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 sournesscuts 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.
The 2017 Wildkat Rkatsiteli from Stinson Vineyards is an aromatic, heavier white made locally with one of the world’s oldest varietals. Courtesy stinson vineyards
With current temperatures and humidity remaining high, many of us are likely still enjoying crisp and refreshing white, rosé, and sparkling wines, and the thought of drinking something heavier seems impossible. However, soon it will be autumn, and the cooler weather will bring crisper evenings, more time outdoors on porches and decks, and food from the barbecue, grill, or smoker.
The change in season also brings out the heartier wines. White wines with more weight on the palate and aromatic complexity take over from the bright, lean, high-acid summer go-tos. Fuller-bodied red wines, with more structure from tannins and heavier flavor extraction, become welcome companions that promote conversation, comfort, and inspire contemplation.
Virginia wine has many options well suited to this time of year, including familiar varieties such as chardonnay and cabernet franc. Here are some less-well-known examples that are worth seeking out.
Rkatsiteli
Rkatsiteli is perhaps not a variety that immediately jumps to mind when it comes to white wine in Virginia. It’s one of the oldest known grape varieties and it originated in the country of Georgia. The wine is spicy, floral, and a bit textural on the tongue. These characteristics make it a good pairing for roast pork, smoked vegetables, beans, and stews. It also pairs well with Asian- or Middle Eastern-spiced cuisines, such as dishes from India, Lebanon, and Vietnam.
There’s not a lot in Virginia, but I can recommend two excellent examples: the 2019 Rkatsiteli from Blenheim Vineyards ($19, blenheimvineyards.com) and the 2017 Wildkat Rkatsiteli from Stinson Vineyards ($27.99, stinsonvineyards.com). The Blenheim bottling is a bit lighter in weight with a floral nose and flavors of apricots, roasted peaches, and tarragon. Stinson’s version utilizes skin contact, a process similar to how red wines are made, which extracts more flavor, color, and tannins (also known as “orange” wine). The result is a darker, heavier wine with aromas of honeysuckle, Asian pears, and dried apricots, and flavors of white peaches, pumpkin, and a slight bitterness on the finish reminiscent of grapefruit and orange peel.
Both of these wines benefit from being served a bit warmer, which allows the many aromas and flavors to fully express themselves.
Petit Manseng
Petit manseng is beginning to fulfill its early promise, drawing rave reviews and gaining recognition here in Virginia. Made into a white wine, it has full and complex aromas and flavors that often include honey notes, spice characters, and tropical fruits. With a heavier body and lots of complexity, it’s a perfect wine for fall.
I highly recommend the Michael Shaps Wineworks 2017 Petit Manseng ($30, virginiawineworks.com). If I could have only one white wine from Virginia to drink during the autumn months, this would be the one. It exhibits lime, white flowers, and wet stone on the nose. It has a broad, rich, luxurious feel with complex flavors of lemon-lime, beeswax, and papaya. A very long finish extends with a pleasant hint of white stone.
Like rkatsiteli, this wine is better when served a bit warmer than most white wines.
Pinot Noir
If there is one grape variety that many identify with autumn, it’s pinot noir. This red variety produces wines of medium weight, relatively lower tannins, and complex flavors of red and black fruits, Asian and baking spices, and savory characteristics such as mushroom, fall leaves, and dried tea leaves. While there isn’t a lot of pinot noir in Virginia, Ankida Ridge Vineyards makes an excellent example, and the 2017 Pinot Noir ($44, anikdaridge.com) is a great wine from a great vintage. On the nose are aromas of cherry, plum, blackberries, and baking spices, echoed in the flavor, along with a pleasant cola and a long finish that presents hints of vanilla. Fans of pinot noir should also be on the lookout for Ankida Ridge’s yet unreleased 2017 Pinot Noir Reserve, which should be available soon.
