OK, maybe I wasn’t surprised by the sweepstakes winners at the San Diego International Wine Competition, but there were some doozies to be found as I perused the complete list of medal winners.
I was greeted this morning with an email from Stephen at Raffaldini Winery. He was anxious to know the results (they went out snail mail on Tuesday night and will be posted on the SDIWC website later today) because tomorrow is “Pinot Grigio Release Day” at Raffaldini.
Now my first thought was who’s Raffaldini? Could have been an email from northern Italy, could have been a request from Sonoma County. So I looked it up.
Two silver medals and a bronze. Not bad. One of the silvers was for a 2005 Montepulciano. This is the red grape of Abruzzi in central Italy. The other was for a 2005 Sangiovese Riserva. Sangiovese, of course, is the noble grape of Tuscany. The bronze was for a 2006 Vermentino, which is most often found in Tuscany and Sardinia.
Imagine my very pleasant surprise when I discovered the vineyards that produced these winning wines are in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains west of Winston-Salem.
Stephen informed me the vineyards are a mere seven years old, and that they’ll have one of my favorite grape varieties, Aglianico, in production soon.
Congrats all around on Raffaldini’s tremendous success in an area most of us wouldn’t have considered wine country. Could be that’s about to change.
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