Author: Erin Scala

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The sweet spot: Zeroing in on special Virginia vineyard sites

Ankida Ridge. Photo: Courtesy Ankida Ridge.

Several decades into Virginia’s booming post-Prohibition wine economy, we are starting to home in on some special vineyard sites throughout the state. In France, you’ll find heavily protected and coveted Grand Cru and Premier Cru sites; in other wine-centric countries you’ll find similar infrastructures protecting the best vineyards. What sites are emerging as Virginia’s equivalent to Grand Cru vineyards?

A straightforward answer is much more elusive than you might think, because the question is being asked, perhaps, a bit too early. Learning the land takes time because agriculture takes time. The search for quality in the wine business is an especially drawn-out process because, though grapes are an annual product, a grape vine plant has a similar lifespan to a human, and grape vine roots can take decades to reach the depth and maturity they need to truly express their place. Only when the vines are echoing their environment can the influence of special sites shine their truest. This clarity of site quality can take decades and generations to discover. You just can’t rush it.

Broaching the topic of “best sites” with some of Virginia’s top wine minds often draws a certain measure of recoil.

“I’d say for the most part that we are so young as an industry that most of our best sites are unplanted and yet to be discovered,” says Early Mountain Vineyards’ Ben Jordan. “I’m not the first to say so, but I think the best is yet to come.”

As the industry grows into its next phase, it’s helpful to revisit some vineyards that seem to have that “special something” in the hopes that we can glean a bit of experiential knowledge and new plantings may be aimed at great sites. Even at this early juncture, here are a few places that consistently give up superior fruit.

Ankida Ridge (above)

“There are a few characteristics that make Ankida Ridge a great site for growing quality wine grapes,” says winemaker Nathan Vrooman. “The elevation and relative altitude of the vineyard allow for excellent drainage of cold air, which helps to mitigate our risk for spring frost.” Additionally, the slope of the vineyard, combined with the loose rocky soil, allows for water drainage, so the plants are forced to send their roots deeper into the ground. Being on a mountainside, there’s almost constant air movement, so the plants and the fruit tend to dry very quickly, which results in lighter fungal pressures.

Barboursville Vineyards

Barboursville winemaker Luca Paschina is always reevaluating his vineyard blocks for the highest quality material to make his Octagon blend. Among the vineyard’s 900 acres, there is a particular area that the wine team has designated “santa,” as if holy. For the past 18 years, it has been producing, with almost impeccable consistency, its prized Merlot, which is the starting block of the winery’s Octagon blend.

“Many elements make the block special,” Paschina says, “starting from the medium vigor red clay soil to the gradually steep slope facing to the east, which allows for a nice early morning dew-drying sun and for a cooling during the late summer afternoons.”

Michael Shaps Wineworks

For Michael Shaps, who produces wine from grapes grown on various properties, three special vineyards stick out in his mind: Carter Mountain for its Cabernet Franc, the Gordonsville’s Honah Lee Vineyard for its Petit Manseng and Loudoun County’s Wild Meadow vineyard for its Chardonnay.

“What makes Wild Meadow so special is not one particular variable, but how all the elements come together,” Shaps says. “The soil is lighter, loamier with less clay and with good drainage. But that in conjunction with the slope, exposure and its northern Virginia location, which provides cooler nighttime temps during the critical last two weeks of ripening, help to produce very balanced chemistry, which in wine vocab means fresh fruit.”

Horton Vineyards

Winemaker Michael Heny is impressed with the Viognier from Berry Hill Vineyard, just outside of Washington, D.C., where Dennis Horton started the Viognier story in Virginia. “Year-in, year-out, it continues to prove itself,” Heny says. “The vineyard isn’t immune to frost, but it’s never severe. Hail strikes from time to time but the vines bounce back. We get hot, we get cold, we get dry, we get wet, with a procession of various insects entering and exiting the stage. The vines take it all in stride, dependably delivering lug after lug after lug of beautifully golden ripened fruit.”

Veritas Vineyards

Emily Pelton, winemaker at Veritas, loves the new vineyards her family has planted. She works mainly with the vineyards from Veritas’ first plantings in 1999, but says the newer ones—planted in the last four years—are quickly gaining her favor.

“We cleared 30-odd acres on the top of our ‘saddleback’ and we have planted it to Viognier and Cabernet Franc,” she says. “I think it may be the promise of the future that makes my heart skip a beat every time I visit these vineyards, or it may be the view, I’m not sure. This vineyard would be my first site that has considerable elevation and gorgeous aspect. Fingers crossed!”

Jake Busching Wines

Winemaker Jake Busching is currently focusing on 800- to 1,000-foot elevation sites with clay-based soil: Honah Lee, Carter Mountain and Wild Meadow and similar vineyards that are slowly being tuned in vintage after vintage.

“Monticello reds and Northern Virginia whites stand out to me, just as the Shenandoah Valley has so much to offer,” Busching says. “But like all of the sites, we need more time to suss it all out. We are headed into greatness. Patience seems like our best ally.”

While we are clearly far from drawing an official map that guides people toward the best vineyard sites, we are rushing into a third wave of Virginian wine investment. “We have so much yet to explore, so many places to dig and find hope for the future of our craft,” says Busching. “We are infants in an old world of wine and dirt.”

Erin Scala is the sommelier at Fleurie and Petit Pois. She holds the Diploma of Wines & Spirits, is a Certified Sake Specialist and writes about beverages on her blog, thinking-drinking.com.

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Living

The East Coast revival is a boon for Virginia wine

Dr. Konstantin Frank learned his craft at ancient wineries in (then) Soviet Georgia before coming to the United States in 1951. Once here, he advocated for the plantings of the Vitis vinifera grape varietals that dominate our current wine business. Courtesy of Dr. Konstantin Frank Winery.

