Author: Erin Scala

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Knife & Fork Magazines

Perfect pairings: Charlottesville wine (with a side of local cuisine)

Parallel 38 owner Justin Ross says a glass of Michael Shaps Cabernet Franc is the right accompaniment to the restaurant's roasted pork belly dish. Photo: Rammelkamp Foto

You may have explored the Virginia Wine Trail, but if you want a meal with your wine, you can sample area selections at a few choice restaurants around Charlottesville. Here are some must-visit places for great food and wine pairings.

Wine and brine

Start your food and wine crawl with some raw oysters at Public Fish & Oyster. “My go-to pairing with oysters is Thibaut-Janisson sparkling chardonnay,” says owner Daniel Kaufman. “It has a biscuity-lemony quality and acts in many ways as a mignonette, cutting through the salinity and adding to the briny goodness.” If you’re not in the mood for bubbles, try the Veritas Sauvignon Blanc by the glass. It’s one of his most popular wines and also pairs great with oysters.

You can find Thibaut-Janisson bubbly on Fossett’s wine list at Keswick Hall, too, where sommelier Melissa Boardman will deftly pop the cork to pair the sparkling wine perfectly with the patio view (and maybe the Eastern Virginia crab cakes, too).

Honor the past

Make your way to downtown’s storied C&O, which recently celebrated 40 years. In addition to its rich history, it was one of the first local restaurants to strongly feature Virginia wine, starting in the 1980s under former wine director Elaine Futhey. A team of merry oenophiles, led by Sarah Thackeray, carries the torch today, and continues to honor local wines.

“I’m digging the 2014 Madeleine’s Chardonnay from Breaux Vineyards,” says C&O manager Jenn Lockwood. “Its crisp finish is great with our monkfish entrée.”

The American wine list at The Ivy Inn has featured Virginia wines since 1995. Wine director Farrell Vangelopoulos has carried Barboursville Vineyards and White Hall Vineyards since the beginning, and she has witnessed the scope of local wines grow to include a wide variety of wineries and grape varieties.

“Michael Shaps, Early Mountain Vineyards, Blenheim, Lovingston and King Family Vineyards are other very popular wines on our list,” Vangelopoulos says. “One of my new favorites is Barren Ridge Touriga. It has a great mouth feel and body for a Virginia red and is priced affordably.” And, it would be delicious with The Ivy Inn’s mustard-herb-crusted rack of lamb.

Palate primer

For a crash course in Virginia wine, head to Parallel 38, where you will find one of the widest selections of Virginia wines by the glass. Out of its 150 glass pours, 12 are local. The restaurant is also forging ahead in the keg-wine category (yes, that is a thing) and carries four Virginia wines on tap, including Early Mountain Rosé and Blenheim Chardonnay.

Sommelier and owner Justin Ross has a few personal favorites. “I’m a big fan of Michael Shaps Cabernet Franc with our roasted pork belly,” Ross says. “The acidity cuts through the Autumn Olive Farm pork belly fat, the earthiness in the wine complements the cipollini onion with the dish and the sumac spices make a bright citrus note jump off the palate.”

In chorus with several other wine directors around town, Ross is also a fan of the Pinot Noir from Ankida Ridge: “It’s out of this world.” He suggests trying it with Parallel’s mushroom flatbread pizza with Bear Dog Farms mushrooms, sweet onion, feta, fines herbs and balsamic vinegar. “The combination of the earthy mushrooms and sweet onions pair well with the acid and forest-floor aromas in the Pinot Noir,” he says.

Stinson Vineyards' Sauvignon Blanc pairs beautifully with a plate of local cheeses. Photo: Rammelkamp Foto
Stinson Vineyards’ Sauvignon Blanc pairs beautifully with a plate of local cheeses. Photo: Rammelkamp Foto
Cheese please

Charlottesville has a wealth of places to make a nice wine-and-cheese match. Visit Stinson Vineyards’ tasting room, nestled on a historic property in Crozet, for a bottle of local Sauvignon Blanc and see what local cheeses are in the fridge. If you’re near downtown, stop by Timbercreek Market for cheesemonger Nadjeeb Chouaf’s recommendation with a bottle of Blenheim Chardonnay, or see what Sara Adduci at Feast! has behind her cheese counter. At The Local, pair the cheese platter with a bottle of Pollak Vineyards Petit Verdot or Horton Vineyards Norton.   

