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I love Virginia wine but used to think it was yucky, all because of a single bottle.

Back in 1996, my wife and I received a basket of goodies which included said bottle of some kind of Virginia red. Back then, there were not all that many wineries in the state and to my knowledge few, maybe even none, produced anything memorable. We both enjoy wine, very much actually, but neither of us is particularly into finding "notes" of tobacco or leather or pepper or apricot or flint or cheese or sunshine or hogwash or any of the million other things that the snobs go on about. Even so, that long ago bottle stands out in my memory based on its clear notes of chalk and vinegar with just a hint of cat box ammonia. Bad.

How lame was this wine exactly? Some years later, we and some in-laws went to a Celtic festival held on the property of that very winery. Stopping at the wine shop to use the restrooms, we were approached by a salesperson asking if he could answer any questions about their various offerings. Crystal - whose Midwestern Dutch upbringing laid a foundation of calling it like it is  - demurred, saying "No thank you. Frankly, I've been underwhelmed by your wines." I have no memory of the salesman's response. For his sake, I hope he argued for whelmed. 

Flash forward a dozen plus years to a time Crystal and I decided to spend a few days after Christmas in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Our hopes to go hiking were bamboozled by ice on the trails left by the previous week's storm, so our innkeeper suggested that we instead visit a few wineries. In principal, this should have been a golden plan. We'd had a blast visiting vineyards in Oregon's Willamette Valley a year or two before. There was, however, our memory of the Ghost of the Bottle of Underwhelming Virginia Wine Past. Ultimately, we figured what the heck, let's go for it. It would beat slipping off a cliff and breaking open our skulls. At least a little. 

We visited, I think, four wineries that day, and while admittedly one did not overly impress us, the remaining three brought joy upon joy. How had this improvement happened in just a few years? All I know is that we tasted a selection of wines ranging in quality from nice to wonderful. And since then we have made it our business to visit other Virginia wineries and even start our approximation of a cellar. Many of the best wines in this state emulate the dry Bordeaux style, and there is one winery making a prize winning Pinot Noir capable of going toe to toe with the west coast's finest. Our winemakers even took Petit Verdot, a grape that the rest of the word struggles to figure out, and created world beating stuff. 

It's hard to find these lovely wines outside Virginia; I think primarily because the wineries are too small to sell product much beyond their own tasting rooms. Maybe that will change, but for now it's reality. In light of these limitations, our wines' reputations beyond state lines seem to be based more on ancient history than current production. Here's an example: in his book In Defense of Elitism, author Joel Stein anticipates a Virginia wine will be "(s)lightly too sweet, due to the low acid levels in the Virginia grapes." Which is hooey, but might reflect a peck of truth from the old days before Virginia's winemakers moved up to the big leagues. I don't fault him; after all, I'm the one who spent decades dismissing Virginia wine quality based on my own memory of chalk and ammonia. Oh well, not to worry. Virginia wines are here to stay, and it's really fun to introduce out-of-towners to their myriad delights. 

Wineries tend to be pretty locations that lend themselves to photography and painting. That's why you've just read this infomercial about the genesis of my passion for Virginia viticulture. All to announce a small watercolor painting of some grapes on the vine. Cheers.