The Virginia wine scene exists within a larger post-Prohibition wine revival sweeping across the United States. Before Prohibition, the East Coast had a thriving wine trade. But following the 1920 constitutional ban on alchohol, only a few wineries remained standing, such as New York’s Brotherhood Winery (in operation since 1839), which produced sacramental wine to avoid shutting down.

Once the law was repealed in 1933, it took several decades for the East Coast wine industry to bounce back. One New York wine producer, Dr. Konstantin Frank, who established his winery in 1962, helped to shape the new direction.

Frank vociferously extolled a particular grape species—Vitis vinifera—and believed that indigenous and hybrid species produced inferior wines. Vinifera grapes are a European species that originated in the Caucasus region several thousand years ago, and most familiar wines (chardonnay, viognier, cabernet, etc.) are vinifera.

By 1973, a Vinifera Wine Growers Association popped up (now known as the Atlantic Seaboard Wine Association) and, along with the findings of Dr. Frank, began to influence East Coast winegrowers and the beginnings of today’s Virginia wine trade, where vintners such as Dennis Horton became intrigued by vinifera grapes.

Virginia’s focus on smaller-scale boutique wineries has helped our wine trails stand out as unique
attractions for agro-tourism. Most Virginia wineries are small family businesses, and you are likely to find one of the owners in the tasting room when you visit.

The U.S.’s post-Prohibition revival has made the grape business more profitable, partly because of the higher prices wine grapes can fetch. A near decade of statistics from 2005 through 2014 show that the country’s total grape production has not changed dramatically: Both at the beginning and end of the decade, the U.S. produced approximately 7.8 million tons of grapes. But the average price per ton increased about 67 percent during that time, and a $3.4 billion industry grew into a $5.8 billion industry.

Zooming in on the East Coast, the major players in order of grape ton production are New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia. Virginia’s biggest market competitor is New York. In 2014, New York crushed 44,000 tons of wine grapes, while Virginia crushed 8,600 tons. In volume, New York outpaced Virginia by about 80 percent. But New York has only about 20 percent more wineries than Virginia. This data demonstrates that Virginia wineries are producing significantly fewer grape tons per winery, and this is one of the reasons why Virginia’s emerging wine scene is so special.

Virginia’s focus on smaller-scale boutique wineries has helped our wine trails stand out as unique attractions for agro-tourism. Most Virginia wineries are small family businesses, and you are likely to find one of the owners in the tasting room when you visit. Many wineries produce just enough wine to sell out of their tasting rooms, but not enough to enter the larger U.S. or international market.

And while U.S. data shows little growth in grape tons but intense growth in revenue, Virginia numbers demonstrate explosive growth in both grape tons and revenues. In 2005, Virginia produced about 5,600 tons of grapes; by 2014 this grew to about 8,000 tons.

Grape crush

Virginia’s largest wine market competitor on the East Coast is New York, with Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia also being key players. But Virginia’s lower number of wineries compared with New York means we are producing fewer grape tons per winery, thus making our boutique wineries stand out.

2014 grape harvest yield:

New York: 44,000 tons

Virginia: 8,600 tons

One thing Virginia and New York have in common is a local restaurant scene that supports local wine. In New York, most serious restaurant wine lists feature a New York selection, and the same holds true in Virginia. You’ll even find a few Virginia restaurants such as Field & Main (Marshall), Revolutionary Soup (Charlottesville), the former Brookville (Charlottesville) and The Roosevelt (Richmond) pouring almost exclusively Virginia wines. This synergy between local food and wine is helping to create and define new regional cuisines. Take, for instance, the magic combination of fresh soft-shell crabs paired with a local petit manseng. The pairings help create a lasting dining culture that can sustain long-term business and promote regionality.

Over the last four decades, the East Coast wine scene has shaken off the dust that settled over a diminished industry crippled by Prohibition. Today, these wineries are poised to take the next step in creating lasting impacts on local culture and cuisines.

Erin Scala is the sommelier at Fleurie and Petit Pois. She holds the Diploma of Wines & Spirits, is a Certified Sake Specialist and writes about beverages on her blog, thinking-drinking.com.

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Living

Jake Busching’s new label raises the stakes for Virginia wine

Bottling under his new label, Jake Busching Wines, gives the local winemaker an opportunity to use his vast experience in Virginia’s vineyards. Photo courtesy subject

It was while working at Jefferson Vineyards that Jake Busching had his aha wine moment. His epiphany, the Jefferson Vineyards 1998 cabernet franc made by Michael Shaps, remains a true bellwether for Virginia wine—“That’s the one that hooked me,” Busching says. Once he made the connection in his mind between place and flavor, a soil-based winemaking philosophy blossomed, and now the well-known local vintner has a new label: Jake Busching Wines, for which he makes wine from some of his favorite vineyard sites around the state.

Having grown up on his family’s Minnesota subsistence farm, Busching is naturally drawn to working with plants. His father worked at a local paper mill and, at home, they raised beef cows. “When you farm in Minnesota,” Busching says, “you have four months of the year to get everything together to survive for the next eight months. That’s where I learned the importance of the dirt.”

He hunted and fished for many of his meals on the farm, and though life wasn’t always easy, the food was good. Busching sums it up: “I ate like a king, but I wore my cousin’s clothes.”

Eventually, he left Minnesota to work in music, and toured with a band. Asked about the circumstances of his move to Virginia, Busching describes 1993: “We [the band] were sick of being cold and poor, so we moved where we could be warm and poor. We ended up in Virginia.”

By 1996, he returned to farm life and landed at Jefferson Vineyards, a winery near Monticello that grows vines planted on the original site where Thomas Jefferson and Philip Mazzei attempted to grow wine grapes in the late 1700s. “What a great way to come into the business,” says Busching. “This is where it all started. Here.”

