Promise and Challenges of Ohio Wine (Part 1)

This is the first of a two-part series on Ohio wines, featuring last weekend’s North Market Ohio Wine Festival in Columbus, and some of my Ohio wine travels. There is so much history, and so many questions yet to be answered about where Ohio wines are going that this piece would be too long if I were to include it all. This article will look more broadly at the industry that is Ohio wine. Next time, I will review a number of Ohio wines that I would gladly recommend.

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Photo of the winery road sign.

Road sign outside Markko Vineyard showing the direction and distance to the major wineries in northeast Ohio.

For a long time I have believed that there are quality, fine wines made in my home state of Ohio. Such has been the reputation of Ohio wines, unfortunately, that holding such a belief can make someone a bit of an outlier. Even in my own home I have faced the scornful refrain, “Ohio wines are terrible!”

The truth is that winemaking in Ohio has and continues to face severe challenges.

The Early Grapes and Stature of Ohio Wine

The history of early winemaking in North America and in the United States in particular is well documented. From the arrival of the earliest of the colonists, the new North Americans saw in the thickets of wild, native grape vines the promise of an Old World-styled wine industry featuring vitis vinifera, the species of grape growing in those centuries-old vineyards of France, Italy and Germany. The colonists that arrived in the eastern part of North America, however, faced decades of failure and disappointment.

Unbeknownst to them, the native grapes that seemed to grow so well had, over long centuries, developed resistance to many diseases and pests that were to that point unknown in Europe, and greater tolerance for the cold winters of America’s Northeast and Midwest. Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson in The World Atlas of Wine, their essential guide to wines and winemaking throughout the world, noted that the colonists tried to plant the European varietals, but insects, disease, and the unforgiving climate, including the bitter winters of the north, devastated the vines.

The newcomers also attempted to vinify the native grapes which were a different species, labrusca, of the genus vitis. Vitis labrusca includes varietals like Concord, which makes fine jellies and jams but which makes wine with a pronounced and unpleasant rustic character which Johnson and Robinson call “ruddy,” and which is widely known in the wine community as “foxy.” And no, this is not a 70s-style compliment!

Over time the labrusca and vinifera vines began to exchange genetic material, and a number of hybrid varietals, known today as French-American hybrids, emerged, including Catawba, Vidal Blanc and Cayuga, which brings us back to Ohio.

Longfellow_Page_1Ohio wine history really begins with Nicholas Longworth who made the first commercially-successful sparkling wine in the United States at his winery in Cincinnati, Ohio. Longworth’s sparkling wine was made from Catawba grapes, and gained such acclaim both across the country and internationally that it truly kick-started the U.S. wine industry. Grape growing and winemaking spread north to the Lake Erie islands and all along the northern border with the Lake. Ohio became the largest producer of wine in the country, bottling 570,000 gallons in 1859. Longworth produced over 100,000 gallons that year, and has become known as the father of the American wine industry. Vitis vinifera, the European wine grapes, were flourishing in California by this time, and the American wine industry was thriving in California and the Midwest.

Ohio Wine in Steep Decline

Just one year later, in 1860, nearly 10,000 vines were killed in southwestern Ohio by two diseases, black rot and powdery mildew. The wine industry suffered as did the rest of the country, devastated by the Civil War. Near the turn of the century, California’s vineyards were wiped out by phylloxera and powdery mildew, just as in Europe. And in the 1920s prohibition virtually snuffed out the wine industry as it was attempting to recover from these decades of challenges.

As a result of prohibition some wine production went underground, but the vast majority of wine grapes were torn up and in many cases replaced with grapes for jams and jellies. When prohibition was repealed, the American wine industry was back at square one.

In Ohio, rebuilding the wine industry meant rekindling the debate over what types of grapes to grow, a debate that continues to this day. The vitis labrusca species, the native American grapes, still have the problem with that musky characteristic. Many agricultural specialists in Ohio advised potential wine makers that the climate in Ohio made the growing of vitis vinifera untenable, counseling instead that they should use some of the many French-American hybrids that had been developed over the years. On the whole, the hybrids are more cold hardy and better adapted to the growing season in Ohio, and have less of that foxy character of the vitis labrusca parent.

That thinking held sway until the mid-1960s when Arnulf Esterer and Tim Hubbard began to work with Dr. Konstantin Frank, a Russian-born winemaker from New York who had discovered techniques to allow vitis vinifera to be grown successfully in colder climates. Thus was born Markko Vineyard in Conneaut in the far northeastern corner of Ohio. Arnie Esterer and Tim Hubbard are credited with planting the first commercially successful vitis vinifera grapes in the Lake Erie American Viticultural Area (AVA), focusing on Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir.

Ohio‘s Wine Industry Today

Ohio’s wine industry continues the debate about what types of grapes to grow, but one thing is certain regardless of the varietals being used in the wines. Ohio’s wine industry is exploding.

The Ohio Grape Industries Committee (OGIC) is a government entity within the Ohio Department of Agriculture. It is an advisory committee charged with promoting the development of the wine industry in Ohio. Every five years the OGIC commissions an economic impact study of the Ohio wine industry.

Source: Economic Impact of Ohio Wine and Grapes, study commissioned by the Ohio Grape Industries Committee.

Source: Economic Impact of Ohio Wine and Grapes, study commissioned by the Ohio Grape Industries Committee.