Cabernet Sauvignon
For some red wine fans, the bigger and bolder the better. In other regions, cabernet sauvignon fits that bill, but it can be difficult to fully ripen in the local climate. As a result, you don’t see a lot of cabernet sauvignon as a single variety bottling in Virginia. Instead, big red wines often consist of blends that may also include cabernet franc, merlot, petit verdot, and tannat. However, the right vineyard site combined with an excellent vintage year can bring success, and this is the case for the Pollak Vineyards 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon ($50, pollakvineyards.com). On the nose there are hints of vanilla with lots of red fruit and a bit of stewed black plum. On the palate, there are red fruits, vanilla, baking spices, cinnamon, and a hint of smoke with a lingering finish that includes some crushed stone characteristics. This wine has solid tannic structure and great potential to age, but is also balanced and approachable if you are drinking it now. It’s a wonderful wine and winner of the 2020 Monticello Cup.
I wholeheartedly encourage you to try these wines as you raise a glass to autumn in Virginia. These bottles showcase great things happening in local vineyards and wineries, and they will definitely reward your time and attention.
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.”
Table settings that include the color blue, like these from The Market at Grelen, in Somerset, are a good match for the neutral hues of fall. Photo: Courtesy of The Market at Grelen
After the harvest rain-out of 2018, this year’s Virginia wine vintage brings especially welcome news: a healthy, plentiful crop of ripe reds and whites, now bubbling merrily away in fermentation tanks before their long winter’s rest. Wineries are preparing to celebrate with harvest parties scheduled for the weekend of October 19, including events at Valley Road Vineyards, Courthouse Creek Cider, and Veritas Vineyard & Winery, among others.
“We kicked off the harvest party theme last year as a way for wineries, retailers, restaurants, and the public to help celebrate October as Virginia Wine Month,” says Annette Boyd, director of the Virginia Wine Marketing Office. “The concept has really taken off. This is an event we want to build each year to celebrate the bounty of all products grown in Virginia, in addition to Virginia wines.”
We loved the idea, so we asked local experts for some tips to help you plan your own harvest party this month.
Harvest wine and food pairing
Priscilla Martin Curley
Co-owner, The Wine Guild of Charlottesville; general manager, Monticello Farm Table Café
“I think a great way to celebrate the Virginia harvest would be to pair a Virginia wine specialty, such as dry petit manseng, with a fire-roasted pork loin served with paw paw jam. The sweet-tart quality of the paw paws married with the smoky char of the pork will bring out the subtle tropical honey notes in the petit manseng while contrasting with the bitter qualities. Plus, it’s an impressive but simple showstopper for any harvest party meal! You can even use the unique-looking paw paw fruit as part of your centerpiece along with some beautiful fall foliage.”
Where to find it: “Try Horton Vineyards’ 2015 Petit Manseng ($25)—it won the 2019 Virginia Governor’s Cup. I’d also recommend Michael Shaps Wineworks petit manseng ($30). Shaps was one of the first to make a dry version of this wine.” Curley forages for her paw paw fruit, but it’s also available seasonally at farmers’ markets. Horton, (540) 832-7440; hortonwine.com. Shaps, 529-6848; virginiawineworks.com
A fresh take on tableware
Tabatha Wilson
Manager, The Market at Grelen
“When creating your fall tablescape, don’t be afraid to mix up the traditional for something a little more fun—adding color is a great way to spice up your tabletop. Blue is one of our favorites because it is such a versatile color, and when paired with neutral hues it can be very elegant. Colored glassware is a beautiful way to add color to your table. Also, little seasonal touches, like a simple feather in a napkin ring, can make a big statement.”
Where to find it: The Market at Grelen, Somerset, (540) 672-7268; themarketatgrelen.com
Breezy centerpieces
Jazmin Portnow
Owner, Anyvent Event Planning
“My key to a good table setting is to incorporate quirky and unexpected seasonal elements as part of your centerpieces. A wedding trend that will make an appearance in my seasonal and holiday centerpieces is pampas grass. It’s wild, fun, and has a wheat-like aesthetic that’s perfect for fall.”
