Massachusetts' Own Appellation: Wine from Right Here

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Massachusetts' Own Appellation: Wine from Right Here

Posted 04/16/2008 at 09:04 PM by Cathy

A few weeks ago I visited Running Brook winery in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts and I loved – loved – their Vidal Blanc. Yesterday in Edible Boston magazine I read several articles about local wines, including "Will Oenophiles Embrace What's Being Made Here?" [the answer is Yes] by Clare Leschin-Hoar, which plotted the locations of some 20 grape growers across the state. It was like an itinerary of discovery for anyone interested in local grape agriculture.

Are you surprised that it's possible to talk about "local grape agriculture" when "local" means Massachusetts? If you are, you've been missing out.

Westport Rivers winery, near Buzzard's Bay, makes perhaps the most well-known Massachusetts wine. They started out making still wine, but soon realized that sparkling wines were better suited to the highly variable Massachusetts climate. Sparkling wine can be made consistently from year to year, since it doesn't need very ripe grapes each time around. (Ripeness affects the level of alcohol: with sparkling wines you need between 10 and 11 percent on average, while with still wines you need 12.5 to 13 percent.)

Last night in a Wine Studies program at Boston University the Westport Rivers Blanc de Blancs was the finale of a section on non-Napa American wines. "I bet I could fool a lot of people," the instructor said, into thinking the Westport Rivers' sparkling wine was actually a French champagne. I bet he could too, though there are differences. The Blanc de Blancs was lower in alcohol and lighter weight than champagne, and it was slightly less creamy than champagne because of less contact on the lees. But the bouquet of cheese and chalk from the Blanc de Blancs was distinctive and wonderfully pleasant, and I would jump at the chance (in a restaurant or at home) to drink it with oysters or some other seafood.

It's expensive to make wine in Massachusetts. The equipment is more expensive here, ditto for the taxes and the labor. Nonetheless Massachusetts is part of the Southeastern New England AVA, which extends from Buzzard's Bay into Long Island Sound. It hugs the edge of Massachusetts and covers counties in Rhode Island and Connecticut as well. The Coastal Wine Trail of Southeastern New England hits highlights of the AVA, including Running Brook and Westport Rivers wineries in Massachusetts, and Sakonnet Vineyards, Greenvale Vineyards, and Newport Vineyards in Rhode Island.

I've put "passport to the Coastal Wine Trail" on my list of summer projects. I have a feeling it will be one of the first things I'll check off as "Done!"

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About the Author

Cathy Huyghe

Cathy Huyghe writes about drinking wine every day in the Boston area. She finds the quirky characters, the after-hours events, and the surprising stories that make up Boston's vibrant local wine scene. But no matter where she is, what she's doing, or who she's with, she mostly just wants to drink the stuff.

Her first restaurant gig was at Chez Panisse, when she knocked on the kitchen's back door and asked if she could work there. She's also worked for Jean-Pierre Vigato in Paris and Thomas Keller in Las Vegas. She went to graduate school at Harvard (twice), and her writing has run in Boston magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Edible Boston, and on Nevada Public Radio and Grist.org.

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