A Vineyard Travelogue of the Baltics and Belarus
In
1998, Tom and Bob received a USDA grant to travel to Latvia, Estonia,
and Belarus during the harvest season and evaluate local grape varieties
for wine potential. They tasted nearly 200 varieties of grapes in three
weeks, mostly unripe ones. But the dozen or so varieties that were ripe
despite the extremely cool and wet Baltic summer caught their attention.
So did the scenery and the people. This article describes the grapes of
the Baltics and Tom and Bob’s travels into the hinterlands of this
region to taste them.