Vineyards that are putting Virginia on the fine-wine map
Putting Virginia on the fine-wine map
Written by Dana Milbank
Posted 11/21/2013
Washington Post
Thomas Jefferson was a failure.
Yes, the man did some good work, writing the Declaration of
Independence and running the country as our third president. Monticello is
fairly impressive, too. But there is no way around it: As a winemaker,
Jefferson was a disaster.
He began planting grapes in Virginia in 1771. In 1773, he
had an Italian, Filippo Mazzei, plant a variety of European vines on his land.
Yet in the years that followed, Jefferson had not a single harvest of grapes
and produced not a single bottle of wine. His precious European vines were
killed by insects, fungus and harsh winters. Some were trampled by horses. As
recounted in a recent history by Richard Leahy, “Beyond Jefferson’s Vines,” the
great man eventually packed it in, claiming that he “would in a year or two
more have established the practicability of that branch of culture in America.”
Sure he would have.
Instead of bringing viticulture to the New World, Jefferson
may have helped set in motion the devastation of the wine industry in the Old
World. The phylloxera vine louse, believed to have helped to kill off
Jefferson’s vines, was eventually exported to Europe, where it wiped out most
of the continent’s grapevines. It took the better part of a century for Europe
to recover.
And for the next 200 years, wines in Virginia — based on
native grapes not susceptible to the dreaded louse — were mostly undrinkable.
When oenological pioneers revived winemaking in Virginia 40 years ago, the
result was, as often as not, something that tasted like detergent. Gradually,
the wines became tolerable, if usually unremarkable.
The past several years, however, have brought Jefferson
vindication. A new generation of Virginia winemakers has begun to produce wines
that can compete with the best of those from California and Europe. Here in the
Mid-Atlantic, a petite Bordeaux is taking root. Technological advances in
vineyard site selection, viticulture and winemaking have combined to create a
critical mass for Virginia, establishing this area as what Decanter magazine in
July called “the next big thing in American wine.”
“The current renaissance of serious vintners in the Virginia
wine community has made Virginia a major contender,” says Jennifer Knowles,
wine director at the Inn at Little Washington, which has 52 Virginia wines in
its cellar and this year won a Wine Spectator Grand Award. She calls the wines
“beautiful in their balance” and, ranging from $30 to $240 at the Rappahannock
County restaurant, competitive with similarly priced wines from California and
Europe.
This is not to say Virginia is the new Napa Valley. The
Virginia Wine Board Marketing Office reports that the state has at least 230
wineries, and offers impressive statistics: an all-time high in wine sales in
fiscal 2013, more than 511,000 cases sold, tied with Texas (yes, Texas) as the
fifth-largest wine-grape-growing state. But independent experts I spoke to
generally agree that many Virginia wineries are still making wine that ranges
from unremarkable to unpleasant. That helps to explain why all but about 3
percent of Virginia wine is consumed in Virginia — much of that by tourists at
wine festivals and winery tastings.
The making of high-quality wine is a rather different story.
It is the work of about 20 producers. Some, such as Jim Law of Linden Vineyards
and Gianni Zonin and Luca Paschina of Barboursville Vineyards, have been at it
for many years. Others are Johnny-come-latelies with deep pockets. Donald Trump
bet on Virginia wines two years ago, buying Kluge Estate winery and naming it —
what else? — Trump Winery, under the direction of Donald’s son, Eric. AOL
founder Steve Case and wife Jean bought a producer and reopened it last year as
Early Mountain Vineyards; they have said they’ll donate any profits to
furthering Virginia wine.
In between are small, little-known estates with names such
as Rappahannock Cellars, Pollak Vineyards and King Family Vineyards, scattered
from Loudoun County to the Charlottesville area. Within a 90-minute drive from
Washington, you can find three of the best:
● RdV Vineyards, in Delaplane, is the work of Rutger de
Vink, a Dutch American who poured a family fortune into building a great
vineyard and now sells out his $100-a-bottle wines.
● Delaplane Cellars, just a few minutes from RdV, was built
by Jim Dolphin, who was in real estate and used proceeds from the sale of his
home to turn his winemaking hobby into a business.
● Glen Manor, in Front Royal, was the brainchild of Jeff
White, a fifth-generation farmer along Skyline Drive who discovered that his
land was perfect for wine grapes.
The three have little in common, except that they all
learned the trade from Jim Law at Linden Vineyards. In just a few years, they
have employed technological advances to make world-class wines, at times
exceeding the quality of their mentor’s.
As I write this, I am sipping 2010 Hodder Hill, a Bordeaux
blend from Glen Manor, which sits on the west side of the Blue Ridge. The vines
are grown on impossibly steep slopes at altitudes above 1,000 feet, using
viticultural advances unknown just a few years ago and hand-pruned with the
care of bonsai artists. It’s mostly cabernet sauvignon — a finicky grape hard
to ripen in Virginia — softened by merlot and given rich color by petit verdot,
a favorite grape here because it resists fungus and rot. The result is a
flawless, silky wine with flavors of black cherry and currants that won a gold
medal in the 2013 Virginia Governor’s Cup; the 2009 Hodder Hill won the 2012
Governor’s Cup overall.
At $48 a bottle, it’s a steal — if you can find it. White
produced only 350 cases of the stuff.
“There was a tendency in the past in Virginia to think, ‘I
just have to get my fruit through the growing season clean, disease-free, so I
can harvest it,’ ” White told me. “Now we’re kind of pushing the envelope.”
Demaris Goffigan of Virginia Beach, left, dances with
Marquita White of Norfolk at the AT&T Town Point Virginia Wine Festival
held in Norfolk in October. Demaris Goffigan of Virginia Beach, left, dances
with Marquita White of Norfolk at the AT&T Town Point Virginia Wine
Festival held in Norfolk in October. (Logan Mock-Bunting/For The Washington
Post)
At first glance, there is no reason anybody would try to
make wine in Virginia.
