all it the tyranny of the glossies or simple failure on the part of wine lovers to be vocal enough, but a number of emerging wine regions in North America are being ignored, and unless they are recognized before the housing recession ends, thus making condo-demands on what is now vineyard land, we may be looking at a transitory story that will be told only in retrospect.

Are we looking at entire regions that show the same potential as Umpqua Valley, or Anderson Valley, or Walla Walla? Not really, but a story comes to mind that relates here. Some years ago, when Serge Hochar was named the ‘Wine Man of the Year’ by Decanter Magazine, which displayed bullet holes splayed across its cover, there was a subtle, unspoken implication that his winery, Chateau Musar, was the precursor to the development of a great new wine region.

Chateau Musar is located in war-torn Lebanon. And the story spoke of the greatness of the property’s wines despite a daily diet of bombs, artillery shells, and assorted other armaments. The clear implication (even if the writer and editors of the magazine didn’t think of it during production of the article) was that “if Serge could do this in the Bekaa Valley, then the Bekaa Valley is potentially a great spot to grow wine of excellence.”

Let’s leave aside the fact that Hochar’s wines are and have always been rather erratic (a few of them are downright poor). The article’s implication, that the region might produce excellent wines, leads to the correct generalization that there are probably dozens of places on the earth where great wine could be made. Hochar’s persistence and dedication to his art should be recognized and rewarded, to be sure. Those of his wines that do display greatness prove more than just his own perseverance. They prove that the general beneficence of his terroir allows a visionary to succeed.

That few others have followed in the Bekaa Valley is not a fault of the terroir but a function of the fact that there are few Lebanese who are as committed to wine as is Hochar.

So are there other places in the world where great wine could be produced? Certainly. Are there places in Africa that could grow superb Sauvignon Blanc? Certainly. Is there at least one place in Russia or even Holland in which Pinot Noir can be grown that would rival those of Burgundy? Of course it’s possible. The fact that it hasn’t (yet) been done is due to the economic factors that suggest that even a successful wine from such a region might not sell.

Yet when I tasted a Pinot Noir from central Michigan a few years ago, I was stunned. I could have figured that such singular sites and visionaries do exist, and the mere fact that the wine was made in infinitesimal amounts has nothing to do with the fact that it was superb. I learned that the amount of Pinot Noir in this particular locale was limited to what the gentleman had planted: a few hundred vines.

Visionary Jim Lester made the wine in southwestern Michigan, in Berrien County, at his Wyncroft Winery. This Pinot Noir, with a retail price of $45, is one of the more startling wines you will find in this unlikely location.

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You’d think that a wine of such stellar character and distinctive terroir aroma and taste would be perfect fodder for one of the glossies. But the fact that Lester has very little of the wine year to year, that he sells it to in-the-know wine lovers, and has virtually nothing to sell to glossy readers may have influenced the editors to bypass Berrien County.

Either that or they are simply ignorant of Wyncroft. And other similar one-off success stories that portend greatness for a region once the followers realize what’s what.

It is true that few other Michigan Pinot Noirs I have tasted offer much excitement, not even to the standard I would recommend if nothing else were available. Is Pinot Noir potentially an exciting grape in Michigan? Perhaps, though not very soon. Yet even so, if such a wine can be made in Michigan, isn’t that some sort of news?

Thus far in our narrative, such stories like those of Serge Hochar and Jim Lester don’t lead us, yet, to places we can generalize about that imminently will deliver great wines of strong terroir character at the hands of more than singular heroes.

Yes, Virginia, There are Great Wines in Virginia…and Canada

So when I tasted the wines of Jim Law at Linden Vineyards on a trip to Virginia a couple of years ago, I was so pleasantly shocked about their greatness that I was ready to write another one-off story about them. Not only were the wines sensational, but among the best were whites and reds from Bordeaux varieties! And yet there was an echo of an episode of about four years earlier, when I tasted the wines of Bob Ferguson at Kettle Valley Winery in British Columbia, where I expected Riesling to be great and found a magnificent Syrah! And then not long ago there was a Riesling from wine maker Gina Haverstock at Gaspereau Vineyards in the Nova Scotia region of Atlantic Canada that has a personality you can’t get from winery tricks. The soil clearly is perfect for this grape and Haverstock has the skill to get out of the way and allow nature’s gift to creep into the bottle.

