Tag: Matthieu Finot

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Culture Living

Thanks, Virginia: Go local at your holiday table this year

Drinking well-crafted, locally sourced wines, beers, and ciders will be easy at this year’s Thanksgiving table. Staff photo

If you are looking for the perfect beverage to accompany your Thanksgiving meal, area producers have many options, ranging from beer to wine to cider. Here are some recommendations to help you drink well while also drinking local.

Amber and brown ales are obvious options for pairing with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and gravy. The seasonally offered Apple Crumb Apple Ale from Three Notch’d Brewing adds an extra dimension by incorporating apples and cinnamon into the brew. These notes combined with malty, bready, and caramel flavors will remind you of freshly baked apple pie.

A sour or funky farmhouse ale, or even a full-on sour beer, can bring a bit of acid to the table. The sourness  cuts through the fattiness of roasted meats, while side dishes with fruit flavors or sweetness bring out similar fruit notes in the beer. Starr Hill’s Carole Cran-Raspberry Gose, only available through December, delivers autumn berry flavors and a nice balance of sweet and sour fruit.

The vanilla, caramel, and chocolate notes found in porter are a great match for dessert. Strange Currencies, from Reason Beer, was originally brewed as a birthday present from the head brewer to his wife. It’s currently available in four-packs of 16-ounce cans direct from the brewery. It’s full and satisfying enough that it could be served on its own instead of dessert, but who is going to pass on that slice of pie?

Two wines deserve a second recommendation in these pages because they are perfect for Thanksgiving: The 2017 petit manseng from Michael Shaps Wineworks and 2017 pinot noir from Ankida Ridge Vineyards. Shaps’ petit manseng is a dry, white wine with weight and texture that brings flavors of honey, tropical fruit, and nutmeg spice at the finish. As a white wine, it can pair with lighter fare, and with roast chicken or turkey. Pinot noir is the classic red wine to pair with Thanksgiving turkey, and the pinot noir from Ankida Ridge Vineyards is the best example of the varietal in Virginia, full of flavors of cherry, cranberry, plum, and cola. Its long, fruit-filled finish will have your mouth watering and anticipating the next bite or sip.

The 2017 Small Batch Series Viognier from King Family Vineyards should also be on your radar. Winemaker Matthieu Finot ferments these white grapes on their skins, more like a red wine would be produced, thus adding aromatics on the nose, and creating a fullness on the palate, and texture in the mouth that will stand up well to the dishes of the season. Similar to the petit manseng mentioned above, this white wine holds up well throughout the meal.

When it comes to Virginia red wine, we can’t forget cabernet franc, which has the perfect weight and flavors for stewed, roasted, grilled, and smoked meats. The 2019 Madison County cabernet franc from Early Mountain Vineyards is a wonderful example of what this grape can be when grown on a good site and in an excellent vintage year. It’s full of ripe red and black fruits with undertones of green herbs and a full finish highlighted by soft, fine tannins.

For many, cider evokes visions of dry falling leaves, pumpkin patches, and hayrides on the farm. Our local industry continues to push forward with creativity and passion, and cider-lovers are benefiting from interesting small-batch, craft products.

The Cranberry Orange Blossom Cider from Potter’s Craft Cider is a limited and seasonal release. With subtle hints of sweet and sour flavors and a pleasant acidity, it will cut through heavier, fattier dishes and can serve a similar role as the sour beers mentioned above. Intentionally produced at only 5.5 percent alcohol by volume, it’s bright and easy drinking that won’t weigh you down before your celebration is over.

Another intriguing option is the just-released 2019 Bricolage Sparkling Cider from Patois Cider. Featuring wild, unsprayed local apples and a minimal intervention fermentation process, this cider develops fine bubbles in the bottle that are sure to please. The palate shows textural weight expresses a depth of caramelized fruit flavors without being too sweet. Delicious on its own, it will also complement a wide range of dishes. This versatility means you can drink this through the entire day of feasting, or at least until the turkey and football games lull you to sleep.

Categories
Living

Raise a glass to 2019: Winemakers reflect on a great vintage

Luca Paschina, winemaker at Barboursville Vineyards, has high hopes for the 2019 vintage. "We will be celebrating this growing season for many years to come," he says. Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith

Like all agricultural endeavors, growing grapes is subject to the vicissitudes of weather. In Virginia, after a difficult 2018 harvest (because of rain, rain, and more rain), 2019 was good—some would say great—thanks to timely precipitation and stretches of warm, sunny weather.

“This vintage is a beautiful gift to the faithful farmer,” says Luca Paschina, the winemaker at Barboursville Vineyards. “We will be celebrating this growing season for many years to come, for giving us white wines of great intensity and fragrance and reds of unquestionably long age-worthiness.”

