Aaron Berdofe's Wine and Food Experience

Recently I attended the Cold Climate Conference in downtown St. Paul to get a grip on what is going on in the Minnesota wine scene. Now, I know I just blew your mind with the fact that there is a local wine scene, but let me blow it again: it is worth checking out.  This article I wrote for the Downtown Journal about the CCC is worth checking out too!

The Midwest has struggled for years ( numerous decades if you want to talk about Missouri) on how to grow grapes that are fit for wine.  To be quite honest, for the most part, it’s been a bit of a failure.  It isn’t that the people attempting this are just bad at growing grapes and making wine from them.  You get those people in “wine country” as well.  No, it really boils down to the fact that in Minnesota, or Iowa, or Michigan, or Wisconsin, we have really cold winters.

Vitis Vinifera is the species of vine that 99.99% of all drinkable wine is made from.  While the positives of this species abound in terms of the wines it produces, the major downside for those of us in the midwest is that these vines just wouldn’t survive the winter if we planted them here (which we have) unless we did things like bury them through the cold months (which we have tried).

Well, because this is America.  And we’re American.  We don’t take kindly to being told we can’t do things.  Therefore, some enterprising folks, a lot of which work for the University of Minnesota, have been developing hybrids of Vitis Vinifera and species like Vitis Riparia, which is native to Minnesota in hopes that we can take the best wine qualities from vinifera and seamlessly meld them with the cold hearty capabilities of riparia.  Quite the project.

Therefore, you may see varietals such as La Crescent, Brianna, Edelweiss, Frontenac Gris, Frontenac, and Marquette on the local bottles instead of the words that you’ve just begun to know how to pronounce, but the rest of the world is familiar with.  I don’t know how long it will be until these varietals are seen on shelves outside of the midwest, but my guess is that it will take awhile.  However, don’t let that stop you from tasting the local fare. After tasting a good sampling of local wines, I can certainly tell you there is promise.  There were even a few wines that I might actually enjoy buying a bottle of.   I think I’m developing a soft spot for Marquette, but don’t let me impose my preferences on you.  Instead, let me impose rules to guide you along the way.

Some general rules for your Midwest wine excursion:

• If all of their whites are described as “sweet”, kindly run away.  Unless of course, you are into that sort of thing, then drink up, me hearties!
• Everybody has a dessert wine and everyone thinks there dessert wine is special.  It is special…just like everyone else’s.  Would you turn down a chocolate chip cookie? Nope.  Would you call it a culinary masterpiece? Nope.
• The famous wine regions of the world have been making wine for thousands of years at a basic level and hundreds of years as a practiced craft.  Frontenac has been around for 10 years, Marquette for 3.
• On a similar note, we know that the experience we get when we drink wines from a certain region will be similar regardless of the wine maker as long as it’s of a certain quality.  The Midwest hasn’t come to agreement yet as to what the wines should be like.  In fact, we haven’t even decided what regions we really have.  Don’t expect homogeneity yet.  Ask yourself when you drink the wine whether it expresses where it comes from or not.  Promote the ones that do.
• And of course, just go drink wine and have a wonderful time with people. Enjoy the experience!

Last, I have a little assignment for you.  I’ve found through my tastings that most people confuse the sensation of acidity for that of sweetness.  I have no idea why this confusion exists, although I do have a few theories (here’s looking at you food industry!).  Generally, I’ll have them taste an acidic white wine that is entirely dry and they’ll tell me they like it because it’s a little sweet.  You can note acidity by the amount of saliva rushing into your mouth after you swallow.  Now, there are different types of acidity, but we can get into that later, for now just note if you’re really talking about sugar sweet or “sweet” as in acidic like a tart green apple.  Midwest wine makers have been told by local people that they like “sweet” wines.  There is even horrible, horrible marketing “research” that says these things. So if you really like crisply acidic white wines, don’t tell them you like sweet ones.  They’ll make syrupy sweet wines for you if you say that and the myth will continue.