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Friday, May 11, 2012
Big, Wonderful Wyoming--Table Mountain Vineyard
Over
Easter (yes, I realize I am just a bit behind in blogging here!), I had the
wonderful pleasure to visit big, wonderful Wyoming’s Table Mountain Vineyards
(in Huntley, Wyoming), the only Wyoming winery growing or harvesting all of its
fruit from within the state and producing all of its wines exclusively in the
state as well. My family and I showed up
at the tasting room and small section of vineyard on a beautiful Friday
afternoon. The Zimmerer family has
owned this farm land for four generations, and the grape growing actually began
as a project for a class at the University of Wyoming. This project then turned much larger as wines
were experimented with from the vines that were experiments themselves. Over time, business has grown, and continues
to grow so much that a larger tasting room is being built near the
original. Events are already planned
there for this summer, though the actual completion is still ongoing.
There
are several wines of note being produced at TMV. First is the Cowgirl Blush, a semi-sweet
blush wine that I would love to sit and sip on a hot summer day. It just so happens to be a Gold Medal winner
from the Finger Lakes Wine Competition as well.
My other favorite grape wine was the Frontenac Gris, a wonderful,
off-dry hybrid grape wine that reminded me of a New Zealand Sauvignon
Blanc. The final wine that impressed me
was their Cherry Rush dessert wine.
Though the wine was sweet, it had undertones of spice, too; a wonderful
contrast in the wine made from cherries that are harvested in nearby Torrington,
from the yard of a 90-plus year old woman, who sits in the front yard and watches
the cherry harvest, shouting instructions the whole time!
I have
to say how much I enjoyed TMV! I love
the fact that it is exclusively a Wyoming product. There are several other producers in Wyoming
making or bottling wine, but they are buying their grapes or juice from
California or other popular grape-growing areas. I’m not saying these aren’t good wines, but if
I want a California wine (which I buy often), I want to buy that wine from a
California producer, and I want to know exactly where the grapes were grown,
not look at a bottle that appears to be “Wyoming Wine” when it’s not. This is exactly what the term terroir means: grapes
are produced into wines that reflect the growing environment where the grapes
are grown. Wyoming terroir is just
slightly different than California (or about any other growing area). Okay, it’s REALLY different than most
areas. Wyoming is cold, and some years
dry, and most of the time windy!!! This
means that different grapes grow well here, so TMV grows hybrid grapes like
Frontenac, Frontenac Gris, and Elvira. These
are different wine grapes than the traditional but because they are different does
not mean they are bad. So though you are
not going to find a California Cab here, I am enamored with the idea that you
will find something completely different, enjoyable, and unique…something totally
Wyoming!
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