Getting Virginia on the American Wine Map
On almost every American wine map, there are four states: California, Oregon, Washington, and New York. There is constant rumbling that Virginia is poised to breakthrough and make it five states on the map, but the rumbling has yet to to produce anything.
To see how one would vault into the elite club, it’s best to examine the club members in the first place. What does it take to be there?
Produce good wines
Sorry to be obvious about things, but that is what gets attention. It begins and ends with the wines. My experience with Virginia wines is that there are some quality spikes but across the board, the quality just isn’t on par with New York. But Virginia doesn’t need a broad swath of awesome wine. Virginia needs three or four wineries to take a common varietal like Cabernet and just knock it out of the park for three straight years.
Stay boutique
Nothing promotes the image of plonk more than mass production. There are plenty of good wines that get rolled off in 100,000 case lots, but they don’t drive reputation. Small production winners drive a reputation for quality. Whispers and friendly tips about “this hard to find gem” get your winery on the map.
Get a score from a big gun
There’s tons of talk about how the wine recommendation engine is changing. Social media rules, old journalism drools. It’s great to see people getting their wine information from lots of different sources. In the future, the hope is that wineries are viewed on their merit, not their reputation.
But that isn’t now. Now, Virginia needs a score.
Parker hasn’t ever marked up a Virginia wine over 88 points, and that happened back in 2002: both White Hall Vineyards Petit Verdot and Chehalem Petit Verdot scored 88. The last time Wine Spectator ran a feature on East Coast wines, nothing out of VA cracked 86. That isn’t going to get it done. I don’t know if Tanzer has even reviewed a VA wine. Anyone?
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to get a more recent score out of these guys. Anyone have Parker’s direct line?
Others are cocked and ready to step up and be a big wine producing state. States like Texas and Idaho (No, Udaho!) are starting to get whispers around the wine world regarding their increasing quality. It’s good to see quality wine coming out of uncommon areas and it will be fun to find out who is the next one to make the leap.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Bummer. I just checked Vinfolio’s database and no Tanzer reviews from any Virginia wine. It could be we don’t have them all classified correct. I’m showing 230 Virginia wines (not vintage specific). Is that about right or are there way more?
May 14th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Thanks for looking. There are about 250 unique wines in Maryland, so I’m sure Virginia is anywhere from 2x to 4x that number.
September 24th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I’m assuming this article is dated now- several VA wines have scored above 90. Valhalla vineyards has one, and so does Tarara, just to name two offhand.
Yay VA wines!
September 25th, 2009 at 3:18 am
Katie,
I did a quick scan of Wine Advocate notes and found an 89 that has been recently published for the 1995 Piedmont Vineyards Chardonnay Unfiltered Native Yeast. Didn’t see anything over 90. Where did you see the scores?