The final stop

Top off your local wine tour with dessert at Fleurie, where pastry chef Serge Torres makes a molten mango cake that begs for a glass of Linden Vineyards’ late harvest Petit Manseng. [Full disclosure: This author writes the Fleurie wine list, raids the dessert station at Fleurie several times a week and is on a mission to get more people drinking Petit Manseng.] Petit Manseng has loads of natural acidity and grows extremely well in Virginia’s various climates. Harvested late, its color turns to gold and its aromas go from tart pineapple to candied peach, but the acid remains and highlights the brightness of the mango coulis you’ll find hidden inside of Torres’ molten treat. Talk about a sweet finish.

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.

The evolving picture

Local wine professionals have noticed a change in drinking habits as Virginia wine trails become more popular. At Foods of All Nations, Virginia wines account for about 10 percent of the selection, and wine director Tom Walters has built up a steady clientele of local wine enthusiasts. “The people who want to buy local,” he says, “always buy local.” His top-selling local wines are Barboursville Vineyards Pinot Grigio and White Hall Vineyards Chardonnay.

On the restaurant side of things, there is a much different reception to Virginia wines than when C&O’s Elaine Futhey first started putting them on wine lists in the 1980s. “Since I’ve opened,” Parallel 38 owner Justin Ross says, “more people ask for local wines. I’d say that about 85 percent of people from out of town are asking for something local to start out with,” and part of this trend can point to Virginia wine’s increasing importance in the United States wine market.

“There are some great wineries around here getting national press, like Early Mountain,” Ross notes. (Early Mountain Vineyards recently won the distinction of No. 1 Tasting Room in the nation by USA Today.)

As vibrant local wine trails increase enthusiasm for Virginia wines in area restaurants, and as wine professionals increasingly look to local wineries to fill key areas of their wine list, endless opportunities unfold to eat and drink local in the Charlottesville dining scene.—E.S.

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Living Uncategorized

Ribolla gialla and the prospects of an Octagon bianco

Luca Paschina sets his sights on a bianco version of Barboursville's highly regarded Octagon label. Photo: Amy Jackson

I heard about a patch of ribolla gialla vines in Barboursville, and I had to go and see them to find out what was happening with these special grapes.

Luca Paschina, the winemaker at Barboursville Vineyards, first tasted wine made from ribolla gialla about 30 years ago. “It was the mid-1980s in Italy, and I was dining at a restaurant that brought in wines from all over Italy,” says Paschina. “This was unique, because many restaurants focus on their local wines.” It glowed a deep yellow, and Paschina recalls of the grape variety, “It had a name you can’t forget.”

Ribolla gialla (ree-BOWL-ah jee-AH-lah) is a white grape variety that ripens to gold. It has an unusual amount of tannins for a white, which translates to a wide variety of wine styles. It can be made into a dense, dry wine, or it can be fermented with the skins, resulting in a rich amber color and lush tannins.

Affectionately called “ribolla” by those in the industry, the grape has a history in written papal and tax records that can be traced as far back as 1296. Over the last 700 centuries, ribolla’s popularity has waned and waxed in its likely birthplace of Friuli, Italy’s “bootstrap” in the northeast that borders Slovenia. Plantings thrive in the region, but you don’t find the grape in many other places.

You do, however, find some prized ribolla vines in California. Ribolla owes its California plantings to the late George Vare. After an inspiring visit to Friuli—Vare had been on the hunt for pinot grigio—he sourced some ribolla gialla from Josko Gravner in Italy, and ultimately grafted over his pinot grigio. Vare’s love of ribolla affected his winemaking friends, and today you can count several producers of California ribolla.

