As Wine Trail Traveler continues to visit and review the winery experience in and outside of the US, we come across wineries that produce wine from grapes sourced from outside of their site. There are many solid reasons for this. With many grape varieties available, varieties grow better in some areas than in others. Some people in the industry prefer to work with the vines in the vineyards and receive a lot of satisfaction in doing so and don’t want to be involved in the winemaking. As we frequently hear in the industry, “wine is made in the vineyard.” Other people enjoy the art and chemistry of producing wine from grapes. Others enjoy making wine from other fruits like peaches, apples, pears and strawberries.

Wineries have different business models and some may want to help consumers create their own bottle or barrel of wine. Usually these wineries also produce their own wine.

Wineries may source grapes from outside their region if they can not find the grape variety they want near them. In this case, a lot of decisions need to be made including: what vineyard to source from, should they source the grapes or juice, etc.

Some wineries are part of a franchise and the franchise uses juice provided to produce wines. Another type of winery uses only wine kits to produce wine and is able to make a small quantity of many types of wines.

What type of wineries do you enjoy visiting? Just as important, would you return after a visit for the experience and the wine?

Wine Trail Traveler provides readers with reviews of what a visit to a winery offers. However with thousands of wineries in the US and more added every year, we can only visit so many. I’d like to say that when planning a visit to a winery, you may want to check out their website but as we are discovering more and more, many wineries do not update their sites and some just don’t have the information easily available on their sites. Talk to friends and discover what wineries they enjoy visiting. Of course, read the many reviews offered by Wine Trail Traveler.

Cheers! Kathy