Wine bottles. Photography in high resolution.Similar photographs from my portfolio:
Jake Busching has also rethought the conduit of wine from winery to consumer. Rather than open a tasting room or sell to restaurants and retail outlets through a distributor, he sells his wine through his website.

As Jefferson Vineyards’ farm manager, he worked with two important founders of the current Virginia wine scene, vineyard manager and consultant Chris Hill, and winemaker Michael Shaps. Hill has had a hand in planting many of Virginia’s vines, and Shaps now has his own Virginia winery, and produces wines in both Virginia and Burgundy, France.

During a brief stint at Horton Vineyards in 2001, Busching worked with a special site he still admires today: Gordonsville’s Honah Lee Vineyard. Planted in the mid-1990s, the site sits on a mountain that rises up in the middle of flat land. “Up top there’s nothing between you and Richmond,” Busching says. Sloped sites, such as Honah Lee, are good for grapes because the angles generate air movement, which helps prevent frost. The vineyards start around 650′ and at about 1,000′ the top of the mountain wears a crown of old-vine viognier.

Busching subsequently worked at Keswick Vineyards, Pollak Vineyards, Grace Estate Winery and Michael Shaps Wineworks, learning along the way about a wide variety of farming methods and grape varieties from around the state.

In 2015, he made a wine from the special Honah Lee viognier grapes he remembered from his early career, and the recently released bottles are his inaugural offering under the Jake Busching Wines label. He’s also released a 2015 cabernet franc made with grapes from Nelson County.

And keep your eyes peeled in May for Busching’s release of F8, a blend of tannat and petit verdot from the upper section of the Honah Lee vineyard. F8, affectionately referred to by its phonetic nickname Fate, is a special bottling because Busching believes there is a larger place for petit verdot-tannat blends in Virginia winemaking. Throughout his career, Busching has championed tannat, and this has impacted the larger wine landscape. Tannat, typically from France’s Madiran region, is a powerful, full-bodied and usually tannic wine that, to Busching, benefits from blending in some deep-fruited petit verdot. He usually finds a sweet spot at around 60 percent tannat with 40 percent petit verdot. Could his signature blend be a way forward for Virginia reds? If it grows in popularity, we might look back and point to F8 as the catalyst.

Busching has also rethought the conduit of wine from winery to consumer. Rather than open a tasting room or sell to restaurants and retail outlets through a distributor, he sells his wine through his website (JakeBuschingWines.com). This is an effective way to directly interface with consumers on their own time, and it’s becoming increasingly popular with winemakers like Busching, who make incredibly small quantities of special wine. (There are just three barrels of F8.)

As a large second wave of Virginia wine producers establish themselves, Busching’s wines stand out because the mentorship of the late 20th-century wine pioneers shines through. Busching’s new label turns the page to a fresh chapter in Virginia winemaking—one that is built on the sturdy ground of past experience, and maybe a little fate.

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Knife & Fork Magazines

K&F: Oenology obscura: Virginia’s new wave of unique, experimental wines

(From left): Horton Vineyards' sparkling Viognier, Early Mountain Vineyards' Pétillant Naturel, King Family Vineyards' orange Viognier, Lovingston Winery's Pinotage, Stinson Vineyards' Rkatsiteli.

Virginia’s wine identity orbits around Viognier, Cabernet Franc and Bordeaux-style blends. Increasingly, however, winemakers are pushing the boundaries of possibility and bottling some unique wines.

Part of the new fascination with experimentation, says winemaker Jake Busching, is driven by a desire to learn more about getting well-suited grapes planted on the right sites and learning the nuances of local Virginia terroir. “What I am seeing and discussing with winemakers and growers alike is a continuing focus on what works with our various terroirs,” he says.

The exuberance of unique wines is also driven by the natural blossoming of a new wine region. At King Family Vineyards, winemaker Matthieu Finot suggests that some of the experimentation is because the Virginia wine scene has come of age. The past two decades have shown the world that Virginia—and especially the Monticello AVA—can produce world-class wine, with respect to the standard of classic winemaking. “I think now our industry is mature enough to push our winemaking and explore some different styles,” Finot says.

Producing unique products can also help distinguish a wine program from the crowd. “For the last three vintages, I’ve made an orange Viognier,” Finot says. (Orange or amber wine gets its color from grape skin contact.) “It’s a little bit more of a nerdy wine, but the public reception has been great, which signals that there is an opening for us to explore.”

Finot’s wine is an industry favorite. “My current favorite,” says Busching, “is the orange wine Viognier of Matthieu Finot at King Family Vineyards in Crozet. It’s a beautiful twist on a Virginia wine-certified theme.”

Busching is no stranger to making skin-contact wine himself. A few years ago, when he worked at Pollak Vineyards, he made a skin-contact Pinot Gris that Evan Williams, wine director of The Wine Guild of Charlottesville, still remembers.

“Jake’s skin-contact Pinot Gris was an eye- opener for me: a Gris with complexity, delineation and personality that speaks gently to the true potential this region holds,” says Williams.

And then there’s Rkatsiteli, a grape from the Caucasus that features in the 2015 bottling at Stinson Vineyards.

“The 2015 Wildkat Rkatsiteli will be a new release for us,” says winemaker Rachel Stinson Vrooman. A skin-fermented Rkatsiteli, it’s inspired by traditional wines of the country of Georgia. “It takes on a light orange or amber hue from skin contact. This also adds layered aromatics and textured tannins to the wine’s profile.”

Horton Vineyards also makes a unique wine from Rkatsiteli. Horton winemaker Michael Heny has observed a few exciting things about the grape.

“I find it odd, interesting and fascinating that the spiritual homeland of the orange wine movement should be most closely associated with a grape—Rkatsiteli—that in our experience has very little color,” says Heny. “Coming through the filter, the color of young Rkatsiteli in the glass is hard to distinguish from water. The golden-hued Petit Manseng is on the other end of the spectrum, as if sunlight can’t quite travel through its richness and instead gets trapped inside.”