The California ribolla interest was partly sparked by Gravner, a winemaker who became disillusioned with modern winemaking and went in the opposite direction. He traveled to the country of Georgia, studying its vineyards and the once-common technique of fermenting in clay amphoras. Gravner has steadfastly produced unique ribolla bottlings since the 1990s, and his philosophy has spread to others throughout Europe, and now the United States.

The California vine nursery Novavine took note of the movement and started cultivating ribolla. Nurseries are often the unsung heroes of the wine business—they select and test vine clones that will be ideal for wineries, then wineries purchase ready-to-plant vines that have already been through a quarantine period, ensuring their health and quality. Many of the grape plantings you see at local wineries wouldn’t be possible without such nurseries.

Paschina took note of Novavine’s unique Italian varieties, and in 2015 he brought ribolla gialla vines to Barboursville. When new vines arrive from a nursery, they don’t look like much. They’ve been grafted onto special root stocks, they are already 1 year old, and they look like bundles of twigs. Paschina planted the experimental ribolla vines in late March/early April 2015, after working the ground and preparing it so the young “roots can dig and develop,” he says.

I asked to see the ribolla and Paschina obliged, but as we climbed into a truck he warned that I might not be impressed with the fruit after the crippling series of frosts Virginia experienced this past spring. The vines have been in the ground less than a year and a half and haven’t had much time to develop.

We pulled up to the small patch of baby ribolla vines and were delighted to find healthy looking plants with promising fruit. Despite the frosts, and the youth of the vines, the vines seemed to be making themselves at home and a sense of nascent possibility hung in the air around the bunches. Usually, you don’t get enough fruit to work with until vines are three to five years old. But perhaps the ribolla might find a home in the upcoming 2016 vintage.

Paschina plucked a ripe ribolla berry from the vine for me to taste. The skin was gold and tasty, and slightly tannic in a chalky way. The fragrant juice was sweet and delicious, and the seeds had started to turn from green to nutty brown. These wine grapes had character.

What will Paschina do with the ribolla? It’s too soon to tell. The vines are so young it’s not possible to foresee how they will perform in the long run.

Paschina pauses for a moment. “I’m still deciding,” he says. He might make a 100 percent ribolla gialla wine, but, if so, he would likely make a crisp white wine instead of a Gravner-style amber wine with extended skin contact.

He also shared his thoughts on a different bottling. For a while now Paschina has been fomenting the idea of a Barboursville Octagon wine made from white grapes. An Octagon bianco, if you will. He’ll likely blend several different Barboursville grapes, including a hefty amount of the special Italian varieties he’s been working with, such as the ribolla gialla.

Barboursville Vineyards’ Octagon red blend has become a cornerstone ambassador of Virginia’s wine industry. Could an Octagon bianco also become a Virginia benchmark wine? And what could this mean for ribolla gialla, a little-known grape with, as Paschina says, “a name you can’t forget”?

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

Local winemakers forge a groundbreaking research exchange

Emily Pelton is one of the founding members of the Virginia Winemaker’s Research Exchange, a group making an impact on the future of wine. Photo: Eric Kelley

The idea for a research exchange sparked when a few local winemakers gathered to share their bottles and ideas. For the first couple of years, the group included Kirsty Harmon (Blenheim), Emily Pelton (Veritas), Matthieu Finot (King Family), Ben Jordan (Early Mountain), Scott Dwyer (Pollak), Jake Busching (Michael Shaps), Michael Heny (Horton) and Stephen Barnard (Keswick). They’d bring a unique wine experiment for the group to try, and these friendly exchanges helped hone each winemaker’s approach.

Without a control bottle, it was difficult to tell if the experiment created the difference in taste, or if it was something else giving the wine its flavor—like a different barrel or the growing conditions that year. “It’s important to have a formal process,” says Dwyer. “Before, when we were doing it informally, there wasn’t a control process.” So, each of them carried out a specific trial that harvest, and came back with a control bottle to taste side-by-side with the experiment bottle. Thus the Winemaker’s Research Exchange was born.

