2011 Tests U.S. Vintners

'Mildew, botrytis, blue mould, green mould, you name it, it was everywhere. This is the most difficult vintage I've ever been a part of', said winemaker Sam Spencer, summing up his point of view on the 2011 vintage in Napa and Sonoma. Spencer's role at one of California's most well known négociants, Cameron Hughes Wine, means he has the opportunity to evaluate both thousands of tons of harvested fruit and tens of thousands of hectolitres of finished wines on the market each year.

'There's a lot of really, really fucked up wine out there', he confessed to me forcefully in a recent phone interview.

I've spent the past few weeks speaking with dozens of winemakers from Santa Barbara, to Walla Walla, to the North Fork of Long Island trying to get a sense of how 2011 treated some of America's most prominent wine regions....

Continue reading this article on JancisRobinson.Com.

This article is my monthly column at JancisRobinson.Com, Alder on America, and is available only to subscribers of her web site. If you're not familiar with the site, I urge you to give it a try. It's only £6.99 a month or £69 per year ($11/mo or $109 a year for you Americans) and well worth the cost, especially considering you basically get free, searchable access to the Oxford Companion to Wine ($65) and the World Atlas of Wine ($50) as part of the subscription costs. Click here to sign up.

Image credit: Koolbe

Posted by: Alder on December 20, 2011 9:02 AM: Tweet; Share this post elsewhere: Digg it! - Add to del.icio.us - Add to Stumbleupon - Add to Reddit; Filed under: Ramblings and Rants

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Comments (2)

Doug Wilder wrote:

12.20.11 at 3:23 PM

I heard a recent story of a bulk wine bin being processed at a winery where instead of grapes tumbling out as ripe, intact bunches, a nearly intact mass popped out instead, creating a cloud of mold spores to erupt on the pad causing the workers to dive for filter masks.

Bernard Sarmiento wrote:

12.23.11 at 12:17 AM

Alden,
This is your blog...do what you like. I, the non-paying reader, am abundantly appreciative and so, have developed a loyalty. That said, a "teaser" with a link, requiring payment to continue reading??? I don't get it, as it seems to fly in the face of everything that's so great about the blogosphere.
Advertising...great idea; go for it! Promotion of "partner" publications...makes perfect business sense to me. Even providing the article in full and adding a persuasive plug, is far from offensive. However, I for one, can say that as soon as I have to start paying to read what you have to say, Vinography runs the risk of going the way of my former Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator, etc subscriptions...
Just say NO!