Pét-nat, Pinotage and Tannat

While most sparkling wine in Virginia is made from Chardonnay, at Horton Vineyards, you’ll find a unique sparkling Viognier that has become a local favorite among wine-lovers. It’s atypical because even in Viognier’s homeland of the Rhône Valley, you rarely find sparkling wine. At Horton, Heny says they embrace its outlier status: “Let’s enjoy this tiny asterisk for what it is: a unique star in the endlessly expanding firmament of wine.”

You’ll also find a fascination with sparkling wine among the team at Early Mountain Vineyards. There, vineyard manager and enologist Maya Hood White experiments with Pétillant Naturel wine (or “Pét-Nat” for short). It’s sparkling wine made from a single fermentation. A few centuries ago, before Champagne houses discovered how to control a secondary fermentation, most sparkling wines were made pét-nat-style, and many were accidentally bubbly, historically considered faulty for the fizz. In 1806, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Thomas Appleton to complain that one wine bottle in a large lot he had received was sparkling. Jefferson wrote, “It… had probably been bottled too new,” which reads today as a recipe for pét-nat. Bottle a wine before it is finished fermenting, and the CO2 in the last bit of the ferment will be captured in the bottle, producing sparkling wine. Today, pét-nats are usually made on purpose, and they are growing in popularity as a tasty and low-intervention method of making sparkling wine.

“I’ve always been interested in sparkling wines and ended up doing research on them while in school,” says Hood White. “I liked the rusticity of the ones I had encountered.” So, in 2014, she made a small lot from Early Mountain fruit, just to see if she could. When it worked, she made more the following vintage, specifically for the people who helped with the harvest. “I liked the idea of a sparkling wine that is consumable so close to harvest and is somewhat a memory of that vintage.”

At Lovingston Winery, they point to Pinotage as their unique grape. It gets much of the soft cherry and elegance of a Pinot Noir, a genetic parent of Pinotage, with a hint of an earthy/savory component, says winery manager Stephanie Wright. “And we’re discovering that fermenting it at slightly higher temperatures yields a bolder, more complex version off of our site.”

You’ll also find some unique dessert wines, like Imperialis, a fortified Tannat, at Stinson Vineyards. “Our Imperialis is a sweet fortified Tannat inspired by the Maydie Tannat from Château d’Aydie,” says Vrooman. “They’re located just outside the Madiran region in southwest France, where Tannat is king.” Fortifying the wine is another way to round out “Tannat’s aggressive structure by emphasizing its ripe fruit flavors,” she says. The Imperialis tastes like a port-style wine and adds diversity to Virginia’s local after-dinner wine selections.

Summing up the unique Virginia wines on the market, you’ll see plenty of interesting grape varieties, along with wines that use less mainstream winemaking techniques, such as skin- contact or capturing the natural bubbles of a primary fermentation. “Orange wine and pét-nats are hitting the tasting room bars around the state,” says Busching, as Virginia’s wine identity continues to expand its orbit.

Erin Scala is the sommelier at Fleurie and Petit Pois. She holds the Diploma of Wines & Spirits, is a Certified Sake Specialist and writes about beverages on her blog, thinking- drinking.com.

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Living

Chardonnay and petit verdot lead the 2016 vintage report

How does 2016 measure up to previous vintages? “In short,” Michael Shaps Wineworks production manager and enologist Joy Ting says, “2016 was pretty typical for Virginia, with all the challenges and surprises that entails.” Photo by Tom McGovern

This is a good time to catch up with winemakers about the 2016 vintage, a year marked by frost events early in the season, and rain near the red grape harvest. By now, ferments have finished and some wines are in barrel or bottle. Wineries have a good idea about how their 2016s are tasting.

“Each vintage in Virginia presents its own unique set of challenges and opportunities,” says Rachel Stinson Vrooman of Stinson Vineyards. “As growers and winemakers we love to hate this unpredictability, but it’s a key piece of Virginia wine’s identity—it keeps things interesting and makes us feel like we’re all in it together, for better or worse. The 2016 season was just as action-packed as we’ve come to expect. A hard frost in April meant lower yields on pretty much everything. Early budding varietals like chardonnay and merlot were hit especially hard.”

Joy Ting, production manager and enologist at Michael Shaps Wineworks, also reports early-frost damage. “Yields were down in some varieties due to spring frost and rain during bloom,” Ting says. “The chardonnays were particularly hard hit by frost early in the season, with 30 to 50 percent reduction in crop load in most of the vineyards that come through our winery. Some sites fared better than others. The quality was good, there was just a lot less of it.”

Matthieu Finot, winemaker at King Family Vineyards, is happy with his chardonnay. “Because of this weather,” in summer, he says, “we were able to harvest the white grapes when we wanted, and despite limited quantities due to frost damage, they have good balance with the freshness and the acid that I am looking for.”

So, for white wines, we can expect lower quantities than usual, with high quality and concentration due to low yields forced by frost.

Red grapes had a better early season, but inclement autumn weather pushed into a few harvests. “Much like last year’s Joaquin,” Vrooman says, “Hurricane Matthew forced our hand a bit when it came to ripening the reds. Rains hit at the very end of September and set off the inevitable mad rush to bring in fruit. While we would have preferred higher sugar levels on the reds, the wines have good concentration at this early stage—and most importantly do not taste underripe.”

Ting notes that during harvest, “intermittent rain posed challenges throughout, but especially when it was time to pick reds. Heavy rains threatened vineyards on the eastern side of the state a few times, while central Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley saw less heavy rain. When rain threatens, winemakers sometimes have to decide to either pick early or take the risk of letting grapes hang through the rain. Good vineyard management practices were key to producing healthy grapes that could hang through rain and dry out before picking.”

