Introduction

Having spent the last several months and even years reading articles about localism and food by the likes of Rod Dreher and Gracy Olmstead, plus watching Anthony Bourdain on television do much the same thing and hearing from all sorts of people about buying local, I decided that this summer I would begin to engage with the local wine scene.

New England is not the center of American wine. It's on the opposite coast from it, in fact, and our climate doesn't really conform to any of the other great wine-growing regions of the world. But grapes do grow here. We have an island called Martha's Vinyard, after all. Loony racist millionaire Eben Horsford believed that, because of the grapes, New England was the Vinland of the Viking sagas. He believed that Leif Eriksson founded a city called Norumbega on the Charles, since that would mean that blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nordics reached America before swarthy Catholic Italians and Spaniards.

But when life gives you grapes, you might as well make wine. Dozens of vinyards have popped up in recent years, thanks to declining returns on traditional agricultural products and the success of the craft beer industry.

And, since I like wine, I thought it might be worthwhile to taste them.

(Also, I was sick of my roommates mocking me for drinking cheap wines like Charles "Two-buck Chuck" Shaw and Carlo Rossi.)

May God have mercy on my soul (and liver).