Frank A. Figueroa
Welcome to Vine & Hollow. I write on the wine of North Georgia Wine Country, and on the people whose work it is. The Hollow Narratives will be the films of that same country.
North Georgia Wine Country should be known as one place. A high country, with a regional name of its own, a character that does not have to be borrowed, and a standing the world can recognize. The vineyards are many. The country is one.
In 1976 a tasting in Paris, later called the Judgment of Paris, changed the way the world spoke of Napa Valley. What lasted was not the tasting. Vineyards once named grower by grower were thereafter spoken of as one region. Napa became a name the world could use. The Willamette Valley later claimed that same unity, speaking with one voice. A name the world can use is the standing worth earning here.
This is the work of Georgia’s Appalachians. The vines hold the slopes. They are already producing wine worth keeping. Two federal appellations, American Viticultural Areas, sit inside this high country: the Upper Hiwassee Highlands and the Dahlonega Plateau. They name clusters of ground, but they do not decide which vineyards belong. Growers farm these mountains inside those lines and well beyond them.
For now the country is still introduced apart. I write so it can be found as those valleys came to be found: one region, worth learning, worth experiencing, and worth the name. That place is North Georgia Wine Country.
Read the first note