Georgia Wine? What’s Your Pleasure?

“I did not know so many things could be bad about a single wine: it's watery and yet it tastes like sweet gasoline at the same time. I tried Chateau Elan's red as well, and it was not only just as horrifying, but it was horrifying in almost the exact same way. This must be one nice golf course for them to get away with this.”

—Time magazine, August 28, 2008

This excerpt from Joel Stein’s review of Chateau Elan’s Founders Reserve Chardonnay is unfortunate—not because he got it wrong, but because he found the exception that lives up to most people’s expectations that Georgia’s wines are awful.

“The article hurt,” said Mary Ann Hardman, owner of Persimmon Creek Vineyards in Clayton. “It cut very deeply because we’ve worked, sweated so hard to dispel such notions that with one swipe of his pen…he reconfirmed [Georgia’s reputation] nationally.”

Stein’s inspiration for his foray into Georgia wine was the revelation that wine is produced in all 50 states and he wanted to sample one from each. A task that proved daunting in part because he could not always find the best example, but also because getting wine shipped to him proved nearly impossible.

“I tried to do this story a year and half ago and it just wasn’t happening,” Stein said. He faced one of the biggest frustrations that burgeoning wine regions, like Georgia, must deal with: archaic and Byzantine shipping laws. This summer Stein redoubled his efforts and pushed his editorial interns, who eventually scored a bottle from every state.

Shipping remains the biggest hurdle faced by burgeoning wine regions, like Georgia’s, trying to make a name for itself. This was certainly the case here until July 1, when the legislature and Gov. Sonny Purdue loosened up shipping regulations. Georgia winemakers can now ship just about anywhere.

“Before, you had to go to the winery to get your wine,” said Karl Boegner, owner and winemaker for Wolf Mountain in Dahlonega. Boegner makes several wines including his well-received Bordeaux-style reds and sparkling wines that debuted this year. And while he has solid cadre of loyal customers—and a growing stack of gold medals and favorable reviews—it’s tough for a small winemaker from an undistinguished wine region to create a buzz if he cannot get anyone to try his wine.

“Knowing that the quality is there is important to consumers,” Boegner said. “Is this local wine a good one or not? You know we have not had a lot of positive role models in the past. So there hasn’t been a lot of enthusiasm for Georgia wine.”

And while restaurants and wine shops offer their sympathy to quality Georgia winemakers, they cannot force their customers to buy Georgia wine—even when those customers enthusiastically support other types of locally produced products.

“I sell about a bottle [of Georgia wine] a month,” admits Nicolas Quinones, owner and wine buyer for Atlanta’s Woodfire Grill, which specializes in seasonal, locally sourced menus. Quinones offers several Georgia wine selections from Persimmon Creek and Tiger Mountain. In fact, he’s rather fond of Persimmon Creek’s cabernet franc and the eclectic petit manseng from Tiger Mountain.

“The cab franc from Persimmon Creek has great flavors, but in comparison to something similar from the Languedoc, [France], it’s hard to compete,” Quinones said. “[The Languedoc wine] is less expensive and it is an awesome wine. It is going to take some patience for customers to start paying more for something from Georgia.”

A recent dinner at Parish restaurant in Inman Park celebrated the flourishing farm-to-table movement, which brings chefs closer to the farmers in their region. Justin Amick, general manager and wine buyer for Parish, brought in beets and carrots from Forest Park, oysters from North Carolina, Polenta from Athens and pork from South Carolina. Chef Tim Magee not only talked to guests about how he prepared the food, but he had a lot to say about sustainable food production and the wisdom of locally sourced produce. What filled the wine glasses next to the plates? Wines made from pinot noir, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc and sémillon grapes grown in California, Burgundy, Bordeaux and Sauternes.

“We can’t serve [Georgia wines] every time,” said Amick, who features different local farmers at weekly, multi-course dinners. “There are only so many local winemakers and wines to choose from. It would get boring to have the same wines every time.