Which 2016 red wines show promise at this point?

“Petit verdot was the star for us this vintage,” says Vrooman. “It escaped most of the spring damage and the tiny berries ripened leisurely while maintaining good acid.”

Ting also points to petit verdot. “The wines that are most exciting in the winery right now are the petit verdots and tannats. These are showing concentrated fruit upfront with a lot of structure backing them up. With so much tannin they still need time to age in barrel, then in bottle, in order to show their full complexity. But, at this stage, they are promising,” Ting says.

Finot is pleased with his cabernet franc. “Overall, I think the cab franc performed the best. I’m very happy with the way it tastes.”

Finot is also enjoying one of King Family Vineyards’ flagship wines: the 2016 Meritage, a Bordeaux-style blend based on merlot, cabernet franc and petit verdot. “I was surprised how much structure the Meritage was showing.” After tasting the 2016 Meritage, he says he likes the way the grape varieties complement each other. “It shows how blending can help consistency in the variable weather we get here in Virginia.”

Erin Scala is the sommelier at Fleurie and Petit Pois. She holds the Diploma of Wines & Spirits, is a Certified Sake Specialist and writes about beverages on her blog, thinking-drinking.com.

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Living

Melissa Boardman gets ahead of the latest wine trend

With years of wine experience, Melissa Boardman brings exciting choices to the lists at Keswick Hall. Photo by Amy Jackson

Local sommelier Melissa Boardman is about to celebrate one year at Keswick Hall, and she’s used that time to build up a dynamic wine program. She organizes several wine lists: a grand list for the hall, a members-only list, a by-the-glass list for the villa and another by-the-glass list for Fossett’s restaurant. She has continued to pour local classics such as Barboursville Vineyards chardonnay and Keswick Hall’s special label made by Michael Shaps. Boardman has added some higher-end pours that are pricey, but still bargains in the fine-wine category; you’ll find Trefethen Napa cabernet sauvignon for $20 a glass and Le Mesnil Grand Cru Champagne for $22 a glass.

Boardman wasn’t always interested in wine. She studied political science in college and planned to go to law school and work in environmental law. But the closer she got to law school and the more lawyers she talked to, “none of the environmental law lawyers seemed very happy.” As she worked in restaurants during college, wine became more intriguing while law school grew less appealing. One day, while working at Siro’s in Saratoga, New York, “I bumped into someone who had just been hired at Morrell wine [shop] in Manhattan,” she said. Hearing about her friend’s job, something clicked. “That’s what I wanted to do,” she says. Soon after, she moved to Brooklyn and landed her own job at Morrell.

The new career opportunity and the Manhattan location were formative for Boardman. “New York City was such a good place to get in the business,” she says. “You get to work with all these gurus, and you learn so much.” She points to Robert Millman as a role model. He and others at Morrell encouraged Boardman to taste often and learn to trust her palate. She spent seven years working at Morrell, developing a deep and professional appreciation for wine.

But she also watched the city go through some of its darkest moments. On September 10, 2001, she attended a Yankees game that got rained out. The following morning she woke to the 9/11 World Trade Center attack just across the East River from her borough. It was a devastating time, but she stayed in New York City and watched firsthand how the city worked to heal from tragedy.

Ready for a change in 2007, she opened up a tapas and wine bar in Key West, Florida. Then, after the 2008 recession, she moved to San Francisco and worked at Spruce, a Michelin-star restaurant with a storied wine list. But a desire to live in a more rural place led her to Virginia in February 2015. At first, she worried about finding amenities like good bread in Charlottesville, “but you get good bread here. I was also worried about good cocktails, but you can get those here, too,” Boardman says with a smile.

But there is one hole that Boardman thinks needs to be filled: “We need a natural wine bar,” she says. Boardman enjoys low-intervention wines (natural wine is made without chemicals and uses minimal technology), and has incorporated some into Keswick Hall’s repertoire. You’ll find low-intervention wines from Occhipinti, Texier, Birichino, Château d’Orschwihr, Olga Raffault, Rousset-Peyraguey, Rolet and others. “My first wine dinner here was a natural wine dinner,” she says. “People were skeptical, but after trying the wines they just couldn’t believe how good they are.”

At Keswick Hall, her Wine Wednesdays are becoming more popular as the group explores a new theme each week, and her monthly wine dinners are noteworthy, such as last month’s truffle dinner, paired mostly with nebbiolo. Her wine list focus is currently targeted on building up the Bordeaux section, but you’ll also find some nice Piemonte selections because, she admits, “My love is Barolo.”

Though far from her original aspirations for environmental law, Boardman’s career still champions the environment by bringing low-intervention wines into the cellar and dining room, helping to promote small winegrowers who farm sustainably.

Erin Scala is the sommelier at Fleurie and Petit Pois. She holds the Diploma of Wines & Spirits, is a Certified Sake Specialist and writes about beverages on her blog, thinking-drinking.com

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Living

Ankida Ridge survives a threat to vine and home

Last month’s Amherst wildfires came within 30 feet of consuming Ankida Ridge Vineyards. “The miracle is that not one home was lost, no injuries,” says Christine Vrooman. Photos courtesy Ankida Ridge Vineyards

In the darkness of night on Saturday, November 19, Christine Vrooman of Ankida Ridge Vineyards looked out her bedroom window and noticed a fire on the southwest face of Mount Pleasant. From the comfort of her bed, the unnerving scene did not seem to be an immediate threat to her home, her winery or her special vineyard plot of about two acres that produces some of the finest pinot noir and chardonnay in Virginia.

Nearby, the U.S. Forest Service teamed up with the Virginia Department of Forestry, and later a Type 3 task force from Montana. They rushed to establish strategic fire lines. Fire lines—created by making lines of cleared ground at the head of a fire—can sometimes be enough to contain a forest fire.

