Westport?

[lsanderson]

All Over America, Wines Search for Identity
By ERIC ASIMOV

MAYBE it was the 2004 Peninsula Cellars riesling that I tried last fall out in San Francisco. It was dry and delicious with a minerally flavor that I don’t find so often in American rieslings. What surprised me most of all, though, was the wine’s provenance: Old Mission Peninsula, north of Traverse City, Mich.

Or it might have been the 1998 Ultra Brut blanc de blancs I had from Westport Rivers in Westport, Mass. Who knew there was such a thing as the Southeastern New England appellation, or that it would include such an elegant Champagne-like sparkling wine as the Westport Rivers?

It might even have been the 2005 Chaddsford pinot noir, a light-bodied wine with earthy cherry and spice flavors that was distinctly not a California pinot noir, though I would have been hard-pressed to guess it was from Pennsylvania.

Regardless of the particular wine, these three bottles and more like them have convinced me that credible wines at the least, and often enough really good wines, are emerging from the most unexpected corners of North America, and now is a good time to start paying attention to them. More