And Amick is right. Georgia wineries number 21 at the moment. Parish features several Persimmon Creek wines on its wine list and Amick, who returned to Atlanta recently to run the four-month-old restaurant, plans to add to that soon. “It is cool they are making wine in our backyard, and I see no reason not to start bringing them in.”

And Sonny Hardman, Mary Ann’s husband and Persimmon Creek’s winemaker, is ready to take his order. It frustrates him to see all the fuss over farm-to-table produce, when he farms 17 acres of wine grapes, but cannot get many distributors, restaurants and consumers to take Georgia wines seriously.

“Some of us are making really good wines up here,” Hardman says. “Mary Ann focuses on the restaurants throughout the state and is continually educating the sommeliers. Once you get in front of them, it’s not too hard for them to see that our riesling may pair nicely with a dish featuring local Georgia shrimp.”

Magee wants to be more supportive of the local wine industry, but points out it’s a lot easier to get diners excited about locally grown produce, like tomatoes and brussel sprouts (which they are familiar with) than to get them charged up about wine from an unknown region, even if that region is only 70 miles up Georgia 400.

“The learning curve is a lot longer for wine than for food,” Magee said. “For the most part, wine produced outside places like California and France is such a new phenomena that people are not used to it….In three to five years, I definitely see Atlanta restaurants featuring more local wines. The familiarity will be there along with the quality and the selection.”

Quinones also sees a brighter future for Georgia winemakers, as long as they concentrate on what they put in the bottle.

“I think as long as the quality continues to improve, more and more people with an open mind will look for these wines [even with higher prices]…. Right now, I see people happily paying more for locally produced food, as long as its high quality.”

He sees a time in the future when local diners delight in a symbiotic relationship between Georgia farmers and winemakers. “After all, anyone who’s been to a wine region knows that the wines always taste better when you enjoy them with local food.”

GIL’S WINE PICK OF THE WEEK

In today’s Food & Drink section, you can read a lot about wines from North Georgia, the North Georgia Mountains and the golden Dahlonega Plateau as part of our contribution to Regional Wine Week. One area not mentioned, for seemingly obvious reasons, is decidedly south in the Okefenokee Swamp.

But in his lonely outpost 350 miles south of the Georgia Wine Highway, on the east side of the swamp, Tracy Chesser makes sparkling wines out of muscadine grapes using traditional methods of France’s Champagne region. And if this scenario wasn’t already difficult enough to accept, they are delicious.

Chesser, a good-natured product liability lawyer practicing in Jacksonville, Fla., admits not many people take his wines seriously. At least, not at first.

“We have surprised a lot of people,” laughs Chesser. “But it is one person at a time.”

Starting on a whim in 1999, Chesser started toying with blueberry wine after a bumper crop gave him a lot blueberries to play with. A self-taught winemaker, he has traveled to sparkling wine producers in New York and California to hone his skills. He still makes blueberry wine, but more than two-thirds of his 2,000 cases are sparkling muscadine.

Muscadine is an acquired tasted for most wine drinkers, but since Chesser harvests his grapes early to preserve the acidity necessary for sparkling wine, they never attain an overwhelming musty quality found in most muscadines. They are more perfume-like with a hint of yeasty dough.

Since the last time I talked to Chesser about 18 months ago, he’s convinced a distributor to pick up his wine, so it is now available at Tower Package Stores and select Kroger supermarkets in the metro area. More importantly, he’s wants everybody to know that since July 1, he can ship his wines to skeptics across the state (www.chesserislandwinery.com or (912) 496-2916).

Chesser sees a bright future for his wines and is currently experimenting with blanc du bois, a hybrid grape developed at the Univeristy of Florida. An unusual grape that shares some qualities with sauvignon blanc, but it’s not unusual to Chesser. Because when you make wine next to a swamp, unusual comes natural to you.

Non-Vintage Chesser Island Winery, Okefenokee Brut, Sparkling Muscadine, Georgia

• $20/750 ml. $10/375 ml.

• One Thumb Up

• Aromas of peach and apricot with a touch of yeastiness. Pleasant and refreshing, it has flavors or peach, orange, lemongrass and light notes of smoky yeastiness that adds complexity.