Where to find it: Pampas grass is readily available at local florists, including Colonial Florist, in Gordonsville. (540) 832-3611; colonialfloristantiques.com
Bring on the fire
Casey Eves
Founder and owner, Casey Eves Design
“For festive events, nothing is better than a supervised fire pit and a s’mores station! The secret ingredient to killer seasonal s’mores? Peppermint bark instead of Hershey bars.”
Where to find it: Feast! co-owner Kate Collier vouches for the peppermint bark personally—it’s made by her mom, Maggie Castillo, of nearby Hunt Country Foods. 244-7800; feastvirginia.com
Blue is a good choice for fall tablescapes because it’s “such a versatile color, and when paired with neutral hues it can be very elegant,” says Tabatha Wilson, manager at The Market at Grelen.
More food and wine pairings
The hearty, savory dishes of fall lend themselves well to wines like gewürztraminer, barbera, and cabernet franc. Mulled wine (heated and spiced with cinnamon, cloves, and other typical fall spices) is another great option for outdoor harvest parties. And don’t forget Virginia’s meads, the original party wine. Here are our recommendations; available at the wineries listed.
This aromatic, slightly sweet wine originally hails from Germany, but for a fun food pairing, think more exotic: coriander-spiced roasted chickpeas, garlicky grilled chicken wings, or cinnamon-laced chili. (540) 456-8667, aftonmountainvineyards.com
2017 Barbera Reserve, Glass House Winery, Free Union ($30)
This high-acid wine is a perfect match for a high-acid food like tomatoes, so try heirloom tomatoes with fresh mozzarella and balsamic, or spaghetti squash with a sauce of late-season crushed tomatoes and basil from the garden. 975-0094, glasshousewinery.com
One of Virginia’s top wines for 2019, this cab franc stands up to strong herbal flavors, so how about surprising your guests with some surprisingly easy Cornish game hens roasted with plenty of herbs like thyme, rosemary, and sage? 244-3341, keswickvineyards.com
This blend is perfect as mulled wine—ready to heat and drink. The winery adds natural flavorings of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, allspice, anise, orange peel, and lemon peel to their Rivanna Red, and sells it by the bottle. 960-4411, burnleywines.com
Voyage, Hill Top Berry Farm and Winery, Nellysford ($22)
Made from 100 percent fermented honey, this is Hill Top’s version of the mead that the Vikings drank. It pairs with hunks of crusty bread, hard cheese, and cured meats. Pick up a bottle of Cyser (apple mead), Lavender Metheglin (spiced mead), or Hunter’s Moon (spiced pumpkin mead) and treat your mates to a mead taste-off. Hilltop Berry Farm and Winery, 361-1266—N.B.
Grapes ferment in large tanks throughout the production facility before being loaded into a press. Photo by Paul Whicheloe
He pulls the golf cart onto the right side of the gravel path: “Let me show you some of this viognier.” Carrington King, vineyard manager at King Family Vineyards in Crozet, stops the driver of a Kawasaki golf cart heading in the opposite direction of the tasting room, toward the processing facility, loaded down with bright yellow crates called lugs, each filled with 25 pounds of grapes. The crates are marked with the name Roseland in black, the name of the farm and the name of a chardonnay/viognier/petit manseng blend the winery produces. King plucks a cluster of grapes and holds it up to the afternoon sunlight to show how these berries, part of a second harvest of viognier this season, are starting to raisin and dehydrate.
“See how it’s drying nicely, no rot? And that”—he points to a brown discoloration—“that’s a little sunburn, but it’s perfectly fine.”
He pops a few grapes in his mouth.
“Super, super sweet. A year like this you can do interesting projects like this.”