But Vrooman’s concern grew as she watched the flames jump a fire line and spread to the neighboring mountain. At this point, her family’s home and adjacent vineyard were still protected, but the blaze continued to encroach on their land. “We spent Sunday watching the flames and smoke grow to our north, east and west,” she says.

The Vrooman family sprang into action to save their house and farm. A beloved flock of sheep that grazes on weeds and fertilizes the vineyards was shepherded to a safer area. By Monday, the fire grew closer from the west. “We worked in the backyard all day stomping out and shoveling little flareups,” Vrooman says. Firefighters flew overhead and dumped water on the Vroomans’ backyard—3,000 gallons at a time.

As darkness fell, the family felt the worst had been avoided. “We thought we were safe,” Vrooman says. “But our eyes kept going to the smoldering hollowed-out pine tree behind us. We watched it into the evening hours,” Vrooman says. “Then the winds picked up again, and one big gust swirled the embers from the tree like a mini tornado, spewing them everywhere. After that gust, at about 9:30pm, we could see the bank where the helicopter had dumped the water behind the yard suddenly become all aglow. It spread quickly. It was growing fast toward our backyard.”

Vrooman called 9-1-1. Swift decisions needed to be made. The family gathered their evacuation bags, and shared their priorities with the firefighters. “I did tell the early arrivals that if they had to choose between saving the house or the vineyard, they were to save the vineyard,” says Vrooman. “The house can be rebuilt in a year. To get back what we would have lost in the vineyard, it would have been three to five years, with no income during that time.”

With the fire 80 yards from the home, they thought they had enough time to evacuate. Then shouts came from the other side of the building: “It’s behind the house!” shouted Vrooman’s husband, Dennis, as part of the fire encroached from the rear.

“The flames were leaping in the air all along the bank just behind the house, about 40 feet away,” she says. “It grew to about 30 feet from the house before the local fire companies made it up the mountain. Bless them all. I was never so happy to see that line of cars, trucks and lights come up our road.” She watched from the winery, where she and her daughters took refuge.

“The firefighters worked for a couple hours and felt we were out of danger and would be safe to stay at the house. We took turns staying awake all night to monitor.”

But they still weren’t in the clear. The next morning, the fire traveled down to the vineyard. Task force firefighters got there in time to stop it at the eastern fence line, about 20 feet from the vines.

“We spent the next couple days watching in every direction for anything smoldering, glowing,” Vrooman says. The fire finally moved away from the winery and the vineyard, but thick smoke hung in the air and at times burned their eyes as they worked to restore things to normalcy.

“The miracle is that not one home was lost, no injuries,” Vrooman marvels. “Those firefighters from all across the land became our friends. We kept a pot of hot coffee ready. The Amherst community baked and baked and these guys were well fed. We had several states based here: Alaska, Montana, West Virginia, Minnesota and more. They are our heroes.”

The forest fire grew to consume 11,229 acres over 10 days. The now-burnt ground surrounds Ankida Ridge on most sides, evidence of the flames that came within 20 to 30 feet of the vineyard and the house. For the Vrooman family, coming this close to losing their vineyard amplifies the meaning of its name—Ankida is an ancient Sumerian word for “where heaven and earth join.” Last month, they seemed to have a little help from the former.

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Living

Virginia Tech’s impact on what, where and when to grow

Virginia Tech professor Tony Wolf’s experiments and monitoring of Virginia terroir have an ongoing influence on our region’s winemakers. Courtesy of Virginia Tech

You’ll often find a university at the epicenter of many of the world’s great wine regions. Learning institutions help drive and fund research and increase wine quality. Since 1905, the University of California, Davis has conducted vine and wine research just outside of Sacramento. Its findings have had an immeasurable impact on winemaking in Napa and Sonoma. Hochschule Geisenheim University, a wine-focused institute since 1872, sits in the heart of German wine country and has a far-reaching influence throughout Germany. The University of Bordeaux offers a master’s in vineyard and winery management or a doctorate in oenology and viticulture. Cornell University offers programs in viticulture and has buttressed the explosive wine scene in the Finger Lakes region. In Virginia, we have Virginia Tech, where a significant part of the agriculture program focuses on grapes.

VT’s influence on Virginia’s wine industry can, at times, be difficult to pinpoint. Much of the research and information is freely available online, so winemakers may read an article, apply that knowledge in their own vineyard, and you’d never know that VT had a subtle impact on the wine you drink. In speaking to movers and shakers in the Virginia wine scene, their responses indicated two main areas where VT’s research shapes our industry: viticulture and winemaking research results that winemakers can apply to their products, and VT’s site selection-tool that helps wineries pinpoint great places for grape growing.

At VT, “Tony Wolf and Bruce Zoecklein (now retired) were major contributors to the Virginia wine industry’s growth and improvement in the 1990s and 2000s,” says wine writer Dave McIntyre. “Their research influenced the selection of vineyard sites and grape varieties, as well as techniques in the wineries.”

When I contacted Joy Ting, enologist at Michael Shaps Wineworks, and asked her about VT’s impact, she laughed because she was holding Zoecklein’s article on sparkling wine, which she was in the middle of referencing before tackling a sparkling wine project.

“For me, [the] biggest impact has been the breadth of information about which Bruce Zoecklein wrote,” says Ting. “It doesn’t matter what question I have about wine chemistry, Bruce has written a paper about it. His academic research was vast, but he also wrote Enology Notes, a free online database of short articles collected from his newsletters over the years. It’s a great topical reference for all things wine chemistry. If that wasn’t enough, Bruce was (and still is, despite his retirement) always available to answer questions personally.”

Emily Pelton, winemaker at Veritas Vineyards & Winery, graduated from Virginia Tech and studied with Zoecklein. As a founding member of the Winemaker’s Research Exchange, Pelton maintains a commitment to research and its practical application to Virginia wine.

