Longtime Chappellet Vintner Resigns

Cathy Corison, wine maker for Chappellet Vineyard for the last 10 years, has resigned to pursue her own project, to be called simply Corison.

The first vintage of Corison was produced in 1987. It is a Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley grapes. Corison said about 1,800 cases were produced in conjunction with Etude Wines, in which she is a partner, but that she was the sole owner of the Corison project.

The first wine will be released later this year. Price for the wine has not been determined.

Phillip Titus, assistant wine maker for Chappellet for the last four years and former wine maker for Stratford, has been appointed wine maker at Chappellet. Corison said she would continue to act as consultant to Chappellet for wine making and marketing.

The United States now has 1,338 wineries in 45 states, 136 more wineries than last year and the most ever, according to Wines & Vines Directory, an annual edition of the northern California trade magazine.

California leads all states with 676 bonded wineries--though a recent estimate by a wine industry consultant was that there were more than 800 bonded in the state. New York has 93 wineries, Oregon 79, Washington 77, Pennsylvania 59 and Virginia 43.

Rounding out the top 10 states, Missouri has 30 wineries, Texas 26, New Mexico 18, and New Jersey 17. The only states that do not make wine commercially, either from grapes or fruit, are North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska and Nebraska, the publication said.

Among the states with new wineries, the leaders are California, 42; Pennsylvania, 23; Washington and New York, 11 each; Oregon, 10; Virginia, 6; and Ohio, 5.

In a related item, a Chicago firm has announced that it has opened a shop at O’Hare Airport, the world’s busiest airport, to market wines from 32 states.

Carson International’s “Wines of America” Retail Emporium and Wine Bar features 230 different wines including Port from Louisiana and Sherry from Minnesota.

French wine shipments to the United States, which had been held up while U.S. authorities checked wines for traces of a banned pesticide, have largely resumed, according to a French trade group.

The French Wine Exporters Federation said only a small number of wines had been detained. U.S. food safety authorities began checking samples of 200 imported wines from 10 countries for the fungicide procymidone, which is used in many European countries to reduce the risk of mold on grapes, but the chemical is not approved for use in the United States and thus there are no levels of it that are considered safe.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejected some wines from France and Italy when it found traces of procymidone in samples. Wines are also being tested from Australia, Brazil, Chile, Hungary, Israel, Portugal, Spain and West Germany.