How should Virginia market its wine?
Argentina has malbec. New Zealand has sauvignon blanc. Oregon has pinot noir. These wines, these singular grapes, catapulted wine industries to worldwide fame. Does Virginia wine needs its own star?
Virginia is home to seven American Viticulture Areas (including Middleburg) and nine wine regions (including Northern Virginia). With varied climate, soil type and weather patterns, experts find it difficult to figure out how to best market the state’s wine because no one grape will grow best from mountain to suburb to sea.
Two wine experts, both working outside the state but with knowledge of the grape growing and drinking culture here, give tips on how to best promote Virginia’s wines.
| Ray Isle Executive wine editor, Food & Wine Virginia Cred: Hosted 2014 Virginia Wine Summit |
John Wabeck General manager and level III sommelier, Spoon in Pittsburgh. Virginia Cred: Previous beverage director for Eat Good Food Group (Restaurant Eve) |
| ONE GRAPE | |
| “Only if the land, the soil, the climate, the characteristics of the weather are so specifically designed to do great with one grape, then that would make sense. What you want to promote is the quality of wine in Virginia itself rather than a specific signal variety. It will filter out on its own if it turns out that cab franc or viognier or petit maseng is the spectacular grape of Virginia. There’s very good wines being made from a range of different grapes.” | “Petit verdot I think is Virginia’s answer. It’s going to make a lot of people happy, it’s going to get the name out there, and you don’t need to charge a million dollars for it: big concentrated plum, little bit of sour plum, roasted plum, dried cherries, a little bit of black oil and bay leaf. It’s just a good food wine, kind of chewy, not overly so and always a very attractive, deep color.” |
| WINERIES | |
| “I’d like to see the level of winemaking and the level of attention in the vineyards going on at the best Virginia wineries trickle down to more wineries throughout the state. That takes time. Wine is a slow game. You only get one vintage a year, so change happens gradually.” | “I think a lot of the people in Virginia are trying to hit homeruns that don’t really work … Cabernet franc works. Cabernet sauvignon doesn’t. It never really gets ripe enough. I don’t think chardonnay works 90 percent of the time. Argentina did it with the one grape. Australia all banded together and marketed themselves as one unit. You get one shot every year to make things better.” |
(October 2015)
