By: Jennifer Kaplan
Jennifer Kaplan is author of Greening Your Small Business, site director of Ecopreneurist and founder of VineCrowd.com.

If you happen to live near Sonoma County, California or Walla Walla Valley, Washington, finding awesome local wine really isn’t a problem.  But, what if you don’t happen to live in a world-class wine region?

For some of us, the thought of buying wine shipped in heavy glass bottles over several thousand miles in temperature controlled transport seems a bit, well, unsustainable.  What’s a wine loving locavore to do?

As I reported not long ago in my blog post, Are Urban Wineries Taking Over The Industry?, According to Nation’s Restaurant News’ top 20 restaurant trends for 2011 there are at least three trends that prove that wine loving locavore’s want more options (sustainability, hyper local and locally produced wine and beer). If you wondering how to tap into the sustainable, hyper-locally produced wine and beer trend here are four ways.

Urban Wineries. Whether you like to drink red wine or white, these days if you live in a major metropolitan area you probably don’t have to go far to find to find high quality, local producers right in your own city. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are have taken note of urban winery ‘revolution’ and according to a blog post in Eater.com, there are notable urban wineries in the Bay Area, New York City, Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Sacramento and Cincinnati (yes, Cincinnati…). Several of these metro regions even have their own urban winery trade groups, like the East Bay Vinters Alliance and South Seattle Artisan Wineries.

Wine and Dine Locally or The Locavore Wine Hipocracy…No More. Back in July 2010, the food critic Todd Kliman posted an article that ‘exposed the ridiculous double standard of the locavore movement and how they ignore great American wines.’ The good news is that chefs across American have begun to agree with Kilman and are spending more time developing wine programs that keep things local. Take flour+water in San Francisco. They have an upcoming winemaker’s dinner with Two Mile Wines and a large reason they took notice of the Oakland, CA winery is because they are just across the bay bridge. Read More.