Wine adventures in Morgantown, West Virginia
Well, as you may or may not have picked up on, Neil and I are both environmental engineers. And due to this other job that actually pays the bills, I’ll be spending the next two or three months in the beautiful mountain town of Morgantown, West Virginia (birthplace of Don-effing-Knotts). Morgantown is smaller than my hometown of Austin, but for a city of about 84,000, there seems a surprising amount of things to do. So far I’ve found one wine bar and two interesting bottle shops, in only one day of exploring.
West Virginia only has around 11 wineries, but right next door is Virginia, which currently has about 135 wineries. This seems like the perfect time to explore a new wine region in the US, because in my long nine months of serious wine drinking, I can recall having a big-fat zero wines from WV or VA. So please, if you’ve any suggestions about Morgantown or good wines from WV or VA, let me know. I also plan to visit the wineries of the best wines I taste.
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Good luck on the project and I think you’ll eat great if you manage to find the mom and pop places and hidden gems of the area.
As for wine, my best advice would be to take a weekend road trip to Cleveland, OH (about 3 hours away) to stock up on a couple of mixed cases. Bring a chilled cooler to stock up on gourmet food at the great Whole Foods near Shaker Heights. If you want recommendations you can e-mail me, as I’ve spent a lot of time there this year. You can get a lot of interesting Eastern European, Turkish, and Greek wines that are hard to find in other parts of the country, as well as grabbing some of your mainstream favorites just to have on hand while you’re sampling the sometimes gut-wrenching (and occasionally good) world of lesser-known American wine regions. And I say that as someone with a cast-iron stomach who has tried the wines of Colorado, Tennessee, Arkansas, Ohio, North Carolina, Missouri, and a few other places off the beaten path.
Avoid going to Pittsburgh for wine, the laws there are weird and you have to go to a state run shop to purchase any alcohol.
Appellation America is generally a good place to start for a list of decent wines and producers native to any state:
http://wine.appellationamerica.com/wine-region/West-Virginia.html
http://wine.appellationamerica.com/wine-region/Virginia.html
Remind me this weekend — I have a great map of all the VA wineries, I’ve been to 4 or 5 and can definitely recommend a couple.
[…] more dedicated readers may know that I’ve promised to taste wines from West Virginia and Virginia, while temporarily living in West Virginia for work. I’m not too worried about trying the various […]
Benito — Thanks for the good luck wish and the tips.
Sarita — We will talk this weekend. Can’t wait.
[…] been living in West Virginia for the past few months for my day job. When I first moved here, I promised to explore the local wine industry and report back with my […]
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