Part of this optimism flows from a sense of relief after 2018. Overcast and wet conditions can present serious challenges in both the vineyard and the winery. Lack of sunlight hinders the fruit’s growth and ripening, decreasing sugar content (it is this sugar that is fermented into alcohol), and producing grapes that lack flavor and can taste “green,” or undesirably vegetal. High moisture can also allow mold, mildew, and disease to take hold, leading to damaged fruit and diminished yields. In one of the sadder images of 2018, some winemakers simply left grapes to rot on the vine, because they had burst from too much water and, regardless, the ground was too soft to move harvesting machinery into place.

The next growing season could not have arrived fast enough. Chris Hill, who has been cultivating grapes in Virginia since 1981, says that better vintages share “the common thread of dry weather from mid-August through mid-October.” In his opinion, 2019 should be compared to great vintages such as 1998, 2002, 2007, 2010, and 2017. But Kirsty Harmon believes 2019 is the best vintage since 2008, when she started as winemaker at Blenheim Vineyards.

Joy Ting, research enologist for the Winemakers Research Exchange (and this writer’s wife), explains that, in addition to a dry season, an abundance of sunlight helped to ripen fruit much earlier than in previous years. “The white grapes came in quickly since daytime temperatures were high and sugar accumulated rapidly,” she says. “A little bit of rain and slightly lower temperatures allowed the red grapes to stay on the vine. This led to very good flavor and tannin development.”

Ting also puts forth a theory, shared by a number of winemakers, that the exceptionally wet conditions of 2018 led to higher groundwater levels in 2019, compensating for rainfall one to three inches below average last July through September. Winemakers Emily Pelton at Veritas Vineyard and Winery, and Michael Heny at Michael Shaps Wineworks, agree with Ting. “I was thankful for all of the rain that we had in 2018,” Heny says. “We had so much groundwater that the vines [in 2019] had everything they needed.”

But what about the 2019 wines? High quality, fully ripe fruit picked when the winemaker thought it had achieved optimal conditions (rather than because the next storm was coming), should lead to high quality, aromatic whites and full-bodied, age-worthy reds. It’s impossible at the moment to recommend specific bottles from the vintage—because, well, the wines are unfinished and unbottled—so I asked winemakers which 2019 wines held the greatest promise. “I feel that, in general, red wines more acutely express the quality of a vintage,” says Nathan Vrooman, winemaker at Ankida Ridge Vineyards. “The white wines coming from the region will be very good, but the red wines will really shine.”

Among those, cabernet franc appears to be rising to the top. Finot says the King Family cabernet franc “performed very well this year.” At Veritas, Pelton calls the 2019 crop “bright and vibrant and full of depth.” Paschina singles out Barboursville’s harvest from Goodlow Mountain, about a mile south of the winery, as perhaps its “most elegant wine of the vintage.” Similarly, Rachel Stinson Vrooman, the winemaker at Stinson Vineyards, points to her cabernet franc as “ripe and concentrated, but also maintaining some of the pretty florals and herbal aromas that I look for.” At Keswick Vineyards, winemaker Stephen Barnard believes the estate’s Block 2 cabernet franc to be “the best expression of terroir yet—savory, extracted, spicy.”

Other varieties to look for in 2019 include pinot noir from Ankida Ridge—one of the few area wineries growing the grape—and chardonnay from Loudoun County’s Wild Meadow vineyard. At Michael Shaps, Heny will use the chardonnay in a vineyard-specific wine; he anticipates the 2019 bottling to rival that of 2015, one of my own personal favorites. Also worth noting, according to Harmon, are albariño, a grape grown mostly in Spain and Portugal that’s still relatively rare in Virginia, and cabernet sauvignon, which the lingering dry heat of 2019 helped to achieve full ripeness and flavor.

With uniformly high hopes for the 2019 vintage, Pelton provides some perspective. “I think it is important for us not to lose sight of how fantastically wine tells the story of the year,” she says. “Great years tend to get all of the attention, but the fact that we get to capture all of the aspects of the fabric of a year—whether it was cool or windy or dry or wet—all speaks to the final product, and I find it thrilling to be a part of that story.”

Categories
Knife & Fork

The natural: Winemaker Damien Blanchon cultivates sustainability at Afton Mountain Vineyards

Born into a winemaking family in France, Damien Blanchon received his formal training in the craft there before moving to Virginia in 2006. Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith

One morning last April, Afton Mountain Vineyards winemaker Damien Blanchon stood under a canopy in the rain, his yellow rain slicker a bright spot on the gray day. Smoke streamed out from the firepit he tended. The night’s meal, a freshly butchered pig, dripped fat onto the coals.

