As a young man in the 1970s, Jim Law studied agriculture and worked in Zaire in the Peace Corps. On his return, he decided he wanted to make wine. So, he headed for the East Coast, arriving in Virginia in 1981.
It was an unconventional choice. In California, wine was gaining momentum and ready to soar. Virginia had barely gotten started. But one of its pioneers, Gabriele Rausse, had arrived a few years earlier from the Veneto region of Italy, and that got Mr. Law’s attention.
“I said, ‘If the Italians are working there, something’s going on,’” Mr. Law said. “How many places on Earth can you find virgin terroir and unearth what it is?”
He got a job at the now-defunct Tri-Mountain Winery and, in 1983, bought an abandoned apple orchard on a mountain near the village of Linden in Northern Virginia. Linden Vineyards was born, but what to do with it?
“It was spaghetti against a wall,” he said. “You plant a lot of varieties and see what works.”
For Mr. Law, that meant 20 years of trial and error.
At first, Mr. Law and other early Virginia winemakers looked to California as a model. But as they discovered how vastly different the conditions were on the East Coast, they turned their attention to Bordeaux, which was more similar in climate. Mr. Law learned how to match different varieties to the appropriate soils. Merlot takes well to clay, for example, but cabernet sauvignon does not.
Eventually he decided to pull out his original vineyard and start fresh, beginning a 15-year replanting program that ended in 2019. Now, he is making superb wines, including energetic, textured chardonnays and fresh, savory Bordeaux blends.
Like Linden Vineyards, the still-young Virginia wine industry has had its share of false starts and dead ends. But over the last 10 years or so it has gained confidence, professionalism and a sense of its identity. Growers are selecting vineyard sites based on soils and the shape of the land rather than convenience. Virginia is making better and more interesting wines now than ever before, though few of those wines are available outside the local area.
I spent a week in April exploring a few very different Virginia wine regions. The first was the Northern Virginia area near Front Royal, due west of Washington, D.C., where relaxed, rustic, family-run operations like Linden and Glen Manor Vineyards nearby turn out lively, distinctive cabernet sauvignons and other wines that are delicious young but can age well.
Another northern producer, Lost Mountain Vineyards, is by contrast sleek and well-financed. It makes impressive, polished, deep wines that sell for $200 or so, far more expensive than other Virginia wines. In 2024, it was bought by Eutopia Estates, a French company that owns Château Montrose, a top Bordeaux producer.
“Virginia should and does consider it a feather in the cap,” said Joshua Grainer, the Lost Mountain winemaker since its first vintage in 2008, who’s stayed on through the ownership transition. “It’s a nice recognition that East Coast viticulture is getting more serious.”
Seventy-five miles to the south, in the area around Charlottesville, the Monticello appellation has far more clay than up north. Cabernet sauvignon does not thrive there. Cabernet franc is now the red grape of choice among the more established wineries in this area, including King Family Vineyards and Gabriele Rausse Winery, now run by two of Mr. Rausse’s children, Tim and Peter Rausse.
“The story of cab franc is the story of Virginia becoming itself,” Tim Rausse said.
Both wineries make numerous other wines, like King’s graceful, creamy blanc de blancs sparkling wine and Rausse’s pretty, balanced nebbiolo.
The winemaker at King, Matthieu Finot, a French native, also has his own label, Domaine Finot, where he experiments with different styles. He makes excellent, easy-to-drink Finot wines, like a fresh, minerally roussanne and a floral, lightly fruity petit verdot, made to resemble a gulpable Beaujolais.
Like Mr. Law, Mr. Finot sees Virginia winemakers growing in confidence, focusing on what the state can do best rather than trying to emulate somewhere else.
“The best thing we’ve done is realize we’re not California,” he said. “We are more restrained. Twenty years ago that was considered a weakness. Now it’s a strength.”
An entirely different wine community is growing as well, one that, like Mr. Finot, has been influenced by natural wines and is highly experimental. It is making wine with hybrid grapes as well as vinifera, the European species that includes all the best-known wine grapes, and it is tinkering with different forms of wine.
“We’re the lunatic fringe in Virginia,” said Patrick Collins, who with his wife, Danielle LeCompte, runs Patois, which makes superb ciders and cider-and-grape wine blends in a tiny warehouse space near a community garden. Mr. Collins calls it “an experiment in uncapitalized winemaking.”
