By Doug Fabbioli Not much is easy about the wine business. Scratch that. Drinking great wine that you grew and produced, is easy. Translating the process into a consistent business that covers all of the costs and gives back a bit of a profit, that part is hard. Between our tasting rooms, event facilities, off site tasting rooms, farmers markets, retailers, distributors, restaurants, box stores and on line sales, some may think that selling wine is easy. Well, selling wine has been pretty hard lately. Each of the above outlets have a cost to them, and when people buy less, the costs to operate remain the same. Our local wine industry is having some growing pains and many folks are looking at ways to increase sales. One outlet that has been on the schedules of wineries and wine lovers here in Virginia, is the wine festival. When I arrived in Virginia 26 years ago, I did not have a lot of experience selling wine, let alone experience with wine festivals. We didn’t have anything like this in California. Sure they had events in the square of Sonoma, or at a park with food and wines, but we did not sell wine. These events were for marketing and press. Here in Virginia, the wineries can obtain a “remote license”, to set up sales and tastings in another location. There are legal steps, insurance and safety considerations, but, we can bring the wine and experience to another location, present the wine and sell by the glass or bottle to those that want to take it home. With bigger events, event companies run the show. The wineries are the attraction, as well as the music, food, location, seminars and such. Back in the day, wineries would bring a large volume of wine to…
By Doug Fabbioli Here in the Mid Atlantic, the wine grape growers have been fortunate to find a number of grape varieties that grow well here in our soil and climate, and that the winemakers can process into interesting and drinkable wines. Some of these varieties, like Chardonnay and Merlot, are well known and grown across the world in a variety of climates. Others, like Albariño or Petit Verdot, are not as widely known but have found a home here in the Virginia countryside and the surrounding areas. A grape variety that may be known a bit better and which continues to gain respect among both the producers and the customers is Tannat. A large-clustered grape that creates a bold and rich wine, Tannat is gaining more fans the more we work with it. Originally from the Madiran region in South West France where it is used to make a robust red wine, Tannat is embraced as the national grape of Uruguay. It has been used to make rosés, soft reds, full-bodied reds, and even dessert wines, but it is best known as a deep, tannic red wine. Here in our region, most of us focus on making full, bold reds. With its higher acids and firm tannins, it is also an important blending wine used to finish off other red wines. I was first introduced to this grape through the work of Dennis Horton at Horton Cellars. He was a maverick in our industry and his ambition to try different grapes gave those of us coming along behind him a knowledge base we could use to make choices. My other big influence for this variety was Dr. Tony Wolf from Virginia Tech. Tony was more conservative about plantings than others but he had ventured into Tannat and, although he…
By Doug Fabbioli The weather this season here in the Mid Atlantic region has been a bit of an anomaly. Low humidity, low rainfall, slightly lower high temperatures and cooler evenings have all added up to a very comfortable and relatively easy growing season so far. The lack of rain eases the disease pressure on our vines even though it slows the growth of the vines. Our plants are deep rooted, but are accustomed to summer rains. They have some feeder roots that will absorb water and nutrients from the top soil, but they can survive with those deep roots if the season continues like this. Any new plantings will need watering this season, but a dry spring is not the worst thing for a grape grower. This has been a year of aging equipment and substantial repairs for me. Brakes on the forklift, the water pump on one tractor and the AC compressor on the other, welding on the one sprayer, and seals on the other, all add up to added cost and down time for critical equipment. Fortunately, between Arturo and me, we have the skills to diagnose and take on some of these repairs right here on the farm. Some of my neighbor farmers have had issues with their tractors as well so you may have seen me driving my Kubota down Route 15 a few times this spring. I know this is part of our game and every repair adds to our confidence and skill sets, but I could do without always having something in need of repair. We have some land here that we share with other small scale farmers—‘farmettes’ if you will. This is land that is not suitable for grape growing but works well for annuals and garden plots. We started this during the…
By Doug Fabbioli How artistic does a winemaker need to be in order to be successful? Making quality wines involves a lot of science, both in the vineyards to grow flavorful and healthy grapes and in the cellar to successfully navigate fermentations, stabilities, and bacterial threats. But wine covers such a wide spectrum of styles, price points, consumer preferences, and purposes. Yes, if it is made of fermented grape juice, it is technically a wine. And when you break down a wine by chemical composition you have water, alcohol, and natural acids that make up more than 99 percent, and “other” at less than one percent. Most wines fit these breakdowns, meaning the true difference between a box wine selling for $4.99 a liter and a wine that is hundreds of dollars per bottle falls within that less than one percent! That is where the artist works, within the less than one percent. I have often referred to myself as a productionist. I am always looking to keep my team working on something productive, to make quality products and deliver them at a fair price point. I don’t necessarily acknowledge the artistry that it takes to create the products like I should. Starting on the farm, the grower makes a commitment to dance with Mother Nature in order to deliver the best crop possible. Sometimes that means training the vines to do what they need to do. Sometimes it means reading the weather so as to protect your crop from a pending frost. The artistry of a farmer comes in sensing the challenges and adjusting the plan accordingly. When we bring those grapes to the winery for processing there are steps and procedures to turn those flavorful berries of sweet nectar into the wine that we want them to become….
