Dunn with Wine: Making the case for American wine

Some say that people from Philly have a chip on their shoulder. I think that's unfair. People born in Philly have shoulders that are literally made of chips. It's not our fault. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we, oh, I don't know FOUNDED AMERICA?!?!?!?!? (Look it up. I'll wait.)  No big deal, don't get up. Anyway, the way I see it, the old world has been making wine for a long time and they're real proud of their juice. With good reason. It's good juice. But, come on fellas, it's juice! Anyone can make juice. And anyone is what America was founded on.

So American winemakers started making juice, and when they took it around to their snooty European friends, the French, and the Italians, and the Germans turned up their noses.

Zees is zapposed to be viiiiine? they said in a stupid Francogermanic Italian accent I just made up. And that went along for a while until California got good enough at wine and Europe got complacent enough about wine that The Judgment of Paris happened.  (For more on this, consult Wikipedia or watch that one awesome documentary about how Alan Rickman saved the world.)

And so— boom! — America. On the wine map. All of a sudden, you got Oregon making wine. Washington's making wine. Shit, Chile, Argentina and Tas-frigging-mania are making wine. And not just any wine, decent wine. Sometimes great wine. Hell, even Australia started making decent wine.  (Yes, I am aware that Australia is nowhere near the Americas and that they have no historic association with this country, but come on, Australia is America's cousin that just went to college and ended up in the biggest frat on campus. You know this. I know this. But shit, Australia, can you turn down the Guns N’ Roses? Some of us are trying to sleep.)

But I figured, Philly being the birthplace of FREEDOM™—which, I should emphatically state, is not in the least bit free—that I was a born Philadelphian, I owed it to myself, nay, I owed it to the WORLD to prove once and for all that America doesn't just make great wine in California. We make great wine in Oregon. And Washington. And.... did I already say California?

So I spent three months driving all over America visiting vineyards, and then I wrote a book about it. For you. You’re welcome! But by no means is it a typical wine book. Indeed, at times while reading the book— and you WILL read the book (you promised!)—you may find yourself thinking, sweet Sylvia Plath, this is the most depressing wine book since Hugh Johnson’s The World Atlas of Wine, 7th Edition. And sure, I get that some, if not most folks who purchase American Wino will do so with the expectation it’s a breezy primer on the particulars of the American wine business (I’m pretty sure that’s what HarperCollins thought they were getting... my bad, HarperCollins!) I swear, that’s precisely what I initially set out to produce. But then, somewhere along the way the thing just unexpectedly went in a vastly different direction, like the final season of Roseanne after the Conners won the lottery.

I’m not suggesting it’s a bad thing, and hopefully you won’t feel that way (we can all agree, however, that the final season of Roseanne was a total dud). I guess what I’m trying to say is that sometimes we create things that take on a life of their own, like ambrosia salad when you leave it in the sun too long, or Frankenstein. American Wino is my Frankenstein. An amalgamation of my dead parts come to life.

On a lighter note, Hugh Johnson is a hilarious prank phone call name when you linger on the J. Oh, and if going on that epic oenophilic journey and writing about it taught me anything, it’s that America may very well be the greatest wine producing country on God’s Green Earth. Thanks Philadelphia! We couldn’t have done it without you.

“American Wino: A Tale of Reds, Whites and One Man’s Blues” will be released April 5th, 2016. It’s available for preorder now on Amazon.com, Harpercollins.com and other online retailers.