Why regional wine matters (and other good stuff)

DrinkLocalWine's fourth annual Regional Wine Week ends tomorrow, and the blog will return to its normal programming next week. Full disclosure: The Wine Curmudgeon, for those who haven't noticed, is a co-founder of DLW.

Interestingly, the blog set a record for cancellations this week, which is probably a good indicaton that regional wine still has a way to go to reach the winestream. But that's OK. I love a challenge. Wrapping up regional wine week after the jump:

We commissioned three original essays for wine week. My take the misconceptions surrounding local wine ran on the blog on Monday (and a slightly different version was reposted to DLW today). DLW co-founder Dave McIntyre took a very eloquent look at why regional wine matters on the DLW site on Monday: "It's easy to think of local wineries as novelties instead of neighbors. But as we increasingly support local farmers and ranchers, why not vintners as well? Viticulture is agriculture. Locavore should be locapour."

Meanwhile, DLW's Richard Leahy, who knows more about this stuff than almost anyone, wrote about the unique grapes that are transforming regional wine on Wednesday: "In the U.S., drinking local wine means trying new and unusual grape varieties that you (or even Robert Parker) may not have heard of."

But that's not all we had this week. We covered more than than half of the other 47, one of our best showings ever. Eric Asimov of the New York Times wrote about New York wine, and loved it. Tim McNally of WIST-AM in New Orleans did Wineapalooza, with interviews with six regional wine makers. And we had reports from Nebraska and Vermont. How much better does regional wine get?

Let's not forget the 47-word essay contest, which provided dozens of strikingly original entries -- including one from a woman in Oregon, who wrote about Oregon wine even though she said she knew it was against the rules. But she did concede that there might actually be quality wine elsewhere, so we'll take that as a victory.

The contest doesn't end until midnight on Saturday, so there's still time to enter. Write 47 words about anything you like about wine that isn’t from California, Washington or Oregon. To submit essays, send an email.