Joe Appel has penned a feature article for today’s Maine Sunday Telegram that explores what it’s like to be a wine guy in a beer town.
But even if the numbers tell a mixed story, the feelings tell a straight one: There’s cultural excitement around beer in southern Maine that wine doesn’t currently match. Surely in the near future nothing will matter but marijuana (stack those pallets high next Thursday, Riverside Industrial Parkway!), but for now Portland feels like a beer town, and a fancy-beer town at that.
I think it has to do with the reality that beer is produced locally so there’s a sense of ownership when a a patron walks into her favorite brewpub and orders up her best liked beer. Wine just isn’t as well connected as the beer culture is here. Even cider and mead are far more locally connected to the terroir than wine is.
No one in New England writes about wine with as much knowledge and passion as Mr. Appel.