East Coast eateries generally ignore local wines

Wrote Terry Sullivan of Wine Trail Traveler recently and asked how much he and his wife Kathy were finding regional wineries carried on local restaurant wine lists during their trips across the country. He responded this way:

We are in the Niagara-on-the-Lake region of the Niagara Peninsula in Ontario, Canada, and the restaurants here do a good job carrying wines fromthe local wineries. I'd say at least half of the wine list. The restaurants in Colorado, also do a good job, with three to sometimes more than ten Colorado wines on the list.

The East Coast of the United States is a disappointment though. We did find a restaurant in Skaneateles, New York, that had a couple of wines from the Finger Lakes, but it was only two, and there are near a hundred wineries there. We did stumble into an Applebees in Front Royal, Virginia, that had local wines in display casesas well as at the bar.

I think that the closer you are to big cities the less chance you'll see local wine. Outside the cities in the country you'll have a better chance.