Top 5 Up-and-Coming Wine Regions
By James Oliver Cury
For several years, the wine world's exotic "new" regions could be rattled off fairly quickly. The list often included South Africa, Chile, Argentina, Israel, New Zealand, and Sicily (not that any of these places are new...and neither are their wines, but that's another story). What was most captivating, perhaps, was that these places offered delicious-but-relatively-unfamiliar grapes/varietals such as Pinotage, Carmenere, Malbec, and Nero D'Avola. In the last six month, however, I've seen oenophiles looking beyond these areas to the following (re-emerging) places:
1) China (a Forbes article discusses the country's growth potential)
2) India (a Decanter article discusses the country's growth potential)
3) Bulgaria (I sampled some blends from Tcherga that had promise, especially the Cabernet-Mavrud mix)
4) Russia (a Wine Business Int'l article discusses the country's growth potential)
5) The USA, especially Washington and Oregon (A NuWire Investor article rattled off some unexpected picks including Idaho and Texas)
What are your 2009 picks?
Other pundits point to the Ukraine, Moldova, Croatia, Slovenia, Poland, and Canada as sources of great wine. Especially if global warming persists.
For the record, I probably could have suggested England (for its sparkling wines), too, among several other rising star regions.
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