Traminette: Little Gewürztraminer grows up

It is so wonderful to have such friends and colleagues at WineMaker magazine who keep inviting me back to speak at the annual conference (and I am looking forward to San Diego, California next May and hope to see you there as well). As I reflect back on this past year’s conference in Ithaca, New York I recall what I really like about the conferences; the enthusiasm, zest for knowledge, and then of course the diversity of wines we get to experience. Of greatest interest to me is the diversity of the varieties I rarely have the opportunity to taste in my home state of California. California’s climate is such that by and large, Vitis vinifera, or the European wine grape, makes up greater than 99% of wine grapes grown statewide. While hybrids or vinifera crosses have been developed for the California climate, they just have not caught on here even though some may do very well in certain climates of our state. As a winemaker, I appreciate hybrids in that they were created to fill a niche that Vitis