NEW newbie and Virginia Wines

Visiting VA wineries is an enjoyable experience. I can think of none that are "must do's"

I th>Hello All-

Piedmont, Linden, Naked Mountain are some of the best East of the Rockies, Gabrille Rausa(sp) is perhaps the best winemaker in State but his latest venture doesn't allow visiters yet. Ingleside Plantation had some good reds. Also Barboursville, owned by Zonin, run by Luca Paschiera(sp) has introduced some Italian varietals.

Dennis Horton is the owner of Horton.

I sort of thought Dennis was the front and ran a business in No VA, , and the Dennis wife was the winemaker and ran the vineyard.

"jjmche" in news:eAALe.228$_F1.146@lakeread04:

Welcome! Visiting wineries can always be instructive. Alas I don't have any information to offer about Virginia. (Is its wine industry young? One fairly recent reference book, covering wine production in many parts of North America, lacks any entry for Virginia; but as with any bearer of information, that situation may reflect on the book, of course, more than on the Virginia wine industry.)

As another bit of information that may be useful at some point, in these situations I suggest pointedly reading about and getting experience with wine styles from elsewhere in the world that are widely known and are useful as reference points, even if one prefers to begin with the local produce. This was a topic of discussion on this newsgroup (or rather its immediate predecessor*) in the late 1980s, such as in message , after some fellow posters in California advised, almost as if it went without saying, that the budding US wine enthusiast, especially in California, should naturally start with California wines. I (a native northern Californian and wine enthusiast) countered with other perspectives on this, from which an unexamined assumption in favor of beginning with one's local producers is not without drawbacks. These can include orientation to the world of wine through styles that are atypical (e.g., should the Hungarian-born enthusiast always begin with Tokaji?), or, especially in the new world, trying to discern what is general or timeless in wine from a local industry changing fast. Even information, of the meaty and useful sort for beginners, is harder to find in evolving wine industries (though they produce rivers of words, certainly) compared to wine industries in regions with a few centuries' experience. (For such reasons, my own early wine education in the deliberately avoided focusing on my own, very vibrant, region.) Events later (1980s-90s) underscored in California the hubris of insisting on re-inventing things worked out successfully elsewhere.**

I haven't looked at _Wine for Dummies_ yet, but additional tried and true books about wine -- introductory and in-depth reference both -- have been recommended by many knowledgeable people on this newsgroup, in recent years and going back to its origins in the early 1980s. (Anyone interested can therefore find much more information on that topic by searching archives than by asking again, by the way.)

Cheers -- Max

-- Notes:

• Before the middle 1990s this newsgroup's traffic was part of rec.food.drink (RFD). RFD was the new name in late 1986 (when all newsgroups were re-named) of net.wines. Net.wines was a spinoff in February

1982 from the cooking newsgroup net.cooks, created a month earlier by my friend Steve Upstill (and motivated only partly by an excess of fresh pasta on hand). The renamed version of net.cooks operates today as rec.food.cooking (RFC). All of these newsgroups are reasonably well archived in early years and in recent years, though poorly in the middle period, in public archives at groups.google.com and elsewhere.

** This refers to the disastrous promotion to the California wine industry of the inadequately pest-resistant AxR-1 root stock hybrid and the subsequent revisitation of the phylloxera pest onto California, later called a billion-dollar debacle. It compelled widespread re-planting, the more poignant because native North American grape types had earlier imparted _resistance_ to this native pest into European vine crops in the nineteenth century.

Dennis sell computer equiptment to the federal government. There was both old puters & wine boxes in the warehouse They bought out Montdomaine and the time kept Lane Whetherall the winemaker. Pardon my spellings. I know Chris Baida son of Joan was their marketing guy. I didn't know Joan was the winemaker.

In Maryland both Dennis & Luca have had pretty short stays with mid sized wholesalers. Dennis is a pleasant but hard driving fellow. He and Barboursville get much of the out of area press and have completley replaced Meredyth as the winery accounts had to have both in DC and Maryland. Virginia by far markets their wines best in the Mid Atlantic. There's a lot of hype about Long Island in the Wine Spectator as the owner Marvin Shanken loves being in the Hamptons and there's lots of new money there. Still wines from the Finger Lakes, Maryland Va and PA often outshine the overpriced weedy wines of the North Shore. Tom Matthews of the Spectator has been very honest in his reviews and is the only one covering the North East States but the layouts, dining guides etc feature Long Island uber alles.

At the beginning Parker had an appreciation for North Eastern wine but as space in his guides became limited, reviews only appear every two or three years in the Wine Advocate by Pierre Rovani, who basically dismisses them as do frequent contributors of the Parker-Squires Board. Every once in a while there will be a review of Basignani wine because Bertero & Parker are good friends, so I guess Rovani grabs a few things off the shelf to write a balanced review.

For the record I sold wines for Horton, Barboursville & Basignani. I still pour for Basignani at festivals if my health permits.

Hi Jim,

I would try and find the wines you like. Everyone has diffrents tatses right? There is new site out detailing wineries across the U.S. with maps,searches, etc. You can search by state or view maps by location. There are still a few bugs, it will be interesting to see how it develops.

Check it out:

jjmche wrote:

Hi Jim,

I would try and find the wines you like. Everyone has diffrents tatses right? There is new site out detailing wineries across the U.S. with maps,searches, etc. You can search by state or view maps by location. There are still a few bugs, it will be interesting to see how it develops.

Check it out:

jjmche wrote:

A second for Horton. I was impressed by each wine I tried. Also recommend Shenandoah, Prince Michael & Afton Mountain. In the Lynchburg area, Valhalla was excellent and certainly worth the drive IMO.