It's safe to say that South Dakota came to the wine-making party a little late.

People across the globe have been crushing grapes into intoxicating creations for the better part of 5,000 years but around here our less than ideal climate provided some pretty tall challenges.

But over the past two decades or so all that has changed and the Mount Rushmore State now has a thriving group of wineries all over the state.

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Recently, 24/7 Tempo set out to determine exactly which states have the best access to wineries.

To do that they looked at data from VinePair, a digital media company producing content related to wine and other alcoholic beverages, and the latest figures from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

What they found might surprise you.

With 4.6 per 100,000 people, South Dakota has the 13th most wineries per capita in the United States. That's despite having the 13th fewest wineries (41) and the 5th lowest population in the country (884,659).

STATES WITH MOST WINERIES (per 100,000 people)

  1. Oregon (21.6)
  2. Washington (18)
  3. California (15.2)
  4. Vermont (14.3)
  5. Michigan (6.5)
  6. Idaho (6.3)
  7. New Hampshire (5.8)
  8. Virginia (5.8)
  9. Maine (5.7)
  10. Iowa (5.3)

STATES WITH FEWEST WINERIES (per 100,000 people)

  1. Mississippi (0.4)
  2. Louisiana (0.5)
  3. Utah (0.7)
  4. Nevada (0.8)
  5. Florida (0.9)
  6. South Carolina (1.1)
  7. New Jersey (1.1)
  8. Delaware (1.2)
  9. Alabama (1.2)
  10. Hawaii (1.2)

TRENDING FROM RESULTS-TOWNSQUARE SIOUX FALLS:

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To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.

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