(WTOP) - Andrew Stover is on a mission to turn Washingtonians on to American wines from unsuspected places. Think less California and more Texas.

“Usually that’s referred to as ‘The Other 47,’” says Stover, who is a certified sommelier and founder of Vino 50 Selections. “Meaning anything but California, Washington and Oregon.”

Not that he has anything against the wines from the country’s three biggest wine-producing states. Many of their vineyards and wineries are growing and producing some of the best in the world. But so are wineries in Michigan, Missouri and Virginia.

“Some people will tell you, and I would agree, that there are some wines already today that exceed quality and value in Virginia, than a comparable wine from California,” Stover says.

Hearing about a wine from Missouri might be new to some consumers, but Stover says it shouldn’t be. Many of these “unusual states” have been making wine for centuries.

“For example, Missouri was making wine as early as the 1830s,” Stover says, adding that the state’s Stone Hill Winery was once the second largest winery in the U.S., and at the turn of the century was shipping 1,250,000 gallons of wine per year.

Virginia also has a long history with wine that dates back to the days of colonization and extends through the early 1900s. However, this all came to a halt when prohibition was enacted.

“A lot of people don’t really realize what prohibition did for American wine production. Locally, here, it pretty much decimated the industry, and the same thing in Missouri,” Stover says.

Wineries out West were also affected, but Stover says they rebuilt their operations faster (in the 1960s and ‘70s) than many East Coast wineries, which started to see regrowth in the industry in the ‘80s.

Today, progress continues to grow on the East Coast, as well as in several other regions throughout the country.

“There’s a boom in New York, there’s a boom in Virginia. We’re seeing a small boom in Maryland. Really, we’re seeing a boom everywhere, except in California,” Stover says.

And these states are all experimenting with a number of different grapes and varietals, based on their specific regions and climates.