“Now, we each test a single variable,” says Dwyer. They bring a control bottle and an experiment bottle, with the only difference being their chosen variable.

What are they looking for? Each winery is interested in different research, and the beauty of this exchange is that the wineries can focus on a project important to them.

Some have chosen to test fermentation vessels. How will the same grapes taste when they are fermented in, say, concrete containers versus steel containers?

Some wineries are looking for ways to use less sulfur without sacrificing the wine’s stability. If grapes are not pressed immediately after being harvested, they’ll be prone to spoilage, and this is a key moment when most winemakers use sulfur to preserve their fruit.

Some of the trials test other natural antioxidants and preservation methods. If a different preservation method yields an equally delicious or better wine with lower sulfur levels and fewer inputs, then all winemakers in the state benefit from that research and can choose to use that method if they wish.

Other wineries have chosen to test ways to improve the color of wine. It’s long been a trick in the northern Rhône region of France to add a small percentage of white grapes to a red wine fermentation. This adds some aromatics and helps stabilize the color. Can Virginia wineries use grape co-fermentations to improve color?

Usually, a winery will have the resources to perform one or two experiments each harvest. With the research exchange, winemakers benefit from the results of dozens of experiments each harvest—far expanding the experimental scope of what one winery can accomplish each year.

You can find published academic studies on some of these topics, but the exchange takes it one step further and brings these trials to life with tastings. Sure, a winemaker can read a scientist’s description of how wine will be different if fermented in concrete versus steel, but tasting this difference can really drive home the concept and influence a winery to change its status quo.

“At the end of the day, the tasting is really emphasized,” says Pelton. “We want to make sure that you are actually tasting the variable that you are testing.”

Pelton has been delighted with the success of the project. “The coolest part was how many people showed up to our tastings,” she says. The wines are tasted and evaluated blind. “It’s hard to pour your wine blind in front of your peers,” say Pelton. “And yet, we kept having large turnouts.”

The blind tasting helps keep the topics in focus. “We didn’t want it to turn into a competition,” says Dwyer. “We wanted it to be an open exchange of research.”

Aside from the obvious benefit of personal palate development, the organized tastings give winemakers valuable feedback. “If 75 percent of the tasters preferred the trial over the control, that means something,” Dwyer says.

Setting up organized trials took time and organization, and in 2014 the group received a grant from the Monticello Wine Trail and founded the Winemaker’s Research Exchange. The power of this idea gained so much momentum that in 2015 the Virginia Wine Board funded the group. “It got more rigorous,” Dwyer says.

“In year two, we tightened up our consistency by ensuring that all analysis was done at the same laboratory,” says Pelton.

The wine industry around the state took note. “The Virginia Wine Board was excited to see the initial research and encouraged a statewide project,” Pelton says. “They are investing in quality wine and they pushed us to grow.” This year the group expanded to include all of Virginia, and formalized its name as the Virginia Winemaker’s Research Exchange. The VWRE split the state into five regions, each with its own regional director.

This all points to good things for Virginia wine-lovers. Rarely in the wine world do you find such a systematic focus on quality improvement. The VWRE is also committed to transparency: Its results are available on its website, winemakersresearch exchange.com.

Midway into the group’s third formal year, it’s attracting attention from several other states—mostly from winemakers curious about their specific trials and winemaking organizations interested in the overall model. This idea, hatched by a few innovative Monticello winemakers, is not only benefitting Virginia wine, but also has the potential to benefit the United States’ entire wine industry.

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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Knife & Fork Magazines

The varied vine: Chardonnay’s vast appeal—from France to Central Virginia

One of the most widely planted grapes in the world, Chardonnay grows well in a variety of climates and is capable of immense stylistic versatility: It can be a fresh, zesty, easy-drinking table wine; it can be picked ripe and heavily oaked to produce a toasty, buttery wine; or, if it’s planted on a great site, it can produce some of the most profound and thought- provoking wines in the world.