By Doug Fabbioli We all have a mother…and while we are celebrating them on Mother’s Day, I thought I would muse a bit about the mothers and women in my life who have contributed in some way to help this wine business happen for us. First, I have to give credit to my own mother. She was never a drinker but she was certainly a foodie with a hypersensitive sense of taste and smell. I guess she’s where I get my palate. She referred to my first winery job in California as “working in the basement”—her expectations for me were a bit loftier. “No Mom, it’s a wine cellar.” As the years went by and we started our own venture here in Virginia, she clearly saw what we had achieved and the recognition we had received from the region. In the end, Mom was proud of her youngest. Certainly the mother of my children, my business partner, wife, and love of my life gets the most credit. She committed to working a steady day job so that I was able to break into and grow in the wine industry. We certainly encountered many challenges on our continuing journey (with four decades behind us now), but the one I remember the most was my abrupt transition to self-employment. In the spring of 2001 we were gearing up to plant our own vineyard on our property down the road from where I worked and we lived. I was terminated out of the blue and was left with no job, no home, and a large order of vines arriving that I needed to get in the ground and maintain. My immediate reaction was to cancel the vine order until our lives were on more stable ground. My wife’s words to me were “Don’t…
By Doug Fabbioli As the weather gets warmer the flowers start to pop, our springtime gatherings come up on the calendar, and our flavor preferences change to lighter foods and drinks. I’ve made my mark as a hearty red wine maker, but those are not really thought of as springtime wines. So let’s take a look at what locally grown wines might work for this time of year. In the spring I feel an off-dry style of wine best fits the season and the cuisine. One of our better growing white grapes in Virginia and the rest of the Mid-Atlantic is Vidal Blanc. The fruit characters always remind me of Juicy Fruit gum—in a good way. This can be used as a base in a blend like our Something White, or as a varietal wine. A dry, steel-fermented Chardonnay is another wine that could fit the bill. The barrel-fermented, buttery style has been the bane of the ABC (Anything But Chardonnay) crowd for years, but the lighter, crisper Chablis style of Chardonnay expresses the fruit and acid much better. A newer grape variety to our region is Albariño. Crisp, steel-fermented, with bright fruit notes, this wine is made from a Spanish grape that grows quite well here. There is a legendary origin story that tells of bud wood, the material needed to propagate new plants, being transported from Spain in a carry-on bag under the description of “wood for smoking meats.” I can’t attest to this story or to which infamous Loudoun winery was involved but I know it wasn’t mine. Another variety that popped up here around the same time is Petit Manseng. This variety is a little more viscous and intense than Albariño, but could easily be a springtime wine. Intense in fruit character with an underlying sweetness…
By Doug Fabbioli As every farmer does, I have had to learn to dance with Mother Nature. A farmer can take some risks when planting, but it sure is nice when we have some consistency in patterns and expectations for the weather. Over the past couple of decades our weather has been erratic from year to year, and with the relatively warm winter we have just experienced farmers have a lot of things to consider, both good and challenging. On the positive side, we have been able to prune our vines and keep our crews working in the vineyards without snow days and major cold weather considerations. We will have a lull in pruning projects as we finish our rough pruning because we will wait until after bud break for the final pruning. This break will allow us to catch up on other projects that we have not been able to get to yet. Trellis repairs, hardscape projects on the farm, and building maintenance all come to mind when I think of this opportunity of time. A downside to this could be cash flow: many farms have tight budgets and plan on cost-balancing by using those snow days for indoor work. There are times where a farmer will loan out some team members to other farms that don’t have the staff. This helps keep the team working, the budget balanced, and helps to cement solid relationships with the neighbors. Another positive aspect of this mild weather is the ability to work the ground. Timing for farmers is critical year-round, hence the phrase “make hay while the sun is shining.” Another farming hint on when to start working the ground is “when you watch your neighbor work his ground and not get stuck!” Frozen ground does not till well with any…