Blanchon’s on friendly terms with Polyface Farm’s Joel Salatin—the celebrity livestock farmer, author, and speaker—and earlier the winemaker had driven to Swoope, Virginia, to pick out one of his pal’s celebrated pastured pigs. Salatin’s son, Daniel, normally does the butchering but couldn’t get around to it, so Blanchon, equipped with the necessary tools, got busy with the carving. An hour later, he and the pig were on their way back to the winery.

Big on biodiversity, Blanchon recently introduced goats to the property at Afton Mountain. Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith

Rainwater dripped from the edge of the canopy. Blanchon, who has a scruffy beard and intense blue eyes, peered at the smoke. After pressing grapes later this year, he said, he will deliver pomace—the skins left over after the crush—to Salatin to use as feed. It’s a sustainable, natural cycle that Salatin has preached for years, and which Blanchon also believes is the way forward.

“When I look at this little place, we are trying to do things the right way for the environment,” says Blanchon, who’s overseen Afton Mountain’s 25 acres of vines for nearly a decade. “In the long term, I’m trying to have a beneficial impact.”

Blanchon applies no insecticides to the vines, and only sparingly uses fungicides. “The vines are smart,” he says. It’s his shorthand way of expressing his respect for the plants, and the deep knowledge he has gained during more than two decades of tending grapes.

Blanchon’s winemaking education began when he was a child, on his uncle’s vineyard and small winery in Beaujolais. His formal schooling in viticulture and enology began when he was a teenager and led to work at wineries in France. He arrived in the U.S. in 2006, after answering an ad for a winemaker at Old House Vineyards in Culpeper. When he called, Mattieu Finot picked up. Now the winemaker at King Family Vineyards, Finot was consulting at Old House at the time. The rest, as they say, is history.

Blanchon brought with him the organic practices that he uses to this day. He brews huge quantities of herbal teas and sprays them on the vines, which, he says, bolsters their natural immune systems. It takes years for this to happen, but Blanchon believes using the method will keep the vines healthy and productive for 40 to 60 years—instead of the 20 years he says much larger commercial vineyards plan for.

“Looks like it’s working, because last year it was very rainy and we did only 10 [fungicide] sprays compared to an average of 25 to 30 sprays for [many other] wineries,” he says. “All around the vines, I plant some wild flowers that bring in insects that are beneficial for us, like the bees. Last year it was very humid and dewy in the morning, so you could see the spider webs easily, they were everywhere, and thanks to the spiders, we didn’t have a fruit fly problem. I was like, ‘Well, that makes sense.’”

A few hours later, in the glass-walled pavilion overlooking the vineyards, Blanchon prepares platters of sliced pork. He lays them out on a table with whole roasted potatoes and a simple salad of arugula with vinaigrette. He’s serving dinner for a group of journalists and friends of Afton Mountain’s owners Elizabeth and Tony Smith. The meal is the culmination of a long day for Blanchon, who also led a cellar tour and wine tasting.

The Smiths—whose son, Hunter Smith, is the founder and owner of Charlottesville’s Champion Brewing Company—purchased the winery a decade ago. Since then they’ve doubled the vineyard size, in part to protect the sculpted mountain views. Ask the couple what’s next for their vast acreage, and Elizabeth Smith muses over morels, explaining that their plan is not to exceed the 5,000-case capacity of their current wine operation, but instead explore more ways to farm sustainably. The owners and winemaker are in sync.

“With the freedom the Smiths give me, I’m going full tilt,” says Blanchon, enjoying a glass of his own blended red wine with dinner. “We started [the new approach] about three years ago. Now our first spray was only teas and decoction with nettle leaf and horsetail grass to start. I also use chamomile, oak bark tea, and milfoil grass later in the season.” (Decoction is essentially a reduction by boiling of the elixir he describes.) 

“We try to respect the environment, our little environment around here—we are the only vineyard but we have animals, the lake, so we try to really reduce the heavy spray,” he says.

Goats are Blanchon’s latest addition to the farm. They’re like natural lawn mowers that tidy up—and, um, fertilize—the 135 acres that aren’t covered with vines. He’s also talked with the owners of some neighboring cows about taking over the herd when they retire next year. “Why not butcher and sell them here—maybe sell grass-fed beef to the wine-club members?” he asks.

“The thing I hate is having a recipe, dong the exact same thing I did last year,” says Blanchon, pouring more red for himself and a guest. “The weather is always different, the grapes come in different. As a winemaker, I love the adaptations you have to make.

