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,…
By Doug Fabbioli Jim Law, a fellow winegrower and a leader in our industry, has compared the growing season for grapes to a pro football season: the 16 scheduled games get us to the veraison time frame when the grapes are ripening, but the playoffs at the end of the season count the most. Things get hectic and exciting. With a good growing season behind us the fruit is in good condition to come in, but the weather is unpredictable. We work each week of the harvest season with an overall game plan but we must stay flexible, creative, and productive in order to treat each lot of grapes coming into the winery with the attention and time that it deserves. The more fruit coming in at once, the more hectic things can get. Sometimes it’s like chess in the cellar, trying to make space for the next grapes coming in. This season was defined by the rains. As the warnings came of a large storm brewing in the Caribbean whose path was predicted to track right over us, growers and winemakers had to make some important decisions about picking some or all of their crop: How close to ready are the grapes? Will they hang well through the storm? How bad will the storm be? Rain will dilute the flavors and sugars of the grapes a bit, depending on intensity of rain, soil types, and condition of the fruit. A few days of drying after the rains is good for the grapes, and it’s always better if the weather cooperates. Cold temperatures may not bring big sugar levels, but the extra time definitely helps mature the grapes away from greener characteristics and into darker fruit and spice flavors. In Virginia we were relatively fortunate. The remnant of hurricane Ian…
By Doug Fabbioli That autumn feel is in the air! The harvesting of the crops, the cool evenings, and the changing leaves all help to create a season that makes our Virginia countryside an iconic setting for a fall experience. Out here in Lucketts, just north of Leesburg, October seems to be our busiest month of the year. I refer to Lucketts as Luckettsland: “From the merge to the bridge, and from the river to the Ridge.” We have fabulous farm stands throughout the year but fall brings out more of the color, produce and decor that you can take home. Apples and apple cider, pumpkins, gourds, mums, and cornstalks all help to give that seasonal feel to our region and home. The autumn leaves on the hillsides highlight feel of the season. Our antiques stores have truly put us on the map, and the themes of each vendor or venue show each one’s creativity and personality. Hopefully that inspires your own creative drive to bring home some decor, the hand-crafted plant stand and the plant that goes with it. The produce for your meal and the fruit for the homemade applesauce you used to make with grandma are here in Luckettsland for you to experience and bring home. One of our attractions here in Lucketts is Temple Hall Farm Park. This is a great venue for the kids as it has a play land element along with a bit of education. They have a variety of farm animals as well as farm activities specific for the month of October. Pumpkin picking, hayrides and more will make help to make some great memories for the kids as well as for the adults. October has been Virginia Wine Month for as long as I can remember. Because the wineries are farms…
By Doug Fabbioli In my 42 years in the wine industry, I have seen plenty of ups and downs in the harvest and crush balance. Wineries have only so much space but they have needs for certain grapes to make their wines, have their own grapes to bring in, and often have long-term contracts to buy grapes as well. Independent growers have their fruit coming ripe and hope that the winemaker’s promise to purchase the grapes holds up through the season. (Some wineries have not been good players in the past on this point.) Sales fluctuate for a winery through its lifespan, and the grapes planted 20 years ago may not be what it needs now, or it may not need as much of it. It may offer that fruit to another winery and can even do a little “horse trading” so that each winery gets the grape it needs. This year, because there was no wide-spread frost damage in the spring, there seems to be more fruit on the vines that will be coming available at harvest. I am seeing a number of wineries posting their excess fruit on the various forums for the industry. We all need to find space for these grapes without throwing off our inventory balance. In a good year when a winery has more fruit growing on its own vines, there may not be as much of a need to purchase from another grower. This is really the challenge of being an independent grower, and each wine region has a lot of them. You want a winery committed to taking your fruit year after year, but the winery you work with may not need your fruit, or may not have the space to process it. I have talked with some growers who would hold…
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