributors and writers that Virginia wine belongs on the dinner table and in the discussion.

Here are some wine articles that have caught my eye recently. I haven’t done a post like this for awhile, in part because there are several people doing wine news summaries like this. But these articles are especially interesting to me — and I hope to you as well — because they focus on small regional producers, as well as major issues I’ve written about here on WineLine, such as the current anti-alcohol movement I call The New Prohibition. And one sparks my wanderlust.

Here’s what you need to get your wine region recognized: Dedicated winemakers crafting beautiful wines, a good PR strategy with a simple message, and thirsty wine writers. It also helps to have a charismatic evangelist shouting your virtues from the rooftops, or the vine rows. The region is California’s Livermore Valley, and the evangelist is Steven Kent Mirassou, the sixth generation of one of California’s pioneering wine families.

Japanese maple trees are an important part of the color palette of my neighborhood in suburban Maryland, outside Washington, D.C. Their blood-red leaves contrast with the greens and yellows of spring, then turn flame golden-red in autumn to catch the late afternoon sun in a burst of glory. Today I noticed the top branches of our tree are brown. The neighbor’s tree across the street also has some shriveled leaves, as do several around the neighborhood to varying degrees.

This year, the country marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It’s also a year to celebrate American wine. Fifty years ago, on May 24, 1976, a modest wine tasting in a Paris hotel altered the arc of wine history. We are still enjoying its effects a half century later. What became known either as the Paris Tasting of 1976 or the Judgment of Paris had modest beginnings, and it almost didn’t happen.

For the past few years, I — and others — have written about wine as a community rather than industry. It’s a way to emphasize wine’s power to connect us to the Earth and to each other. Wine as community recognizes wine as more than a mere product and consumers as full members, not just sales statistics. Well, now it’s time for us here in the Eastern United States at least to stand up and support the most important members of our wine community: the farmers. We over-romanticize wine.

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Hi everyone - before I get into today’s post, I hope you’ll join me Thursday, April 23, at 8 p.m. Eastern US time for my third WineLine Live! here on Substack. My guest will be Jessica Dupuy, co-author of the new book “Italianity: The Culture of Italian Wine,” as well as an excellent Substack, Direct to Press.

Tim Mondavi of Continuum Estate was my guest April 9 for my second WineLine Live! This transcript has been edited by me for clarity and length, to remove AI errors such as references to tokylawn vineyard and the vodka mountain range, and to make sure I’m not on record saying anything insanely stupid.

I have some delicious wines to share with you, but first, an announcement. My second WineLine Live! will be this Thursday, April 9, at 1 p.m. Eastern time with Tim Mondavi of Continuum Estate in Napa Valley. Tim recently released his 2023 Continuum Cabernet Sauvignon, which marks his 50th vintage. We will discuss the evolution of Napa Cabernet — and Tim’s own evolution — over the past half century, through the cult wine era and the challenges of climate change and wildfires.