Sales Of Virginia Wines Hit New Record

We're not too surprised by the latest wine news out of Virginia, already one of the booming wine regions in the U.S.: new numbers show that wine sales out of Virginia have hit an all-time new high, up 5 percent from 2012. 

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell announced that wineries in Virginia sold more than 511,000 cases of wine for the last year ending June 30, up from 485,000 cases from the year before, reports the Virginia Gazette. More notably, wine sales to out-of-state distributors have grown by 60 percent. And topping off the sundae of really good news, the American Wine Consumer Coalition gave the state an A-plus for its "friendliness" and wine laws, particularly its Sunday wine sales and BYOB rules.  

All the good news has many wine connoisseurs, like at Forbes, wondering whether Virginia is the "Napa Valley of the East Coast." "Virginia terroir is fertile with potential... Arguably, the local wines are already world-class in taste," writes Katie Kelly Bell for Forbes. Yeah, we'd have to agree.