Wine, Cider and Beer in Fannin County

An American Viticultural Area is a boundary drawn around ground that grows grapes differently from the ground next to it, and getting one approved requires evidence: climate data, soils, elevation, historical name usage. The Upper Hiwassee Highlands cleared that bar in July 2014.

What the petition argued, in effect, was altitude. These are the southern Appalachians, and the vineyards sit high enough that the growing season behaves like somewhere considerably further north than a Georgia latitude would suggest. Most of the plantings are between 2,000 and 2,400 feet. The soils come off metasedimentary rock and drain hard, which matters enormously in a region that gets serious summer rainfall. The heat accumulation puts most of the area in Winkler Region III, which is warm but not baking.

The other thing the numbers show is how thinly planted it is. Fifty-four acres of vines inside 441,600 acres of appellation is a rounding error. In practice that means tasting rooms here are attached to small farms, the person pouring may well be the person who pruned, and a wine you like this year may simply not exist next year because there was not much of it.

For a visitor that is the appeal. You are not touring an industry. You are visiting five or six farms that happen to make wine, spread across mountain roads in two states, and the drive between them through ridge country is at least half of what you came for.

A visitor from a classic wine region looks at a north Georgia list and wonders why half of it is unfamiliar. The answer is weather, and it is worth understanding before the first pour, because it changes what you are tasting for.

Vitis vinifera, the European species behind almost every famous wine grape, is not well adapted to a humid southern summer. Warm nights and heavy rain in July and August favour fungal disease, and a vine that is battling downy mildew is not ripening fruit. Meanwhile at 2,300 feet in the Appalachians, a late April frost can take a whole crop off in one night. The winters, conversely, can drop hard enough to damage vines that are marginal for cold.

French-American hybrids were bred precisely for that set of problems: disease resistance, cold hardiness, earlier ripening. Chambourcin gives a dark, brambly, medium-bodied red with enough acid to stay lively. Seyval Blanc gives a crisp, dry white with a citrus edge. Norton is an American species entirely and makes a deep, high-acid red that tastes like nothing in Europe. Catawba is the old pink American grape behind a great deal of nineteenth-century sweet wine, and it still shows up in a sweeter style here.

Vinifera is planted too, and the better sites get Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot ripe in good years. But the hybrids are the honest expression of this ground. Taste them on their own terms, not against a benchmark from a drier climate, and the afternoon makes a lot more sense.

If you only drink one local thing here, there is a strong argument for making it cider rather than wine.

Apples have been the serious crop in these mountains for generations. The elevation that makes grape growing awkward is precisely what apples want: cool nights, a real winter chill, and slopes that shed cold air. Fannin and neighbouring Gilmer County have been growing them commercially since long before anybody drew a viticultural boundary here.

The orchard north of Blue Ridge makes hard cider from its own fruit, and states that it is the only apple orchard in Georgia to grow, press, ferment and can it, with a tasting room on the property. Whatever you make of the claim, the practical point stands: the fruit in that can came off trees you can see from the car park, which is a shorter supply chain than almost any drink you will be offered on a holiday.

Cider also solves two problems that wine does not. It is an easier match for what people actually eat here, which runs to barbecue, fried chicken, trout and a great deal of pork. And it is a reasonable thing to carry home in a cool box, because cans survive a car boot in a way bottles do not.

One small warning. The sweet unfermented apple cider sold by the gallon at the orchard and the hard cider sold in the tasting room are entirely different drinks with nearly the same name. Buy both. Do not confuse which one you handed to a child.

Set expectations and this is a good evening out. Fannin County has a small taproom scene: a handful of places pouring their own beer, most of them within reach of the town, and the whole thing is measured in single figures rather than in the dozens a city produces.

What that buys you is the opposite of choice paralysis. Taprooms here are small rooms with a bar, a few tables, a board with six or eight beers chalked on it and somebody behind it who knows how each one was made. Ordering a flight and working along it is the correct approach on a first visit, and it takes half an hour to have tasted most of what the place does.

The styles reflect the customers rather than a trend cycle, which means a reliable lager, something amber and malty for the cold months, at least one hazy pale ale because everyone makes one, and usually a seasonal that involves local fruit. In autumn, expect apples to appear in the beer as well as in everything else.

Practical points. Kitchens are not a given; several taprooms are beer-only and either bring in a food truck or expect you to eat first. Hours are shorter than in a city and considerably shorter midweek in winter. Dogs are often welcome and children sometimes are, but both are a decision made by the room rather than by the county. And weekend evenings in leaf season fill the small rooms early, which is the one time of year it is worth turning up before seven.