West Coast - East Coast

[CtznCane]

I feel blessed living in the California wine country. While we did live in Santa Rosa and are now more in the bay area we still are in the heart of the wine country when you consider that within a 4 hour drive we can be anywhere from Santa Barbara to the Anderson Valley with so many withing just an hours drive or less. Not only can we go to the wineries but we can also get wines at the source which they do not sell through stores which is a big plus to us locals.

When one consider's locale, we/I don't tend to consider the fact that those in New York or on the East coast probably have as easy an access to French or Spanish wines as they do to California wines. Perhaps I'm wrong in this guesstimation but I'd like to know. How is it in the midwest as far as getting wines? What is the balance of selection between European and California wines?

I'm curious too, for those of you who are in Europe, over there how is it for aquiring American wines?

It is funny how we can take it for granted being so close to where the wines are from, it would be nice to hear from those who aren't near the source.

[Brad Ballinger]

I'll be one voice from the Midwest. Living in a metropolitan area, I have pretty good access to wines from much of the world by walking into a retail shop. What we don't have in the Twin Cities is a large selection from Austria, Beujolais, New Zealand, South Africa, higher end South America, Slovenia, and it's hard to get the highly-allocated wines from California. We also don't see many New York State of Virginia wines on retail shelves here.

But, I can order the wines I want that I can't find here. Also, Chicago is only seven hours away by car (one by plane), and I get there a couple times a year. Each trip I come back with wines I can't find here.