Welcome!

Friday, December 3, 2010

Welcome to Cherry wine dot com’s Drinker’s Blog, where fans of fruit wine, honey wine, hard ciders and exotics keep up with the latest in the non-grape wine universe.

Whether you’re curious about old-fashioned country wine, the people making it professionally or even how to make it yourself, then you’ve found the right place.

Cherry wine dot com — and this blog —started because millions of Americans are fans of non-grape wines & liquors and hard ciders and half of them don’t even know it yet.

Fruit wine fans and curious would-be drinkers range in age from 21 to 121, are composed of all ethnicities and live in every corner of America from small towns to the Big Apple.

Some fruit wine fans don’t even consider themselves “wine drinkers” in the traditional sense but like the taste of fruit wines, which are more familiar tasting and can be found in sweeter versions than grape wines generally are.

Others, me included, are regular red and white wine drinkers who also love the adventure, romance and rural tradition that non-grape wines offer, no matter if they’re sweet as pie, dry as a bone or somewhere in-between.

I love a good Cabernet but for me, nothing says “spring” like a wine made from field-fresh strawberries or freshly cut rhubarb. Nothing says, “autumn” like a hard apple cider. Nothing tastes more like summer than a peach, blackberry or dandelion wine, and nothing warms up a dark, freezing January evening exactly like a smoky port distilled from summer berries or orchard fruit.

Grape wines simply do not have the same connections to the seasons. Or to regions of the country:

No variety of grape wine says “the South” the way a peach or persimmon wine does. Nothing says “Midwest” more than an apple wine or pumpkin. Nothing says “New England” like a cranberry wine. Nothing says “the North” like a chokecherry or thimbleberry. And nothing says “West Coast” like a huckleberry, boysenberry or fig wine.

I know that there will be more than a few people excited by the idea of this site, especially since non-grape wines are so hard to find. There are 6,400 wineries in the United States, yet there are only 700 that make non-grape wine. That’s only one-out-of-ten wineries, and those tend to be smaller, privately owned entities off the radar of corporate distributors.

But just because you can’t find a dry raspberry, organic hard cider, sparkling rhubarb or pear eau de vie at a store, doesn’t mean you can’t buy it. Because you probably can.

On Cherry wine dot com you will find search functions for every style and variety of non-grape wine, hard cider and liquor. Each search will give you a list of products that are legally shippable to the state of your choice. When you find a wine that you want listed on Cherry wine dot com as shipping to your state, follow the ordering instructions listed on the wine’s page for that particular winemaker and the winery will ship it to you via UPS or Fed Ex in about a week (unless you decide to pay extra for next-day or two-day shipping).

Let the adventure begin. There’s a world of taste out there ready to be explored. Cheers.

—Todd Spencer

Todd Spencer is the founder of Fruit Wine Media, LLC and editor of Cherry wine dot com. He’s written for Wines & Vines and Wine Business Monthly, and contributed articles to national publications and national radio about everything from the importance of local economies to donuts to global warming and music. He’s a longtime magazine editor and advertising agency proofreader in San Francisco and his native Michigan. He discovered cherry wine in college and counts that and other fruit-based wines and liquors as among his favorites.

Categories: Drinker's Blog