More Education Needed


• By Allen Dale "Ole" Olson   |   Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 11:05 am   |     |   Print   |   Permalink

During my travels across the High Prairies the past couple of weeks, I found much wine news to commend, as a couple of my postings have indicated. At wineries and in upscale restaurants, wine use and service has come a long way in rural America in the last decade.  However, I also found much disappointment in my explorations.

Admittedly, one shouldn’t expect tiny towns devastated by the movement to cities and urban areas to support fine dining. It’s even a stretch to expect those motels clustered around Interstate Interchanges to provide much more than survival fare to their transient clientele. Nor should a traveler give up the hunt without a reasonable search.

At a motel a few miles from Kansas City a receptionist assured me that her motel served good wine. When I asked the server to brings us each a glass of dry white wine while we looked at the menu, he said “We don’t have any dry white wine.”  I asked him what white wines they do have, and he said they only have Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and White Zinfandel. Never mind that he brought us Chardonnay instead of the Sauvignon Banc I had requested. The red wine, he thought, bore the name Mondavi. Encouraging, I thought, as I requested a Cabernet to go with our steaks. Back he came to explain they no longer carry Mondavi. He had to go back to the bar to find out what they do carry and returned with a Merlot and a Cabernet from Yellow Tail and a Merlot from Red Rock Winery in Napa. “That’s our last bottle of Red Rock,” he said. He also had to go to the bar to ask the price.

In northwestern New Mexico the receptionist sent us into town to a restaurant with wine. The only red wine ws $38 a bottle, again the server had to ask because she had only served wine by the glass. She didn’t know the name of it, so she brought the bottle. It was a magnum (double bottle). “The bartender always pours from these big bottles,” she said.

But I don’t complain. It wasn’t too long ago that neither of these places would have any wine on offer. And each venture across country shows more progress. At a small town eatery in rural Oklahoma, a server let us sample an Oklahoma wine, pleased to let us know about a local wine. The restaurant had only three or four white wines and only four red wines, but they were there and available. We take heart — but we push for still more wine education. And data indicate that by 2012, Americans will consume more winer per capita than people in any other nation.

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