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Each month our experts answer your burning wine questions. Email your questions to editor@decanter.com
VINOUS STATES OF AMERICA
How many US states produce wine?
Scott Jarvis, by email
Clive Pursehouse, Decanter’s US Editor, replies: The answer, surprisingly, is all of them. Wine is made in every state in the union, from the hot, humid shores of Florida, where Muscadine is the most common grape made by the state’s 30+ wineries, to Alaska, where Zinfandel is grown in a greenhouse in order to ripen.
While the fine wine world is familiar with California, Oregon, Washington and New York states, the country’s emerging wine regions from Michigan and Virginia to New Mexico and Arizona are focusing onfrom Riesling in the Great Lakes to Cabernet and Merlot in the southwest. Throughout the rest of the US, you find hybrid grapes, from Norton and Marquette to Chambourcin and the aforementioned Muscadine, ubiquitous in the southeastern United States. Hawaii even makes pineapple wine, which is better than it sounds.
