The wines of Portland TN

Yes, there is wine made in Portland. Portland, Tennessee. 


Here is the website for Sumner Crest Winery. Here is the tasting room:





I just visited Sumner Crest. They pour (no charge) a wide variety of wines, including a Merlot and a Cab. I asked where that fruit was from, and they said, "someplace called Yakima." Funny! Along with Red Mountain and Walla Walla, it's my favorite wine area, and only three hours from my home. 


The other fruit is local: They make Stueben (a pinkish French-American hybrid that I'm growing) into a nice off-dry white wine, with expressive fruit notes. They make a Seyval Blanc that wasn't pouring. The Merlot and Cab fruit must've suffered greatly from that long journey, as those wines were not recognizable as of the same ilk as the wines found in Yakima. A white blend was nice, though the Muscadine didn't seem up to the quality level of the other locally-grown wines. They grow Chambourcin but it wasn't pouring.


You gotta appreciate their use of vinifera-American hybrids, because the disease pressure is very high in humid Tennessee. At least they're not trying to spray their way to low-quality vinifera, like so many mid-American wineries do.


Their Niagara, made "semi-sweet," has nice qualities though it makes me wish more growers tried Cayuga, or in their TN heat, possibly Esprit instead. Niagara is over-rated and should be grown less. I wish they grew Traminette. But it's great to see a winery succeed with hybrids. 


A fun stop; this winery serves its local customers well. 


(Background: I live in Portland OR and have a mother in law in TN; we were driving from Nashville to Cincinnati to see my daughter and happened across this Portland TN winery. I went in for a tasting and the pourer asked where I was from. "Portland," I said, not realizing that was also the name of the hamlet I was presently standing in. "Well, Darlin', you sure don't sound like you're from around here," she said. Funny thing is, my roots may be deeper in TN than hers--our family farm was near Frankewing, since about 1830; one of my ancestors was a Presbyterian minister, and the principal of the Boonshill Academy, and he ran--unsuccessfully, thank God--on the Prohibition ticket for a seat in the US Congress. But it's true that I don't have the TN twang, and neither did my TN-born grandfather.)