“I have the chance to be in charge of a small area,” he says. “What can I do—even if nobody knows, but for me, what can I do—to have a beneficial impact? When I leave, or when I retire, I’ll know I’ve done whatever I could to make this place environmentally friendly. And I really believe it affects the quality of the wine.”

An Italian immigrant, Gabriele Rausse is one of Central Virginia’s most prominent and influential winemakers. Photo: Ashley Twiggs

Wine without borders

Damien Blanchon, a native of France, is one of many immigrants now working in area wineries, bringing not only diversity to the industry, but also skills, practices, and knowledge that improve the quality of the commonwealth’s wines. We raise a glass to the men and women who give our local wine its multicultural flavor.—N.B.

Gabriele Rausse, Italy, owner, Gabriele Rausse Winery and Director of Gardens and Grounds, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello

Fernando Franco, El Salvador, viticulturist, Barboursville Vineyards, Barboursville

Luca Paschina, Italy, general manager and winemaker, Barboursville Vineyards

Andy Bilenkij, Australia, winemaker, Pollak Vineyards, Greenwood

Francoise Seillier-Moiseiwitsch, Belgium, vineyard manager
and co-owner, and Julian
Moiseiwitsch, Northern Ireland, co-owner, Revalation Vineyards, Madison

Jorge Raposo, Portugal, owner and winemaker, Brent Manor Vineyards, Faber

Stephen Barnard, South Africa, winemaker, Keswick Vineyards, Keswick

Julien Durantie, France, winemaker, DuCard Vineyards, Etlan

Matthieu Finot, France, winemaker, King Family Vineyards, Crozet

Claude Thibaut, France, winemaker, Thibaut-Janisson, produced and bottled at Veritas Vineyards, Afton

Categories
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.

Categories
Living

Valley Road Vineyards opens on Nelson’s 151

Valley Road Vineyards CEO and co-founder Stan Joynes says he and his wife, Barbara, were pleasantly surprised when they opened the first bottle from their collection—a merlot-based rosé. The 2014 meritage, a blend of merlot, cabernet franc, petit verdot and cabernet sauvignon, “is really special,” he says. Photo by Ryan Jones

One of the most surprising things Stan Joynes learned after entering the local wine business is how much camaraderie there is among vineyard owners and winemakers. It’s not a “zero-sum game,” he says—when one business is successful, they all benefit.

About two years ago, Joynes started thinking it was time to do something different. He had helped found Richmond law firm LeClairRyan, and although he was passionate about his work, he knew he needed a change. He and his wife, Barbara, had a second home in Wintergreen and visited many of the local wineries while here.

They started looking for land in both Albemarle and Nelson counties, and heard that the former amFOG Farms property on Route 151 in Nelson County was for sale. They bought it the same day they saw it last fall, and started their winery, Valley Road Vineyards, with four other couples from Charlottesville and Richmond.

Joynes says he received lots of guidance from locals in the industry, including Ellen King, co-owner of King Family Vineyards. Because it takes two to three years for grapes to mature (Valley Road planted one acre each of sauvignon blanc, cabernet franc, chardonnay and petit verdot grapes in April), King suggested they consult with her winemaker, Matthieu Finot, on sourcing surplus grapes for their first bottling.

With Finot at the helm, Valley Road has bottled 2,000 cases of six wines: viognier, chardonnay, Destana (viognier, chardonnay and petit manseng blend), rosé, merlot and a 2014 meritage, which will be available during the vineyard’s grand opening weekend August 19-21. Other wines from the vineyard include a pinot gris, a second viognier, a petit verdot, a viognier-based sparkling wine and a red “spaghetti wine” in the fall.

The property’s previous life as a farm is still evident—the “industrial chic” tasting room has concrete floors and distressed wood walls, and the patina tin covering the front of the bar was part of an equipment shed on the property. In addition, the vineyard is hosting a weekly farmers market from 3-7pm on Thursdays as a way to showcase local vendors and bring the community together.

“(Agriculture) is the ultimate sustainable activity because the community helps each other,” Joynes says. “I think that is very true in the wine business for most people—there’s an abundance mentality. …It’s just instinctively part of the culture here. It’s great to be a part of.”

Something’s brewing

Deschutes Brewery and Blue Ridge Beverage Company held a launch party celebrating the brewery’s Roanoke brewery (projected to open in 2021) July 28 at Second Street Gallery. Deschutes beers started hitting taps and stores in western Virginia August 1. On tap at the event were some of the beers you can find in our area, including the Mirror Pond Pale Ale, Black Butte Porter, Fresh Squeezed IPA and Pinedrops IPA, as well as samples of more rare beers, including Mirror Mirror barley wine ale, Smoked Gose, The Dissident (Belgian-style brown ale) and Green Monster (a sour beer with dried fruit notes).

Related links

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