Steeped in history
Our region is part of the Monticello American Viticultural Area, the state’s oldest AVA, founded in 1984. It’s named for the estate of one of the biggest proponents of American winemaking, Thomas Jefferson, who dreamt his home would be surrounded by flourishing vineyards that could compete with the Old World style of winemaking. Jefferson enlisted the help of notable Italian winemaker Filipo Mazzei, who researched the local terroir and planted thousands of vines around Monticello and at farms nearby. Although the American Revolution cut down Jefferson’s dream, if he walked the Monticello Wine Trail today he might see something closely resembling his vision.
The Monticello AVA, which includes Charlottesville and the four surrounding counties of Albemarle, Greene, Nelson and Orange, is made up of 33 wineries and encompasses 800,000 acres in the area on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains. About 30 varieties of grapes are grown here, with some of the most prominent being chardonnay, cabernet franc, merlot and our state grape, viognier.
Virginia winemaking saw a resurgence in 1976 with the founding of Barboursville Vineyards by Gianni Zonin, heir to a family wine enterprise in the Veneto region of Italy. In August, the Daily Meal, which gathers input from wine industry professionals and factors in awards and accolades from wine publications, named Barboursville No. 8 on its 101 Best Wineries in America list (Michael Shaps Wineworks came in at No. 57, Jefferson Vineyards at 94).
What makes it Virginia wine?
Vineyards and wineries in which 85 percent of the fruit comes from the Monticello AVA, with the remainder made up in local grapes from around the state, may enter the Monticello Wine Cup Awards each April.
Statewide regulations are a little less strict: 51 percent of the grapes have to come from Virginia land owned or leased by a winery for that wine to be considered a Virginia farm wine (the label will read American wine).
Some of the larger wineries operate under a different classification: 75 percent of their grapes must come from within the state. And the wines of any winery with 75 percent or more grapes grown in Virginia are labeled Virginia wines.
But Virginia is often overlooked when it comes to making the grade as a top wine region in America, with heavy-hitters like Napa and Sonoma, and New York’s Finger Lakes and Oregon’s Willamette Valley getting all the national headlines. In fact, some wineries in California produce as much wine as all of the wineries in Virginia together. Sadly, in early October, wildfires in Northern California killed 42 people and scorched 240,000 acres, destroying six wineries in the Napa and Sonoma regions.
Locally, we also battle Mother Nature: This fall’s lack of rain caused City Council and the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to issue mandatory water restrictions earlier in the month—no watering your lawn, take brief showers—to help offset the lower water supply levels (the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir fell to 42 percent capacity in just two months).
But our hot, dry autumn is actually good news for grape growers and vineyard owners. A drier season with more mild temperatures means a longer growing season, which allows the fruit to fully ripen on the vine. That means they are picked at the perfect point of ripeness, when the balance of sugar and acid levels for each variety is at its peak.
This year could not only be a banner year for Virginia winemakers in terms of grape yield, quality of the fruit and thus quality of the wine produced, it could be the year that puts Virginia wine on the map, many say.
Hearty harvest
Emily Pelton couldn’t believe what she was tasting. It was the end of July, and the first sample of sauvignon blanc grapes had just come in from the field at Veritas Vineyard & Winery in Afton, where Pelton is head winemaker.
She expected the berries in a random sampling to be tart, like they usually are, but instead Pelton was hit with a punch of sweetness: “Oh, that’s nice!” she thought.
That was one of the first signs that this year would be “a vintage in our books,” she predicts, up there with her favorite vintages in 2009 and 2010.
Although the area also experienced a drought in 2010, that one caused a surge in sugar in the grapes and fast ripening, which led to a smaller yield, Pelton says. This year, she says they hauled in 382.2 tons of grapes between the 50 acres under vine at her family’s winery and another 50 on farms within 30 minutes’ drive, which will make about 26,000 cases of wine (there are 12 bottles in a case). An average year would yield 15,000 to 20,000 cases for the vineyard.