Virginia’s unique climate faces a host of challenges that many other wine regions don’t confront, such as hurricanes, humidity, hail, frost and local pests such as turkeys, bugs and deer. “When I read the enology literature, much of the work is done in areas whose viticulture is so different that I wonder if the results really apply here,” Ting says. “Also, some of the grape varieties we feature are not widely used elsewhere in the U.S. (viognier, cabernet franc, petit manseng). Virginia Tech helps bridge that gap. The research they do is driven by the issues we see here.”

“Tony Wolf’s research at his experimental vineyard near Winchester, along with his regular updates on weather conditions and disease threats, continue to help growers cope with the challenges Virginia’s tricky environment throws at them,” says McIntyre.

“Their work with vineyard pests and controls has made clean wine making possible,” says local winemaker Jake Busching, with Michael Shaps Wineworks. “We are constantly finding new things that like to damage our fruit. Virginia Tech has been there to find fixes and new methodology for remediation every time.”

VT’s focus on local challenges for vineyards offers practical and custom-tailored research results to winemakers around the state. The application of this research has, in part, been the wind in the sails of Virginia’s recent wine boom.

VT has also developed “a site-selection tool that helps you to see if a specific plot of land is good for growing grapes,” notes Ting. “It basically allows you to locate the plot by address or latitude and longitude, then use a drawing tool to specify where on that site you want to plant. From there, it uses nationally available climate and soil databases to help you see if the site is suitable for grape growing. Since site selection is so important, this is a great first step.”

Ben Jordan, winemaker at Early Mountain Vineyards, thinks the future of higher quality in Virginia wine is to secure the best vineyard sites that aren’t necessarily right next to the winery. He points to VT’s online site-evaluation tool and Wolf as a resource in site selection. “I have been trying to find an awesome site so we can push quality,” he says.

Like so many other wine centers around the globe, the academic world has the ability to ignite a complex and vital relationship between those who study wine and viticulture and those who operate wineries. Many of the world’s great regions thrive because of a healthy link to universities, and it will be fascinating to see how the relationship between Virginia Tech and local wineries continues to develop in the future.

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Living

Horton Vineyards adds variety to Virginia wine scene

Horton Vineyards has brought a wealth of unique grape varieties to our area. Winemaker Michael Heny points to norton, pinotage, petit manseng, viognier, touriga nacional and tannat as some of his favorite grapes to grow. Photo by Rammelkamp Foto

At Horton Vineyards, you’ll find some of the most important vines in Virginia. On my first visit to see them —back in January 2015—a wind ripped through the dormant vines and stung my cheeks. I wrapped my scarf tighter and scribbled notes with numb fingers, trying not to miss a single detail. I was on a pilgrimage to visit the oldest viognier vineyard in Virginia.

Horton winemaker Michael Heny led me on a tour through several of the vineyard blocks. Had you been there, you might have wondered about my growing glee as we approached the viognier vines, because it wasn’t much to see this time of year. There was no sprawling vista, no awe-inspiring sunset and no lush vineyard bursting with green tendrils. Like a leafless forest in winter, dormant vines look like dead brown twigs. But special twigs, they were. As I glimpsed the wooden sign labeled “viognier,” my heart beat faster and I may have even jumped in the air. Then, like a true wine nerd, I asked Heny to take my picture with the viognier vines.

To me, they were more than dormant twigs. If you survey the Virginia wine world as a whole, you’ll find a powerful viognier momentum and a multitude of viognier bottlings that have come to define a large portion of the local white wine scene. It all started somewhere, and now I stood at the epicenter.

But how did it all begin?

After experimenting with some home vineyards in the 1980s, Dennis Horton prepared to launch Horton Vineyards. “It was always his dream to have grapes,” says Sharon Horton, Dennis’ wife and Horton Vineyards’ vineyard manager.

He visited France’s Rhône Valley and the viognier grape variety piqued his interest. He read up on Jancis Robinson’s wine books, then took the plunge. In 1990, he planted vidal, cabernet franc and own-rooted norton—21 acres in total. “The viognier went in in ’91,” Dennis says. Soon after, a great vintage garnered global attention. “Nineteen ninety-three was one of the great years. The ’93 Viognier put Horton and Virginia wine on the map. People still talk about it.” After 1993, viognier became more popular throughout the state and took on a life of its own. Dennis chuckles as he remembers winery visitors commenting on his genesis viognier bottling, “‘Oh, you’ve got viognier here, too,’ they’d say.”

When Dennis established Horton Vineyards, he was in the company of a little more than 40 active wineries in Virginia (today there are more than 250). His goal was to plant many grape varieties, and through trial and error find which varieties were best suited to the local soil and climate. Over the years, there have been hits and misses—a necessary process in any emerging wine region. Those first gambles on norton, vidal, cabernet franc and viognier were certainly hits, “and they work,” Dennis says.

The norton vines at Horton are also in the realm of heritage vines. The norton grape, one of the few grapes native to Virginia, was popular in Virginia before Prohibition, but disappeared as quickly as the wineries after the Volstead Act. Some pockets of norton growing in Missouri—Dennis’ home state—caught his interest, and he thought, “It should be brought back here.”

Not all of the unique grape varieties have caught on in the state, though some have become iconic specialties at Horton Vineyards. Take, for instance, rkatsiteli, a white grape with flavorful skin tannins from the country of Georgia. After extreme cold temperatures killed off some of Horton’s vines in 1996, Dennis reached out to Dr. Konstantin Frank Wine Cellars, a cool-climate New York Finger Lakes winery, and sourced some cold-hearty rkatsiteli vines that would be unlikely to give up the ghost in a freezing winter.

