Ugh. Not another winery…

How many Wineries are there in the World? A hell of a lot of them…that’s the simple answer.

Just a sampling from google

• Italy 45,000

• France 27,000

• California 4,200

• Spain 4,300

• Missouri 130

Well, one more just was born…”Blindspot Vineyard” or in Italian “Il Punto Cieco”

There are so many great wines and wineries out there, why is another needed or wanted?

Well first off, there are way more bad wines and wineries than good ones.  Ok, i’ll stop myself from being hypercritical.  Let’s just use the term “mediocre” or “mass produced”  instead.  Again thanks to the internet, in 2019 just in the USA, we drank nearly 4.5 billion bottles of wine(I did my part) and 50% of that was controlled by just 3 wine conglomerates.    

And the other half. 

Well, there are pappa bear, mamma bear and baby bear sized wineries making up the rest.  We don’t even fit that scale.  Micro is one description that may fit, but who really knows.  Regardless, it is all uphill baby!

Certainly, the path less traveled.

Maybe it is just being passionate about something, just making something better or something from a particular area.  Honestly, it could be an ego thing too.   But if you are not big, it is a hard way to go.  Ask any farmer at the nearby farmer’s market, if they are in it for the money and they will laugh out loud.  But who wouldn’t choose that fresh, summer tomato vs the one that has been picked months ago and is still sitting in some huge warehouse waiting to be delivered to some super store.   

The same occurs in the world of wine.  

In our case, a very limited production of a world class single vineyard, field blended Nerello Mascalese Etna Rosso DOC red wine from the highest slopes of Mt Etna Volcano in Sicily, Italy. 

Incredibly rare, incredibly difficult to harvest and of course an incredibly well balanced and delicious wine that you will always remember your first time tasting. 

The world has become smaller in recent years allowing us access to varietals, wines and wineries from afar, but it is still difficult to navigate the obstacles, barriers, crazy laws,  and marketing of the mass produced wines.  

Good luck to those who try and thank you to those who can and do appreciate the efforts of the intrepid, weary, but rewarded followers of the less traveled path.

So perhaps one more winery in the world is not a bad thing…