Many of these producers are centered on Common Wealth Crush Company in Waynesboro, Va., a sort of cooperative wine space in an old textile mill in which younger winemakers with few resources and diverse backgrounds can work in a supportive environment. The project was spearheaded by two brothers, Ben and Tim Jordan, who opened Common Wealth in 2022 with two other partners, Patt Eagen, who has a wine and business background, and Lee Campbell, a New York sommelier who graduated from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and has been an enthusiastic champion of Virginia wines.
The Jordans grew up in the Shenandoah Valley and have planted a vineyard on the family farm in Fort Defiance, about 50 miles west of Charlottesville. At Common Wealth, Ben serves as a winemaking consultant while Tim, who has a doctorate in plant etymology, is the vineyard consultant.
Wherever wines are being made in Virginia, growers all must face a stark fact: If they are growing vinifera grapes, they cannot be farmed organically. Downy mildew and black rot, two fungal diseases, are prevalent in Virginia’s humid environment. Farmers can succeed without insecticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers, but they need fungicides.
“We cannot be organic here,” Mr. Finot said. “It’s one of the weaknesses of Virginia.”
Many growers accept that fact but point out the many things they are able to do. Most good Virginia farmers do not till or plow their soils, which both preserves life in the soil, promotes biodiversity and reduces their carbon footprint. Good winemakers are committed to working as simply as they can, with minimal manipulations.
“Each region has to adapt techniques and varieties to the terroir,” Mr. Finot said. “We’re at the point where we embrace what we are, and we’re not apologizing for it.”
While those working with vinifera grapes accept the farming limitations, others are exploring hybrids of European and American grapes, like chardonel and chambourcin, which are more resistant to fungal diseases. Winemakers Research Exchange, an industry group, is running a breeding program seeking to develop hybrid grapes that will be adapted to the specific conditions in different parts of Virginia, but those grapes are at least 10 years in the future.
“When we get disease-resistant varieties, that’s when sustainable farming will take off in Virginia,” said Tim Jordan, who nonetheless is exploring natural methods of fighting diseases. In the Jordans’ family vineyard in Fort Defiance, he spreads crab shells rich in chitin, a source for bacteria that feed on fungus. The Jordans originally planted the vineyard with vinifera grapes but, Tim Jordan said, as vines die they are replanting with hybrids.
Virginia growers also face late-season storms made far worse by climate change. Remnants of hurricanes used to move north then veer into the Atlantic off the Carolina coast, Mr. Law said. Now they frequently drive north through Virginia during harvest season. This has led many growers to turn to grapes like petit manseng, a hearty white grape from the southwest of France with lively acidity and the capacity to bounce back after storms.
Many labels are produced at Common Wealth. Midland uses grapes from the Jordan family farm, like an elegant 2022 chardonnay and a complex 2023 blaufränkisch.
Lightwell Survey is Ben Jordan’s négociant brand, making wines like a lively, pretty 2022 Hintermen, made mostly of petit manseng with some riesling. Tim Jordan makes Star Party wines, including a lovely, classic 2023 cabernet franc. Wines made by the partners or Common Wealth employees are released under the Common Wealth label, like a 2023 Mise, a gorgeous, succulent orange wine, made by Ms. Campbell mostly of petit manseng, or a bright, focused 2023 Trot Rock, made of tannat, a red grape also from southwestern France.
Meanwhile, other people are working at Common Wealth, like Reggie Leonard, who works in career development at the University of Virginia and helped to start Oenoverse with Tracey Love of Blenheim Vineyards, an organization working to create opportunities in wine for those whom the industry has historically ignored.
He and a friend, Lance Lemon, who owns Penny’s, a wine shop in Richmond, Va., collaborated on Parallax Project, which makes two wines, What’s This, a precisely, well-balanced white, and What’s That, an archetypal chillable red, both largely of the same grapes, chardonnel and tannat.
Not that the northern producers lack creativity. Jeff White of Glen Manor is making lovely, refreshing sweet wines with petit manseng, while Mr. Law at Linden has an experimental planting of 20 varieties.
“We call it our climate change trial vineyard,” he said. “Fiano in particular has caught our eye.”
Some of the Common Wealth wines as well as the Patois ciders and blends are distributed in the New York area, but very few others are available beyond the Washington, D.C., area, a fact that producers recognize inhibits Virginia’s growth.
“As soon as you get on the shelves and in restaurants, you are competing with the world,” Mr. Finot said. “If we don’t do that, we are irrelevant.”
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Eric Asimov, the chief wine critic of The Times since 2004, has been writing about wine, food and restaurants for more than 30 years.
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