Wines from the US East Coast, is there any hope?

[Fat Guy]

Have you had any wines from New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, etc.? Do you think there's any hope that these regions can produce wines that are 1) excellent, 2) competitively priced, and 3) relatively consistent from vintage to vintage?

Also, what's the deal with China? Doesn't China have about a billion acres of land at just the right latitudes for growing wine? Are you secretly buying up land in China as we speak, with the intention of naming a whole series of wines for General Tso?

[Randall Grahm]

Dear Steven,

Alas, we see very few wines from the East Coast here in California so I am really not so well acquainted with them at all. I am told that there are some great rieslings currently being produced in the Finger Lakes area, but I have tasted precious few of them. My friend Dennis Horton is producing some nice wines in Virginia, but growing grapes in such a humid area is a great challenge. Currently my holdings in China would not be measured in the millions or even thousands of acres category, but yes, I am told that there are areas that would be quite appropriate for the cultivation of wine grapes. I now have a little daughter (aged almost 8 mos.) whose first language is certain to be Mandarin. If she can teach me to speak the lingo, I am definitely there. RG.