By Doug Fabbioli Growing up in suburbia in the 70s and 80s gave me the chance to enjoy both city and country life. I knew the city of Syracuse pretty well, attending the university, working in an office, playing in a bowling league, and having a bit of an urban lifestyle. On the other hand, my friend’s dad (an accountant in “real” life) decided to plant a vineyard and I was cheap farm labor. On the weekends, I would drive out to the countryside to put some time in on the vineyard. Sometimes I would do pruning and trellis work, sometimes I’d work on the barn, sometimes it was land clean up. I enjoyed learning about the land, the vines, and the work, especially the installation of the trellises and tending the vines. The feeling of nurturing the vines so they would grow to their potential was rewarding, and when I hit that magic point in life where I needed to make a leap towards a career, the life on the farm and in the country had a stronger gravitational pull on me—the road less traveled, if you will. There are no recruiters out there working the universities to encourage the soon-to-be graduates to come live a life on the land. Gallo would send somebody out to find some potential sales reps, but that was all I ever saw for the wine industry. Introducing young folks to opportunities on the land is the best way to get people to consider the option. We will always need people to be stewards of the land, to farm it, tend it, work it, and rely on it. The more we have of that, the more people will recognize the value of the land for more than just another building site. I have gotten…
By Doug Fabbioli Working Together for Better When my family and I moved to Virginia in 1997, there were about 60 wineries in the state and only four in Loudoun County. I was hired to be the new winemaker and vineyard manager at Tarara Winery, just a few miles up the road from where we eventually bought our own farm. My new boss encouraged me to get to know the other winery folk and get involved with the industry associations that were around at the time: the Virginia Wineries Association and the Virginia Vineyards Association. These groups were focused (and still are) on growing and strengthening our industry through sharing knowledge of best practices, the marketing of our products, and getting the voice of the industry to our business representatives’ ears. As our industry has grown, more associations and organizations have started up to address specific groups or regions. Here in Loudoun, the Loudoun Winegrowers Association began with a focus on vineyard operations. Not long afterward the Loudoun Wineries Association came along to focus on tasting rooms and wine sales, along with many other related issues. Recently these two groups have merged, making a stronger, more cohesive, and efficient organization that hopes to achieve even more than in the past. The Loudoun Bed and Breakfast Guild, an offshoot of our industry, has many wineries signed on as associate members in order to collaborate in our efforts for our guests and visitors. On a local government level we have the Rural Economic Development Council. Although I no longer serve on this council, I spent over a decade helping this organization give the county guidance and feedback on issues regarding the future of all of the agriculture and rural-based business sectors of our county, including the wine industry. Another organization, Visit Loudoun,…
By Doug Fabbioli Any form of competition needs to have people involved as officials, experts, or judges to make sure the process is fair. Wine competitions are no different. But how do people get to be chosen as a wine judge and is there a process that leads to becoming one? In order to be able to judge a subject, one needs to be an expert in that subject. There also needs to be the desire: the willingness to do what is needed to become educated and prepared. For wine education one way to enhance your knowledge is the WSET program (Wine & Spirit Education Trust). The courses start out relatively light and simple at Level 1, and then a person can continue through the program with more challenging wines, subject matter, and tests in order to train the palate as well as the brain. Time in the industry helps a lot as well. Making wine, selling wine, buying wine, even just being intentional about tasting wine with others are all good for gaining the knowledge. The idea is to understand the grape growing and winemaking process in such a way that one can taste a wine, identify characters in the wine, and judge whether that character is good or bad based on the typical characteristics of that wine and style. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? A friend of mine as well as of the Virginia Wine industry is Kathy Wiedemann. She says “My journey to being a wine judge has been long, encompassing a decade of wine studies, tasting thousands of wines, and having a deep passion for wine. I consider myself an unofficial wine ambassador for Virginia wine as it is where I truly found that passion. Having worked for seven years just about every weekend in VA wine,…
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