Rant: Is Your Wine List Local Too?

It is a pleasure to read a restaurant menu and note that they use locally grown or raised ingredients. More and more restaurants are promoting this fact, trying their best to only use local ingredients. This is a benefit to local farmers and providers, and can also be more enviromentally friendly.

Yet there is one group of local farmers and providers who are often ignored by these restaurants. This fact points to a double standard by many restaurants claiming to be "local." It puzzles me why such a double standard would exist. If you desire to be local, then you should try to embrace it as much as possible.

What bothers me is these "local" restaurants fail to have local wines on their wine lists. They ignore local grape growers and wine makers. Tell me, why should "local" be restricted only to the food? It should embrace wine as well, to complete the entire picture. There are good wines being made all across New England and which would benefit any wine list. "Local" restaurants have little excuse to ignore these wines and fail to add them to their wine lists. This is also a matter not limited to New England.

I would not expect a local restaurant to only carry New England wines. But, I do think having at several local wines is not an unreasonable expectation. A restaurant could find good, local wines including sparkling wines, whites, reds and dessert wines. Adding such wines to their list would show a true passion for being local in all regards.

So restaurant owners, tell me why you don't add local wines to your lists.