Nine o’clock in the morning seems a bit early to start tasting wine, but when World of Pinot Noir offered a vertical tasting of two Grand Crus from Domaine Louis Latour, I was there bright and early.
For wine lovers, is there any better breakfast than vertical flights from of Burgundy? For our vertical flights, we enjoyed the 2014, 2012, 2010, 2005, 2002 and 1999 vintages from both Château Corton-Grancey Grand Cru Domaine Latour and from Romanée-Saint-Vivant Grand Cru Les Quatre Journaux.
After spending a few days tasting wine in Central Virginia, I was already impressed by the quality of wines being produced by winemakers in both the Monticello and Shenandoah Valley AVAs.
Aromatic yet acidic viognier, velvety cabernet francs, as well as albariño, sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, petit manseng, petit verdot are all being made with success. And, while anyone who had tasted Virginia wine in the past might remember thinking, “I’ll drink the white wines, but the red wines…nope,” that is changing.
There is a quality revolution happening in the mid-Atlantic and that was the theme this year at USBevX, a conference and trade show dedicated to helping drive the quality reputation for eastern and midwest wine and beverage producers, when they hosted the second annual conference in Washington, D.C. in February.
Winemaker Gabriele Rausse, who has been called “The Father of the Modern Virginia Wine Industry,” was one of the first to plant vinifera in Virginia. He came to Virginia from Italy and was quoted in the feature documentary “Vintage: The Winemaker’s Year” as saying that when he arrived in 1976, it was a dark landscape, a somewhat primitive situation and he did not have much hope. But, “Everybody was against it so what can be better than the challenge of what they say you cannot do.”
Today, there are 250 wineries in Virginia; there are 50 producers on Long Island; there are 75 wines in Maryland. There is wine in Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania and beyond.
The Shenandoah Valley sits between two mountain ranges, the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Allegheny Mountains.
Tucked in a valley, it does not have close proximity to urban centers as its neighboring wine regions (Middleburg AVA has Washington, D.C., and Monticello AVA has Charlottesville). What the Shenandoah Valley has is the town of Winchester to the north, which is the apple capital of the country, and the small town of Staunton to the south, a charming place.
In addition, the Shenandoah Valley is located at a higher elevation and gets less rain compared to the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains and other wine areas in Virginia. It is a statistically drier and cooler area, and perhaps it is the most ideal place to be making wine in Virginia.