Emily Pelton, head winemaker at Veritas, helped her parents, Andrew and Patricia Hodson, start the winery in 1999. Photo by Paul Whicheloe
Several factors contributed to this year’s bountiful harvest, says Joy Ting, production manager and head enologist at Michael Shaps Wineworks. For one, there was an early bud break in the spring, which generally makes winemakers and growers nervous, because one cold snap could wipe out their crops. But the milder temperatures held, translating into a longer grape-growing season. Most wineries started picking their first white grape crops at least a week early—Pelton says they started picking August 10, almost two weeks ahead of schedule. King Family picked its first chardonnay grapes for its sparkling wine August 3—a full week earlier than it’s ever harvested. In addition, wineries were still harvesting their last red varieties at normal times (early to mid-October), and were even able to do second-round pickings of certain varieties, such as King’s viognier.
The small amount of rain (our area dodged residual effects from Hurricanes Irma and Maria) meant the threat of disease such as rot was lessened, and it also allowed grapes with more concentrated flavor because the vines could focus on their job—growing fruit.
“I feel like the cabernet franc this year is some of the best cabernet franc that I’ve seen since I’ve been in the industry, about five years,” Ting says. The sauvignon blancs, viognier and rosé don’t need to go through malolactic fermentation, which reduces acidity, and will be released in late summer 2018. Most of the reds like cabernet sauvignon, tannat and petit verdot will continue to age in barrels for another year after being pressed and undergoing malolactic fermentation. They will be available in late 2019. “But I would hesitate to say that, only because I really feel like across the board the fruit was very high quality. From the very early whites all the way through the reds…for Virginia, I feel like it was a really wonderful growing season for us.”
Down to a science
As Carrington King passes by blocks of grapes, he points out their labeling system of using cattle tags on each row: red for merlot, pink for cabernet franc, yellow for petit manseng. We stop near a block of viognier, where people are hand-picking the second harvest of the grape, which will likely be used for a small-batch orange viognier (a method of winemaking in which white grapes are fermented on the skins like a red wine, creating an amber hue and giving the wine “nice tannin”). King’s brother’s father-in-law is out in the field, as is King’s mother, Ellen, picking alongside year-round employees. The vineyard is a family endeavor—David and Ellen King started the vineyard in 1998, and the couple’s three sons now help operate the 327-acre farm and vineyard.
King says all the grapes are handpicked—“It’s hard to find them, you have to hunt way up high,” he says. Gathering berries for sampling (which begins about a week after veraison, when the red grapes go from green to red and the white grapes start softening) is not a very scientific process: Someone grabs a Ziploc bag and walks along a path with a row of vines on either side. While looking straight ahead, he’ll reach in and grab some berries off a cluster, sometimes off the top, sometimes off the bottom, and ping-pong between the two rows to ensure a sampling of berries that get both morning and afternoon sun. By not looking at the berries you pick you’re ensuring as random a sample as possible–our eyes are naturally trained to flesh out the best-looking berries.
“When we’re sampling and trying to get tons per acres we do berry weights and cluster weights. On average our berry weight was lower than most years,” King says. “Typically a winemaker would love to have smaller berries, especially in a red where the ratio of juice to skin favors better color, better tannin, better extraction, because your ratio of juice to skin is higher on the skin side. Now, in central Virginia we don’t know what to call average because it’s been so variable every year.”
Employees of King Family Vineyards handpicked a second harvest of viognier grapes last week. Photo by Paul WhicheloeKing Family winemaker Matthieu Finot and vineyard manager Carrington King sort freshly picked grapes by hand. Photo by Paul Whicheloe
Once the sample comes in the process does turn scientific. The berries are crushed and the juice is strained into a beaker, and a pH meter and a refractometer measure the pH level and percent of soluble solids—the sugar level of the juice. As the sugar accumulates in the grape, the pH level increases. When the grapes are first tested the pH might be 2.8 or 2.9, increasing to 5.3 or 6, as it gets more basic (7 on the pH scale is neutral). But acid is good for wine—if it’s not acidic enough the wine won’t taste balanced. Chardonnay used in sparkling wine, for instance, is picked at a lower pH level of 3 to give the wine an “acidic tingle and freshness,” King says.