It reminded me of a moment in the early 1990s when I was in Vancouver and tasted some of the white wines of the Gehringer Brothers that clearly were precursors of some of the greatness later to be seen from other producers in the Okanagan Valley.

There are a couple of fascinating elements that differ in Canada and Virginia from the singular surprises in Michigan and Lebanon. The first is that Law is not the only success story in Virginia, where the dream of Thomas Jefferson to make wines the equal of the French has been resurrected. And the identical fact that Kettle Valley and Gaspereau and Gehringer are not alone in Canada, where greatness, once latent, is now on wide display.

The second absorbing fact is that both Canada, east and west, and Virginia, north and south, have nearly conquered natural meteorological forces that just a decade ago proved disastrous more often than not. And what differs with these cases is that others have clustered around these pioneers and are delivering quality wines that may not be up to the same high standard, but are closing in.

Canada and Virginia already have numerous sub-regions that have developed a critical mass of wineries operated by people of passion and dedication. On a scale of success, New York’s Finger Lakes and North Fork of Long Island may still be considered among North America’s non-West Coast leaders in wine-quality terms, but next in line in the excitement derby comes Canada’s east and west (Niagara Peninsula, Lake Erie North Shore and Okanagan Valley appellations) and Virginia. Alongside these successes are the more traditional Michigan areas of Leelanau and Old Mission peninsula regions.

As might be expected, local varieties tend to dominate the local regions, but exceptions, as the old saying goes, prove the rule and this is due to wine makers who are unwilling to sit on the same old varieties and are willing to break out of the standard molds and test their skills with new grapes and styles that show potential.

One of the problems with emerging regions is that it isn’t easy to come up with a simple way of describing what they do best. If you were to taste one of Virginia’s Linden Vineyards’ brilliant Sauvignon Blancs, you might assume it was white wine that had the inside track.

That would be negated by the excitement you can find in some of the red wines, such as Linden’s own Bordeaux-styled reds, or any of the dramatic Petit Verdots that are now being made by a half dozen other Virginia producers.

And Gaspereau isn’t the only great wine in eastern Canada. In Ontario, the latest word is that Daniel Lenko Estate Winery, a low-key operation that’s the result of a family of Niagara growers, one of which, Daniel, has a magical touch and is highly praised locally. And over in Prince Edward County, the wines of Norman Hardie Winery are sought-after and sell for a lot more than you’d imagine.

Yet reaction to these wines in the United States is scant or nil. One problem is lack of visibility. When I visited the Lake Erie North Shore region two years ago, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was in full swing, yet only two of the wineries we visited (Collio and Pelee Island) had risked sending any wines to the United States. And then only to a tiny number of northern states. Without promotion and advertising, these wines were seen more as curiosities than anything else.


One reason might be the ignorance of the glossies, some of which have become more about lifestyle than wine. Moreover, they rarely will declare anything of significance that’s not already acclaimed, so the chicken-and-egg scenario applies most directly.

One of the classic “here is a discovery worth paying attention to” moments in music history is Rolling Stone critic Jon Landau’s review that stated, “I have seen Rock and Roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” Accordingly, when he tasted Jim Lester’s Wyncroft Pinot Noir in Michigan a few years ago, Ann Arbor wine columnist Christopher Cook wrote, “With apologies to Jon Landau, I have seen Michigan wine’s future and its name is Wyncroft.”

It may be premature for me to declare the future of non-West Coast wine to be Canada and Virginia, but both are certainly reaching critical mass with splendid wines that are not only regionally distinctive, but world-class in numerous other ways.

Anyone who disputes this without trying a representative sample of the wines is missing a treat.