By Matt Dhillon
There might be notes of butterscotch and baked goods, a bite of sour green apple, even a touch of goat cheese, or something earthier with floral aromas and a chocolaty finish. There is the terroir to consider, the climate, the living yeast, sugar content, temperature, phenolic compounds, tannins, malic acid, lactic acid, and more, but what makes good wine good wine?
In her lab at the Winemakers Research Exchange, Joy Ting searches for answers to this question. Entering her fourth year as research enologist for the organization, Ting gets to peek into the winemaking process of almost every vineyard in the state and help them improve their wine.
The WRE, a nonprofit research cooperative founded by winemakers and funded by the Virginia Wine Board, is dedicated to the improvement of Virginia wine. Ting’s job is to design and facilitate experiments on different winemaking practices and to help winemakers incorporate the results.
“Whenever we do an experiment, the first thing I do is ask the winemaker, ‘What was your winemaking goal in doing this experiment?’” says Ting, who’s married to C-VILLE contributor Paul Ting. “We want to keep that winemaking goal in view. And a lot of times it’s things like, ‘I wanted to improve the mouth feel of my wine,’ or, ‘I felt like I wanted more structure in this wine.’”
As she has discovered, good winemaking is as much about responding to the grapes as it is about creating wine. One of the first things Ting learned in the industry was how to adapt to the circumstances for each vintage.
“At its heart, this is an agricultural industry and we’re governed by what the weather and the climate give us,” Ting says. “There’s a balance between the need to have a good plan and the need to be flexible and have open hands to what the vintage is going to bring in and work with it, not against it.”
What Ting likes about working with wine is that it’s alive. A marine biologist by training with a Ph.D. in applied biology from Georgia Tech, Ting came to wine from a scientific angle. Leaving her job as a high school biology teacher in Charlottesville, she started as a lab tech at Wineworks for the harvest of 2013 after a fateful conversation with the owner, Michael Shaps.
“I had gotten very interested in wine itself, but specifically in the production side, the side that sort of seems a little more scientific,” Ting says.
Winemaking engaged her inherent wonder at finding out how things work and her fascination with making things. She learned an appreciation for craft from her mother, who was a seamstress.
“She just had this way of looking at fabric and knowing what to do and making it more beautiful than it was on its own,” Ting says.
From that early example, Ting has always been interested in the process of taking raw materials and developing what is best in them. In her own winemaking process, she keeps that in mind. Good wine depends on what the grapes are doing, and her role is to help them express that.
By 2014, Ting was making small batches of her own brew. She experimented under Joy Ting Wines, her label, while learning the intricacies of winemaking at Wineworks, a large operation, where she could sometimes put in 12-hour days during the fermentation process. If the yeast were ready to be fed, it could turn into a 14-hour day.
“You have to sort of watch that every day to make sure that you get it in there at the right time,” Ting says. “If you don’t feed the yeast on time, there’s a point at which it doesn’t matter if you feed them, they can’t eat it anyways because their cell membranes won’t take food in anymore.”
If you don’t feed them on time, the yeast get stressed, and stressed yeast make bad flavors: vinegar, sulfur, rotten eggs.
Ting did simple lab work well within her wheelhouse, but the numbers needed to be accurate enough to make very expensive decisions.
“So much of winemaking is showing up every day and paying attention to the smaller details, just to sort of help to keep things on track” she says. “It’s not very glamorous at all.
But Ting never lost her enthusiasm for experimentation or her aptitude for teaching. In 2018, when the position of research enologist was incorporated into the WRE, it seemed like a perfect fit. The position would need someone who could design experiments, analyze data, publish studies, and disseminate information in practical ways to local vineyards and winemakers.
Virginia is a unique growing region with unique challenges. Some of the wines people are most familiar with don’t grow well here. The growing season is shorter than some grapes need to ripen, and the environment is humid and wet enough to make mold an issue.
Winemakers look for grapes that fit the land. While chardonnay is the most planted grape in Virginia, making up about 13-14 percent of the annual yield, it is a struggle to grow. However, a lesser-known white wine grape that does great is petit manseng. This grape, with its small berries, thick skin, and loose clusters, has better airflow and is more disease resistant than most varieties.
“It was introduced into Virginia by our cooperative extension agent [Tony Wolf], who tried a bunch of different varieties to find out what actually grows here,” Ting says.
Now Virginia has the second largest planting of petit manseng in the world, next to its home region in France. Its high sugar and acid content deliver an interesting, sharp character to the wine. But it is still relatively obscure, making up about 2 percent of the annual yield.
Cabernet franc contends closely with chardonnay for most-planted grapes every year and averages about 12 percent of the annual yield. This red grape is typically used in blends because its floral, fruity, and mellow characteristics are often attached to vegetable or green pepper flavors. However, its resilience, adaptability, and earlier ripening cycle have prompted Virginia winemakers to embrace it in its own right and cultivate its potential.
In 2004, Virginia had 1,900 acres of fruiting vineyards, ranking it 10th overall in the country, according to data collected by the Virginia Wine Board. By 2008, that number climbed to 2,500 acres. In 2010, it spread to 2,633. In 2015, the growth peaked at 3,172 acres bearing fruit. In 2019, the number was climbing again at 2,969 acres and the state ranked eighth in overall wine production.
But Virginia wine remains an emerging industry and one that is continually working on establishing itself. It is still a world of experimentation and development.
“We’re not as well known around the world as many are,” says Ting. “I think one of the things we get from that is it’s still very intertwined, so a lot of people know each other and it’s still very collaborative and it’s very cooperative.”
Ting’s work at the research exchange is a testament to that collaboration. Vineyards can use this common resource to learn about the effects of leaf removal on the ripeness of their grape, how to integrate the skins during fermentation, or how sulfur dioxide could help with the storage of their wine.
“There are so many things, I think, that are improving the quality of Virginia wine, and I am very grateful that we get to be one part of helping to lift that tide,” Ting says.
Beyond her research, Ting contributes her expertise by collaborating as a winemaker on a variety of releases. This spring she led a tasting of her work with The Wool Factory’s new label that showcased a 2020 petit manseng, a 2019 cabernet franc, and Bitte vermouth.
Her own rubric for what makes good wine is related to what makes people gather around a table, to sit together, and share an evening. Some of the exquisite fine wines we are accustomed to reserving for special occasions, but Ting favors a wine that you could drink any day, or every day. Wine is an ingredient in that everyday bond of coming together. The dinner table, she says, is not just about putting food in our bodies, it’s part of a bigger picture of community, communication, and connection.
“When I was growing up, my family would sit at the dinner table, we would eat our meal in the dining room, and then we would sit around and talk for three hours,” Ting says. “And so, I feel like one of the things I’m trying to do is I’m trying to make wines that go with you through the meal and help you want to linger longer at the table, talking to your family, talking to your friends, talking to whoever you’re having dinner with.”