“When it gets closer to harvest (three weeks after veraison) we might take samples every few days, to try to say what’s the progression of sugar accumulation and how quickly is the acid going down, to try to find the right balance point of when it’s the right time to pick that grape,” Ting says. “And that’s one of the nice things about not having rain coming. We get to dial that in a little more carefully. If it’s going to rain, we’ll usually pick it before the rain, if we feel like it’s close to ripe. This year we would take samples, and we would almost be able to predict ‘well okay, it looks like it’s gaining such and such sugar per day, so it looks like this weekend it should be right where we want it to get’ and it would be right about where we expected it to be.”
Michael Shaps, which has about 80 acres of vineyard under lease or management in eight counties in the state for its own wines, also does contract winemaking for clients who bring in grapes from their own vineyards, and Ting says grapes from all over the state saw similar consistency this year. Shaps was the original winemaker at King Family, and was succeeded by Matthieu Finot in 2007.
Finot, whose lab is housed in the “newish” production facility at King Family (it’s their fourth harvest in the new building), echoes other winemakers in their love of this year’s crop with good acid, which keeps freshness in the wine and helps it age well.
“I’m very excited with the chardonnay, and the cab franc will just be wonderful this year: good ripening, good color, good tannin extraction,” he says. “I think it’s going to be a key vintage for what we do. We had some rain at the beginning of September, just to give us harvest, then it went back to nice, sunny and dry. On a whole I’m very happy with it. Usually when you talk to the winemaker at this time they’re all depressed…here, it’s like yay!”
Experimental thinking
When asked what her favorite varieties this season are, Pelton lets out a little yelp and squirms in her seat. It’s like asking her to pick a favorite child. She concedes that her sauvignon blanc was “killer” this year—not that the viognier wasn’t—but the sauvignon blanc stands out for its intense aromatics. You can pick out distinct notes of grapefruit and passionfruit, specifically pink grapefruit.
“You can really start diving in there and saying, ‘Ooh, I can smell this!’” she says.
For reds, she names both cabernet franc and petit verdot, but finally settles on cab franc.
King also names their cabernet franc and petit verdot as the red varieties he’s most excited about this year: “The chemistry was amazing,” he says.
King Family hauled in 240 tons of grapes this season from its more than 30 acres, which translates to 12,000 cases. King says demand is going up every year, as is production and new plantings: In 2016 they made 2,200 cases of Crosé, which lasted in their tasting room until July. The year before, they produced 1,800 cases that sold out in September. Each year they’re selling out earlier: They will bottle 4,000 cases of the 2017 vintage of the cult favorite rosé, a staple at summer polo matches at the vineyard.
Although King Family mainly sticks to its stable of wines, it created its small batch series four or five years ago to allow Finot to experiment, and in a banner year like this there’s a little more room to play.
“What’s really fun for us is making these little tiny batches to make very select bottlings,” King says.
Newly released this year for King Family is a wine called Mountain Plains, which was the original name of the family’s property when a 22-year-old Thomas Jefferson, then an attorney, signed the deed. The “super meritage” is a blend of petit verdot, merlot and cabernet franc—two barrels of each.
Currently being processed in King Family’s production facility is a whole cluster petit verdot–pressed with stems and all–much the way they would have done in the Old World when grapes were crushed underfoot. The stems give the wine more tannins, Finot says, but that can be risky. He points to a similar experiment a few years ago with a dry petit manseng that is now being served in the tasting room. When he first tried it he thought it was very harsh and acidic, out of balance, and he considered dumping it. But he kept aging it in barrels, and after two years he ended up with a drinkable wine.
“Now it’s one of the wines I really love,” he says.
