New Jersey is like your weird cousin: the butt of a lot of jokes but secretly kind of wonderful. Among its many virtues is a climate that allows farmers to grow almost anything, including, it turns out, wine grapes.
Daniel Ward, an agricultural expert from Rutgers University, compiled years of climate data to determine which grapes would grow best here, comparing the state’s growing season, total precipitation, topography, and hours of sunshine per day to those of global wine regions. “Overall,” he says, “we are quite comparable to Bordeaux.”
To further encourage comparison with one of France’s most famous wine regions, the local Outer Coastal Plain Vineyard Association has registered a unique regional blend called Coeur d’Est (Heart of the East), which can include cabernet franc, merlot, petit verdot, chambourcin, syrah, and cabernet sauvignon. This might seem like a case of trying too hard—except the wines are legitimately very good. Cedar Rose Vineyards, located in the South Jersey town of Millville, makes a Coeur d’Est that’s as deep as the Atlantic, with notes of chocolate, cherry, and baking spices. (I’d be happy to have it at a New York City steak house, alongside a piece of meat that costs as much as a car payment.)
Not convinced? In 2012, the American Association of Wine Economists held a blind tasting along the lines of the 1976 Judgment of Paris (the historic contest at which California wines bested their stalwart French counterparts). This time it was called the Judgment of Princeton, and the judges held that most of the New Jersey wines were statistically indistinguishable in quality from the French.
New Jersey’s wines aren’t limited to French provenance, either. In 2012, Larry Coia, owner of Coia Vineyards in Vineland, one town over from Millville, worked with the U.S. government to import San Marco, an Italian grape that had never been planted on American soil. Coia then produced a San Marco wine through Bellview Winery in Landisville. The 2021 vintage of that wine is like New Jersey itself: full-flavored and a little spicy, Italian but with a dash of something new and exciting.
The best part of all of this? Hardly anyone knows about it. Visit a winery in New Jersey, and you can almost certainly meet the family who owns the place, the guy who works in the fields, the dog. When you get home and tell your friends you’ve been drinking Jersey wine, they may start pumping their fists and hollering about The Boss—but you’ll know the joke’s on them.