Its clay soil has poor drainage. It gets far more rain than
is good for grapevines, and in the form of torrential thunderstorms. The high
humidity encourages fungus and rot. A short growing season means grapes don’t
have time to ripen. Then, just as harvest season arrives, there is the annual
threat of bad weather related to tropical storms that can wipe out harvests.
“You look at our climate, and you don’t jump up and down and
say, ‘Oh, my God, this is a perfect place to grow grapes,’ ” said de Vink, the
RdV proprietor.
Essentially, what’s good for most crops — fertile soil and
ample moisture — is precisely what you don’t want if you’re trying to make good
wine. When a vine is in nutrient-rich soil and gets plenty of water, the plant
puts its energy into leaves and shoots. But when a vine is stressed — not
getting enough nutrition and water — it devotes its energy to perpetuating the
species and protecting its seed by producing the most succulent fruit.
These new Virginia winemakers are mimicking the conditions
of great wine regions such as Bordeaux and Burgundy. Consulting with soil
scientists, they are finding rocky soils on steep, wind-swept hillsides that
promote drainage and air circulation around the grape clusters. They graft
European varietals onto phylloxera-resistant rootstock and use new techniques
in “canopy management.”
There have been advances in the wineries, too, including
micro-oxygenation, enzymes and concrete tanks, and more widespread use of
stainless-steel equipment. But while such techniques can make an otherwise bad
wine tolerable, the real difference has been outdoors. The fickle climate, says
Knowles, of the Inn at Little Washington, “means an incredible amount of time
spent physically tending the vines. This is where Virginia viticulture differs from
most wine-growing regions in the world and why winemakers here have to have an
almost fanatical attention to detail.”
The vagaries of nature, and the resulting need for
labor-intensive farming, means the top Virginia wines have more in common with
the understated wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy than the bold wines of
California. California wines are all about ripe fruit and heavy oak, but
Virginia wines are more delicate and require gentler extraction of juice from
the grapes.
Virginia’s Old World style has won some critical acclaim. Four years ago, The Washington Post’s wine writer, Dave McIntyre, hosted a blind tasting in which Virginia wines only narrowly trailed competitors from France and California. Then, last year, Steven Spurrier, the British wine merchant who arranged the “Judgment of Paris” wine tasting in 1976 that put California wines on the map when they beat their French rivals, arranged a blind tasting of Virginia wines alongside top candidates from France, Italy, Portugal and California. Spurrier preferred the Virginia contender in six of eight comparisons, and the other two were ties.
Also on that blind panel was Jay Youmans, educational
director of the Capital Wine School, who runs the annual Virginia Governor’s
Cup competition. In the past two years, his well-credentialed judges have given
88 of 100 points to more than 40 wines from a handful of Virginia producers.
The influential British wine writer Jancis Robinson, too, has called the
Virginia wines she tasted “thrillingly good,” and McIntyre has been a key
figure in spreading the word about Virginia’s advances.
In theory, the same sort of technical advances that have
helped Virginia wineries should make it possible to produce decent wine almost
anywhere. But Virginia has had a jump because of favorable tax and distribution
laws. Maryland, for example, is 15 to 20 years behind its neighbor, Youmans
estimates, though wineries such as Black Ankle, Boordy, Sugarloaf and Old
Westminster “are making great inroads.”
Still, Virginia’s critical acclaim is of limited use for
now, because the wines are produced in such small quantities they are rarely
available beyond the tasting rooms. But even if Virginia wine never becomes The
Next Big Thing, there is a triumph in making Jefferson’s 18th-century
prediction come true.
A worker clips a bunch of grapes during the harvest at Glen
Manor Vineyards.A worker clips a bunch of grapes during the harvest at Glen
Manor Vineyards. (Logan Mock-Bunting/For The Washington Post)
A century ago, Jeff White’s great-grandfather was looking
for a spot for the family farm. Out in Shenandoah, the best parcels were always
down in the valley, where the soil is rich and the water abundant. But the good
farming land was taken, so White’s ancestor decided to try his luck on the
western slope of the Blue Ridge. The land was scenic — it sits just below
modern-day Skyline Drive in Front Royal — but not much of a spot for
agriculture. The best White’s ancestors could do was to grow fruit trees. “It
was not one of the sought-after farms,” White says with some understatement.
But it turns out White’s ancestor was quite accidentally
prescient. The mountains were steep and rocky — rain simply runs off.
White planted his first vineyard in 1995 at 1,100 feet, on a
patch of granite and greenstone, with a slope of 15 degrees. He sold his grapes
to Law at Linden, where White worked as a winemaker, and it turned out the
fruit was good. So White planted his second vineyard at 1,300 feet, with a
35-degree slope, on soil so rocky White’s ancestors let the forest keep it.
White’s farmhands probably wish he had continued the practice, because
everything in the new vineyard takes them twice as long as it took in the old.
Viewed from his Glen Manor winery, White’s newer vineyard
looks almost as if it is growing on a cliff face. And because of the
west-facing orientation, the vineyard is in the scorching sun until 8:30 on
summer nights.
If he leaves too many leaves on his vines, the grapes will
become moldy and diseased. If he leaves too few, they’ll sunburn. And so he
trims each vine by hand, leaving extra shading over the grape clusters on the
west and south side, but pulling leaves from the east and north side to let sun
and air in. “I make multiple passes through the vines, plucking leaves as the
summer goes by,” he explains.
Dana Milbank is a political columnist for The Washington Post. Staff writer Autumn Brewington contributed to this report. To comment on this story, e-mail wpmagazine@washpost.com
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