Berry good
Although the viognier grape, which has intense, complex aromas of stone fruit with tropical notes, was named our state’s signature grape in 2011 (its thick skin can stand up to Virginia’s heat and humidity), it comes in as No. 6 in grape production totals from a 2016 commercial grape report prepared for the Virginia Wine Board. Here are our state’s top five:
1.Cabernet franc (929 tons)
2. Chardonnay (760 tons)
3. Merlot (620 tons)
4. Cabernet sauvignon (533 tons)
5. Petit verdot (495 tons)
Blenheim Vineyards, which made roughly 4,500 cases in 2016 and will bottle 8,000 cases this year, has added the albariño grape, which generally flourishes in Spain, to its portfolio. Ting points to Bleinheim and Afton Mountain Vineyards as early champions of the grape variety, good for making a fresh white wine. Kirsty Harmon, winemaker and general manager at Blenheim, says both the albariño and sauvignon blanc did well this year, and she made a little wine out of pinot noir, which she hasn’t been able to attempt in years past.
“I’d say that it is potentially the best harvest at Blenheim since I’ve been winemaker for 10 years,” she says.
And Veritas’ Pelton is experimenting too, but less with grapes and more on winemaking styles and the growing process. In 2014 she helped found the now statewide Winemakers Research Exchange in which wineries in Virginia can submit experiments for blind taste tests. Last year the exchange had 10 different tastings; Pelton submitted four or five projects.
The future of local wines
Today there are more than 260 wineries statewide compared with 193 in 2010. In 2015, the wine and grape industry brought in $1.37 billion, and wine production nearly doubled in that time frame from 439,500 cases to 705,200, according to the Virginia Wine Board’s 2015 Economic Impact Study.
Today’s wineries, with careful site selection for plantings and fruit monitoring along with evolving winemaking, are a far cry from the early days 40 years ago, King says. He says he’s often asked who his competitors are. His answer: He doesn’t have any. He says all the winemakers, vineyard owners and grape growers are friendly with one another and eager to share insights to create the best wine and customer experience they can.
“It’s a very intimate thing to sell something that you’re going to imbibe—it’s not tennis shoes or a belt buckle. It’s going in your body,” King says. “If someone has a bad experience somewhere, they might write off Virginia wine.”
Two weeks ago Pelton traveled to Charleston, South Carolina, for a luncheon hosted by Garden & Gun magazine. Only Virginia wines, including Veritas and Early Mountain Vineyards, were served, and guests didn’t know what they were drinking until Pelton walked around to each table to chat with the luncheon’s attendees. Their feedback? They were surprised by the wine’s origins, but they loved it.
“I would just like to point out we have such pride in our Southern food culture,” Pelton says. “I’d like people to start having the same [feeling] about their local brewery, winery and cidery.”
Honah Lee Vineyard’s mountaintop location produces “lush and plump” fruit, including viognier and petit manseng, that is increasingly coveted by winemakers. Photo by Haley Jones
When Vera Preddy and her late husband, Wayne, purchased their property on Gibson Mountain in 1985, they never imagined they’d end up in the wine business. Their 150-acre farm was once part of Windholme Farm, and when they moved onto their parcel, they christened it Honah Lee, after the idyllic place described in the 1960s folk song “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” They started raising cattle and built a house, and later, on a neighbor’s suggestion, decided to get into the turkey-raising business.
Poultry has been a staple industry in the area for centuries (Honah Lee sits about four miles north of Gordonsville). In 1794, a Gordonsville tavern became known for serving chicken. In the 1840s, a railroad stop was established in the town, and by the 1860s locals sold chicken through the windows of stopped C&O trains.
The Preddys raised chickens in the past but switched exclusively to turkeys because they stay put. “When we had hens, they were sneaky and they’d get out,” Preddy says.
