There’s a fresh sense of possibility in the air, exemplified best by the new Hunterdon Wine Trail whose kick-off event is this weekend. All four of the county’s wineries are participating (Unionville, Old York, Beneduce and Mount Salem); other regionally-specific wine trails in New Jersey have recently become active, too. This is all good, for one reason: better wine for you.

For such a small state, New Jersey has three (if not four) distinct growing regions, each capable of producing world-class wine. But that’s where the similarities end: differences in climate, soil and elevation make each region best-suited for certain grape varieties, and wise growers eschew all the rest. Indeed, it doesn’t matter what you want to grow; you plant only what your site allows.

This matters a lot because the ability to ripen grapes consistently every year, survive the occasional brutal winter, and express local characteristics in flavor, aroma and appearance (“terroir”, as the French would say) are essential for distinctive if not great wine. Varietal focus is also necessary for a region to create consumer awareness, given that wine drinkers (and cognoscenti) associate a region with just a few grape varieties, just as the Finger Lakes and Burgundy, for example, equate to Riesling and Chardonnay/Pinot Noir, respectively.

Such focus also results in better wines, because a winemaker benchmarks his wines against his neighbors’, but this applies only if those wines are made from the same varieties and are grown in the same growing conditions in a given year. Anything else is comparing an apple to an orange.

How does the Hunterdon Wine Trail, and this weekend’s inaugural event, fit into all of this?

1. It encourages consumers to view Hunterdon as a distinct place capable of making fine wines, one with varietal focus and recognizable terroir.

2. It encourages consumers, journalists, bloggers and professional wine critics to discover the common threads among the wineries that point toward quality wines.

3. The wine trail will (and this is already occurring) encourage others to establish new vineyards and wineries in the region (our founder and winemaker is fond of saying Pittstown finally has two wineries, but it needs another twenty).

4. Finally, it encourages wineries to collaborate while also making the very best wines they can for an increasingly sophisticated clientele.

We encourage you to travel the new wine trail this weekend, and see for yourself.