Indeed, Chardonnay was made famous by the intensely structured French wines found in Burgundy, where Chardonnay from the Côte d’Or’s limestone escarpment can mesmerize. For centuries, Burgundian Chardonnay from tiny climates in the Côte d’Or—places like Montrachet, Meursault and Corton-Charlamagne—have been important cornerstones of the global wine market.

In the 1800s, a trove of French vine cuttings took root in other areas of the world—including a wealth of plantings in the United States. More recently, Chardonnay became a major player in the United States’ post-Prohibition wine market when California put American Chardonnay on the map at the 1976 Judgment of Paris. Today, you’ll find it in just about every country with a winemaking industry, and in almost every state in the U.S.—including Virginia.

Local vines

Chardonnay vines were some of the first to be planted in our state, and many of them are still producing today. Take, for instance, Linden Vineyards’ Hardscrabble. Owner and winemaker Jim Law works with some of the oldest Chardonnay vines in Virginia, planted just outside his Northern Virginia winery more than 30 years ago, to produce one of his most popular wines. Hardscrabble is delicious on release, but it also has tremendous aging potential and can truly come into its own six to 10 years after the harvest year. Law’s wines are philosophic. They don’t always taste the same each year; he makes them to reflect the unique Virginia vintages. If you have the patience to collect them, a vertical of Linden Hardscrabble Chardonnays can be a true exploration of Virginia’s recent wine history.

Closer to home, in Madison County, Early Mountain Vineyards is producing some of Virginia’s most exciting Chardonnays.

“There are sites in Virginia that produce Chardonnay with sufficient natural acidity, and they are almost always my favorite wines,” says Early Mountain winemaker Ben Jordan. “We made two Chardonnays this year: one a blend of our mountain site and our blocks near the winery, and one from the oldest vines at our mountain site.”

With very little rain in late August and early September, 2015 was a good year for Chardonnay, giving the wines more overall richness and persistence.

At Blenheim Vineyards, winemaker Kirsty Harmon’s 2014 Blenheim Farm Chardonnay comes from planting on red clay. It’s juicy and extremely quaffable with subtle touches of oak—your mind might wander to the Mâconnais in Burgundy if you tasted it blind. Harmon uses a blend of French, American and Hungarian barrels, which give the wine’s core a certain dense complexity. But all that richness is eclipsed by Harmon’s light and bright winemaking style. She produces wines full of energy and tension, which makes the array of Chardonnays from Blenheim almost hedonistic to drink.

From Blenheim, you’ll also find Claim House White, an extremely affordable everyday white wine. It’s a blend of 75 percent Chardonnay and 25 percent viognier. These two grapes are rarely blended together, except in Virginia, where, Harmon says, “It’s natural to want to blend them because they grow together.”

Further afield is Wild Meadow Vineyard, where winemaker Michael Shaps makes a Burgundian-style Chardonnay from his plot in Loudoun County. Shaps’ commitment to ambient yeast (using natural vineyard yeasts instead of commercial) brings a heightened sense of terroir and setting to his wine. He achieves a lean, mouthwatering acidity contrasted with touches of oak, thanks to fermentation in French oak barrels. It’s usually released with a few years of age on it, and it can take much more aging if you plan to cellar it.

A bubbly finish

Claude Thibaut, of Thibaut-Janisson, is one winemaker who has really hung his hat on Chardonnay. Focusing almost exclusively on sparkling Chardonnay, Thibaut’s bubbly wines (in particular the Virginia Fizz and Blanc de Chardonnay) are refreshing options at both ends of the spectrum: The Virginia Fizz is an affordable, everyday sparkler, whereas the Blanc de Chardonnay is something you could age, or pop the cork on a special occasion. (Can every day be a special occasion?)

The diversity of Virginia Chardonnay reflects the multitude of Virginia’s soil types, microclimates and the personalities of the winemakers. Tasting Chardonnay from a few producers can be a great way to better understand the wine renaissance that is currently blossoming in Virginia.—Erin Scala