Today, Heny operates the winery production, and he and Sharon point to norton, pinotage, petit manseng, viognier and touriga nacional as some of their favorite grapes to grow. Heny has also grown particularly fond of tannat: “Year in, year out, tannat is our most consistent red,” he says, “and oftentimes our most exciting.”

I’m particularly fond of their work with petit manseng. Each year, they make a dry to slightly off-dry wine, depending on how the fruit comes in. Earlier this year, Heny opened up some library vintages of Horton Petit Manseng and poured them side-by-side in a special tasting for many local winemakers. Their ageability and beauty will certainly turn some palates to a deeper appreciation of petit manseng, just as Horton’s work with viognier and norton have influenced the Virginia wine landscape.

The experimental spirit at Horton Vineyards, and a willingness to confront the unknown, have brought a wealth of unique grape varieties to our tables. The vineyard has had an incredible influence behind the scenes, shaping and guiding the current inventory of grape varieties that define today’s Virginia wine. Horton continues to make a plethora of wines: now-popular wines like viognier, and lesser-known wines such as rkatsiteli. As we spoke about the broad focus on many grape varieties, and the many different wines in production at Horton, a passing thought from Sharon rang true: “Everyone has to have different tastes, or it would be a dull world, wouldn’t it?”

Erin Scala is the sommelier at Fleurie and Petit Pois. She holds the Diploma of Wines & Spirits, is a Certified Sake Specialist and writes about beverages on her blog, thinking-drinking.com

Categories
Living

New momentum has Virginia winemakers racing to meet demand

Robert Harllee of Market Street Wineshops has watched an increase in Virginia wine sales at his various locations. Photo by Martyn Kyle

As Virginia’s tobacco industry wanes, the food and wine sector builds momentum. With more than 80 cheesemakers in the state, an intense focus on sustainability at farms such as Polyface, Free Union Grass, Radical Roots and Wolf Creek, and a large, passionate beverage industry, the state is poised to contribute a unique chapter to America’s evolving culinary story. Virginia’s wine industry, in particular, brings much to the table and shows no signs of slowing down.

Restaurants around the state have noticed increased demand for Virginia wine in the last decade. Some early champions of local wine recall the first Virginia wines on their lists: Ivy Inn wine director Farrell Vangelopoulos carried early bottlings from Barboursville and Whitehall vineyards in the mid-to-late 1990s. And C&O’s former sommelier, Elaine Futhey, remembers making the drive to Linden Vineyards to pick up dessert wine.

Today, most restaurants carry between five and 12 different Virginia wine labels on their list. Justin Ross at Parallel 38 pours 12 state wines by the glass, including some on tap. Neal Wavra’s highly anticipated new restaurant, Field & Main, in Marshall, pours mostly Virginia wines by the glass—18, to be exact, plus four Virginia ciders. Booth Hardy, of Richmond’s Barrel Thief, has a penchant for rosé and has enjoyed watching that category grow over the last five years.

Wineries are feeling the momentum of the industry. “We’ve more than doubled our production in less than 10 years, and it is still a challenge to meet demand,” says King Family Vineyards winemaker Matthieu Finot. “But it’s nice to be able to focus on making a high-quality product as we grow, knowing that the demand is behind us.”

Rachel Stinson Vrooman, winemaker at Stinson Vineyards, is also under pressure to meet high-volume demands. “We opened our tasting room in 2011 and have seen a crazy growth curve in the industry since then,” says Vrooman. “It’s almost impossible to predict when and where it will level out. Our total sales in 2015 were up 27 percent from 2014, which can be challenging to maintain in terms of production and inventory. We’ve tried to slow things down in 2016 by cutting back on advertising. Agritourism is strong, and more and more people are seeking out specific wines and even specific vintages.”

State statistics mirror the feeling of growth among wineries and restaurants. Governor Terry McAuliffe recently announced record sales for fiscal year 2016, “with more than 556,500 cases, or over 6.6 million bottles, sold,” representing a 6 percent increase from 2015 sales and a 34 percent increase since 2010.

Local vintage variation likely plays a part in the numbers. Some of last year’s growth might reflect the outstanding 2015 vintage that brought in a large, high-quality crop. And it’s possible we may see a dip next year, because early-season frost damage decreased the 2016 harvest in many areas across the state.

But aside from supply statistics, Robert Harllee of Market Street Wineshops points to consumer trends driving a new kind of demand. At his stores, he’s noticed that “people are making more regular purchases of Virginia wine, and many seem to be younger people. Ten years ago you’d see people getting a bottle of Virginia wine for a special-occasion dinner or a special gift, but now I’m seeing more people get Virginia wine for everyday drinking.”

And the variety of Virginia wine has expanded, which attracts a broader audience. “In the last couple years,” Harllee says, “we’re seeing a lot of unique grape varieties outside of the classic international varieties, like Jump Mountain’s grüner veltliner, lemberger at Ox-Eye, vermentino and fiano at Barboursville, and petit manseng and nebbiolo are doing quote well with several producers. I’m drinking a little more Virginia wine now, myself.”

At Wine Warehouse, “we try to have a selection of Virginia wines from around the state,” says manager Geoff Macilwaine. “One of our better sellers is Lovingston Winery, and the winemaker, Riaan [Rossouw], we think, is a terrific winemaker.” Macilwaine points to Lovingston’s 2010 Meritage as a benchmark local example.

The momentum of Virginia’s local wine trade is a confluence of increased interest in wine, high-quality production from dedicated wineries and support from the state level. “Virginia is making intelligent, inspired wines,” Vrooman says, “and the word is starting to get out.”

One of the most exciting aspects of the wine boom is how it fits in with the other emerging industries in the state—it pairs perfectly with all of the carefully farmed vegetables, cheeses and meats produced by thoughtful local farmers. Virginia food and wine forces are joining together in restaurants, and with all of the creative new pairings out there, we just might be watching the genesis of a new food and wine center of the United States.