I wondered aloud to Preddy’s son, Eric Hopwood, if their business model made for a busy fall, going directly from grape harvest season into Thanksgiving turkey season. Hopwood explains that their turkeys are more for lunch meats than the holiday meal. “Our turkeys are about 40 pounds apiece,” he says. “The breast itself is the size of a Thanksgiving roaster oven. We raise turkeys year-round that are antibiotic- and hormone-free, and they go to specialty stores.”
The Preddys were focused on poultry and cattle when they leased a good portion of their land to a nearby winery. Grape vines went in the ground, but after a lease dispute in the 1990s, the Preddys found themselves in the sudden stewardship of vineyards.
“We had to learn real quick about growing grapes and making wine,” says Preddy, so they hired consultant Jeanette Smith. “She was great as far as teaching us how to take care of the vines.”
The Preddys, thrust by circumstance into a burgeoning industry, couldn’t imagine then how much the industry would grow. “There were a few vineyards around then, but now they are like little mushrooms; they’re popping up everywhere,” Preddy says. In 1995, Virginia had 46 wineries. A 2016 press release from Governor Terry McAuliffe’s office announced there are now more than 285 wineries in the state. That’s a 520 percent growth rate over a 21-year period.
As you travel up the mountain, the first vines appear around 650 feet. The vineyard is punctuated by two turkey barns and the colony of gigantic turkeys, then the rows of grapes continue up to the top where you’ll find older-vine viognier at about 1,000 feet.
At first, the Preddys sold their grapes to about 20 different wineries. Then, they narrowed that down to about five or six wineries. Today they work mostly with Michael Shaps Wineworks and Jake Busching Wines.
Life on the mountain began to change focus from grape-growing to wine-making when Hopwood took the reins in the early 2000s. “At the time, I was with the local law enforcement, and I retired from that in 2011,” he says. “That was when we started getting more into the wine business, and we added the event venue.” In 2015, Hopwood first made his wines at Michael Shaps Wineworks and now pours them under the Honah Lee label in his tasting room. Hopwood and his wife, Brandy, also oversee BerryWood Crafters, which incorporates local baked goods and crafts in their wine tasting room.
Hopwood points to the malbec near the top of the mountain as the source of his favorite wine from the property. Aside from the taste, that particular site has a special meaning to his family. “It’s a wonderful place to wake up to every day, the views, the peace and tranquility,” he says. “I often go up there to the top and sit and contemplate life. I take my little 2-year-old daughter up there and she just falls asleep in my arms.”
The perch up top is storied for its views. “At one time, we had a fire tower up here and you could see 360 degrees,” Hopwood says. “It was said that with binoculars you could see the tip of the Washington Monument.”
Mountain fruit is increasingly coveted in Virginia. Though it’s more intensive to farm, vines on sloped mountains have better airflow, which helps prevent frosts, and the soils usually have better drainage. The summit has also captured the heart of Jake Busching, who has been working with Honah Lee fruit since early in his career. Enchanted by the viognier on the mountain, Busching sourced his 2015 and 2016 Viognier from the Preddys.
Joy Ting, enologist and production manager at Michael Shaps Wineworks, also enjoys working with the Honah Lee fruit. “Honah Lee produces fruit that lives up to its whimsical name,” says Ting. “The fruit from there is always lush and plump. Each variety expresses itself fully, from the sauvignon blanc and viognier to the petit verdot and tannat. The petit manseng from Honah Lee has great chemistry, and is versatile enough to make a dry table wine, a sweet dessert wine or anything in between.”
Now, Hopwood is gearing up to begin harvest, which he says could be a record.
“Right now it’s shaping up to be pretty good. But…the summer’s not over yet. We’re watching tropical storms.”
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.
A 30-some-acre spot on the top of Veritas Vineyards’ “saddleback” contains viognier and cabernet franc. It’s the first site, says winemaker Emily Pelton, with “considerable elevation and gorgeous aspect.” Photo courtesy of Stephen Barling.
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.
“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.
Ankida Ridge
“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.”
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, 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.”
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.m.
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.
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.