The most recent study, released in 2014 and based on 2012 data, shows that the Ohio wine industry had a total economic impact of $786 million in 2012, up from $583 million in 2007. The number of wineries rose from 124 to 175, placing Ohio seventh in the nation, and the total amount of wine produced rose by about 100,000 gallons to nearly 1.3 million gallons. The only thing that did not increase was the number of acres of grapes being grown in Ohio, which held steady at about 1,900.

Ohio has five American Viticultural Areas, legally designated regions that have been demonstrated to have unique characteristics relative to the production of wine. The largest is the Lake Erie AVA, running along the lake, covering parts of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. The Grand River Valley AVA is an Ohio-only subset of the Lake Erie AVA. Isle St. George AVA is on North Bass Island and the Ohio River Valley AVA is in southern Ohio and covers parts of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia. The fifth, the Loramie Creek AVA, is fully contained in Shelby County but has no operating wineries at this time.

Ohio Wines

As I hinted at the top of this blog, despite all of the advances and the significant increases in the production of wine in the state, Ohio wines suffer from a poor reputation. Yes, Ohio wines are winning awards in wine competitions around the country, and yes, those awards are being marketed. But the awards are most often in the sweet, dessert and ice wine categories, and the reality remains that the wine world views Ohio’s wines as overly sweet and produced from inferior (hybrid) grapes.

And not just snooty wine professionals think that, at least the sweet part. At the North Market Wine Festival, I spent part of my time conducting “person on the street” interviews, just asking people attending the festival some questions about the wines. It was not scientific by any stretch, but one of the most frequent responses I heard to the question, “How would you describe Ohio wines” was “sweet.” I told of friend of mine who has been in the wine business nearly twenty years that I had gone to the North Market Festival, and he responded, “I bet it was very sweet.”

I have researched quite a few Ohio wineries, and have four basic impressions. First, Ohio grows or purchases a significant amount of hybrid, non-vinifera, grapes and many Ohio wines are made from those varieties.

Second, the Ohio wine market includes a significant inter-mingling of fruit-based wines with wines made from grapes. Whether it is fruit wines made without any grapes or grape-based wines flavored with fruit juices or extracts, there are a lot of these wines on the market.

Third, Ohio wines tend to be sweet. Here I am not just saying that the Ohio wine market features a lot of wines labeled sweet, semi-sweet or off dry. There is a lot of that, but even the wines labeled dry taste of a significant amount of residual sugar.

Fourth, there appears to be a proliferation of labels and types of wines sold by each winery. Most Ohio wine producers are small, under 5,000 gallons per year, but it is not unusual for even the smallest of wineries to offer a dozen or more, sometimes significantly more, different wines.

Judgment

I have said many times that good wine or bad wine is a matter of personal taste. People should drink what they like, and from what I have seen, there is a great market for many of these sweet and fruit-flavored wines. Maybe the sweet and fruit flavored wines have replaced the wine cooler for quick and easy drinking. It is not what I want to drink, but the people I saw at the Festival and in some of the tasting rooms at Ohio wineries like Buccia Vineyards, truly do enjoy them.

Bottles of Buccia wine.

One of the reds and one of the whites from Buccia Vineyards in Conneaut, Ohio.

It is also important to note that just because a wine is sweet or is not made from vinifera grapes, it does not mean that the winemakers are careless or that the wines are poorly made. Fred and JoAnna Bucci planted Buccia Vineyards in 1975 and have worked the land and made wine ever since. I spent nearly two hours with Fred in their tasting room, tasting and talking about their wines. Their style of wine is too sweet for my palate, but Fred knows exactly what he is doing. Great study went into the selection of the varietals, the methods used in the winery and the various blends Buccia produces. If you like the sweeter styles, you will like these wines. The winery is also for sale, if anyone is interested.

Similarly, Meranda-Nixon Winery makes a big, lush, oaky, buttery, Napa-style Chardonnay. I prefer Chardonnay that is more lean and acidic, but I can still recognize that the Meranda-Nixon Chardonnay is a great example of that style of wine, well made and sporting pretty good balance. Meranda-Nixon also makes a couple red wines that are more to my palate and they were very good. I will be talking more about them in my next post.

Nonetheless, I fear there is an “us versus them” component to this. There is an unfortunate tendency for some of those who make a study of wine to look upon the people who prefer sweet and fruity wines as uncouth and uneducated — “Let them drink wine coolers.” Similarly, there seems to be some feeling that those who prefer dryer, leaner styles are elitist and out of touch (as was Marie Antoinette!) with the tastes of the broader society, and perhaps just a little stilted when it comes to having fun.

Maybe this is all a product of a larger trend in our culture wherein we want to judge and denigrate the choices made by other people. Can’t we all just get along?

My concern is that Ohio’s wine reputation sets limits on what Ohio’s winemakers can achieve. As I said at the top of this article, Ohio can produce some great wines to challenge the wines of Napa, the Loire or the Mosel. But producing those types of wines is expensive, meaning that the bottle price of those wines is going to be higher. Winemaking at that level is unsustainable if they cannot sell traditional wines at a higher price point. And I am convinced that the world is not going to pay $40 or $50 for a bottle of Ohio Cabernet as long as every story about great Ohio wines includes phrases like “I was surprised to discover…”

That is what Markko Vineyard, M Cellars, Harpersfield Vineyards and some of the other producers in Ohio are working toward, making wines that can compete against the great wines of the world at their own game and to bolster the reputation of Ohio’s wines. As they succeed, as Ohio wines can compete successfully against the great wines of the world, Ohio’s wine reputation can grow and provide opportunities for all the styles of wine made in Ohio.

Next time, I am going to talk about some of the wines that may well be in that league, or can be as their winemakers continue to develop.

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