Growing Success of Grüner in U.S. East Coast Wine Regions
March 10, 2022
Robin Shreeves
Wine Industry Network
“Grüner can create a diverse profile of wines,” says Charlotte Adams who spent six months researching the grape at Galen Glen Winery in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley AVA for her masters in Wine and Vineyard Sciences at the University of Bordeaux. U.S. wine critics have received Galen Glen’s Grüner well. Contributing editor of James Suckling’s Wine Ratings, Stuart Pigott, comments that the East Coast winery’s expression bears “a striking resemblance to the dry wines made in the Austrian section of the Danube Valley.”
“You can harvest early to retain a lot of the acidity to make beautiful sparkling wines. You can harvest early to mid-season to get those more traditionally Austrian, beautifully crisp, clean, easy drinking table wines,” says Adams. “Or you can wait till later in the season to get some of those late harvest aromas. You can vinify in stainless or put it in oak.”
And it’s that versatility of expression that’s engaging winemakers and consumers alike.
…At Old Westminster Winery in Westminster, Maryland, winemaker Drew Baker uses his Grüner to produce Pét-Nat.
“As a grower, I love it,” says Drew Baker, vineyard manager of the family-owned winery. “It does quite well in the vineyard. It’s winter hardy, tough, and quite fruitful.”
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