Virginia's Verve: Crafting Local Wines But Aiming Beyond Borders

We came back enthusiastic from a reporting trip to Virginia and tastings with top wine producers there in November.

As we have reported before, the state now has many thoughtful and accomplished producers whose work is contributing to a new, exciting and diverse narrative of American wine. You’ll want to be part of it whether your preference is for elegant and age-worthy reds, textured whites that will be drinking for years, exciting high-elevation chardonnay and pinot noir that are only getting better, dry genre-defining petit manseng, or a slew of more new-wave styles and blends.

We tasted over 120 wines from the Piedmont, Shenandoah and Blue Ridge Mountain regions, and the results have us ramping up for still wider Virginia tastings in 2022. Although Virginia didn’t give us a flood of high-scoring wines, with only five rated 95 points or above, our tastings did underscore that the state’s 400-year quest to make great wine is at a high point today. It’s a long and colorful story whose success dates from the 1970s and 1980s and the rise of influential wineries like Barboursville and Linden, who established benchmarks for quality vinifera wine.

Consistent political support has helped, too. The creation of a state wine board in 1984, along with a state viticulturist and enologist, provided critical early and ongoing impetus to the industry’s success. As the board’s director, Annette Boyd, said, “those cumulative efforts are paying dividends for the industry.”

Virginia’s wines are extraordinarily vintage-driven and have been variously impacted by water deficits and surfeits through the years, as well as fluctuating heat and humidity. In our tastings we looked mostly at 2017 and 2019, which were both very good years, with 2019 perhaps edging ahead. 2018 was marked by a particularly challenging hurricane season in parts of the large state, testing the mettle of producers. Some were able to manage harvests to make beautiful wines, in some cases by changing blend ratios as needed. Others simply did not produce certain wines in 2018.

Barboursville continues to be a benchmark year after year for us. We were especially impressed with the older bottles we tasted that poignantly validate the estate’s vineyard and cellar approaches. Notably, Barboursville Vineyards Virginia Octagon 2005 and Nebbiolo Virginia Reserve 2008 illustrate winemaker Luca Paschina’s observation that while there may be “a bit of tightness on the reds when young – three to five  years – there is great longevity thereafter.”

While Barboursville has built an enviable program that produces consistently high-quality wines, they continue to innovate and impress us with new bottlings such as Barboursville Vineyards Virginia Nascent 2018. A blend of viognier, vermentino and falanghina, the wine showed delightful structure and longevity with lifting minerality. It is a testament to Paschina’s deft hand in the cellar that this inaugural wine shows so well with no precedent as a guide. This will be a wine to watch over the next few years.

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF THE USA 2021

It is also worth noting that Paschina has systematically aged Barboursville’s red wines and some whites each year for the past 32 years and releases older wines they have held back. These serve as proof of the wines’ age-worthiness.

Linden is another key producer in the state, with the patient, no-nonsense founder and winemaker Jim Law easily one of Virginia wine’s most revered figures. One producer (of many) who started his career at Linden described Law as the kind of person who would have you wait at the winery’s front door day after day asking for a job and only after two weeks would you maybe be lucky enough to sweep the cellar floors.

He’s the real deal and his wines are, too. We were especially impressed by the Linden Chardonnay Virginia Hardscrabble 2017, another delightful example of world-class chardonnay being made in Virginia.

FINESSE AND RISING QUALITY

RdV is a producer of striking finesse whose two wines, Rendezvous and Lost Mountain, are sophisticated red blends grown on their estate in the Bordeaux style. We tasted a range of vintages stretching back to their inception, including deftly crafted 2018s that successfully navigated complicated weather and beat that year’s odds. Our sneak peek at their 2019s in bottle suggest all the verve and style that RdV is well known for. We look forward to seeing it all next year.

And when it comes to rising quality in Virginia, Early Mountain is one of the wineries at the top of our minds. In our tastings, Early Mountain Chardonnay Virginia Quaker Run Vineyard 2019 was a clear standout, with delicious and nuanced flavors of citrus and white tea that stayed on our palate for minutes. It was the sole East Coast wine to appear on our list of the Top 100 Wines of the USA 2021.

We sat down with Early Mountain’s winemaker, Ben Jordan, who is one of the state’s best and brightest, and vice president of strategy and marketing, Aileen Sevier, to hear their thoughts on the current state of Virginia wine now and what its future looks like.

“Virginia remains a young industry,” Jordan said. “But with the progress of the past decade, we are poised to take our success past its borders, where there are now willing consumers.”

Part of what has restricted progress in Virginia in the past has been a lack of interest in the domestic and international markets for high-quality Virginia wines. This means that Virginia producers have tended to cater to what sells well locally rather than pushing beyond its boundaries and making wines with more outward appeal. That is starting to change now with a more open-minded, borderless wine market.

There is no question Virginia has the potential to join other states like Oregon, Washington and California in making great wines. As the well-regarded winemaker and consultant Jake Busching, who runs his own private label, put it, “There aren’t any excuses anymore for bad wine in Virginia. If you’re making bad wine, you’re not paying attention. [You just need to] put in the effort.”

PUSHING FOR GREATNESS

The wine industry in Virginia has spent many years figuring out what varieties grow well and where they grow best. Today, top producers focus on terroir, making site-specific wines with fine-tuned vinification to match. The progress over the last four or five years has been very good for those who have continued to push for something greater.

Michael Shaps, one of Virginia’s most important producers and consultants, and Burgundy vigneron, remarked: “We have plenty of talented winemakers, but a shortage of talented vineyard managers. As in many parts of the world the winemaking is the glamour side of the industry and they get all of the attention, but as we know the wine is made in the vineyard, and in my humble opinion [that is] where the industry is weakest.”

His thoughts were echoed by Benoit Pineau, the winemaker at Pollak Vineyards, who noted, “If you change the vineyard team, the wine will taste different.” He said Pollak has achieved consistency and quality by having a well-paid growing team that has been with the winery from the very start, in 2003.

Ankida Ridge’s lovely pinot noirs are an example of the innovative mindset we are seeing around the state. For years it was believed that Virginia’s climate and weather patterns were simply at odds with what it takes to make good pinot noir. Ankida Ridge is changing the narrative by successfully growing pinot noir at 1,800 feet (548 meters) in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the environment is much more conducive for high-quality pinot. Owner Christine Vrooman is excited to “see other new high-elevation vineyards … that will be producing pinot noirs of distinction in the years to come.”  We are too.

Virginia  has never shown better, with more and more producers closing in on the upper ranks. The rising floor in quality for Virginia wines, and success diversifying into new geography and varieties such as tannat, albariño, vermentino and falanghina, leave us encouraged. That said, many producers still lag and aren’t making the consistently outstanding wines the state is clearly capable of. That’s the leap to work for now – a challenge that will go a long way in determining Virginia’s place in the hierarchy of America’s wine states.

– Nathan Slone, Associate Editor

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