America's Best Wine Region Pt 3
With today’s Fruit Grower Report, I’m Bob Larson. “America’s Best Wine Region” is … the ever-expanding wine industry in the Walla Walla Valley. The honor comes from USA Today’s 10 Best Readers’ Choice awards, of which Walla Walla was runner-up the past two years.
Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance executive director, Robert Hansen says 2020 has thrown us all many curve balls, but our wineries have met the challenge …
HANSEN … “I think wineries were pretty creative in the time our tasting rooms had to be closed and it helped to make up for some revenue losses, but, you know, I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing that it didn’t make up for all the revenue losses.”
Losses aside, Hansen says being named “America’s Best Wine Region” is something to celebrate…
HANSEN … “Yeah, I think we’re going to tout this for a while. It’s not going to go away and we will do a lot of marketing around it. There’s not a specific celebration around it just through the fact that we can’t really get together to celebrate. But, we will celebrate it individually and talk about it a lot for at least the next year, if not longer.”
And, Hansen says the coming year brings another celebration …
HANSEN … “We get to celebrate our 20th Anniversary in 2021 as the Walla Walla Wine Alliance. And, we’ll be talking about being the number one American wine region during that time period also.”
But, in the end, Hansen says …
HANSEN … “I just want to remind people that, you know, we’re an ideal location for wine lovers and when you feel comfortable traveling and when it’s allowed, please come visit.”
USA Today chose five wine industry experts to pick the winner from a list of 20 finalists, from more than 250 American wine-growing regions.
