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Chris Pearmund, who has been involved in the Virginian wine industry for two decades, with wife Lisa. His new winery La Grange has received big financial backing |
Virginia’s vineyards take on the world
It’s taken 200 years of trying, but New England finally has a wine industry to take on the world
THOMAS Jefferson, a founding Father of the United States, its third president and legendary wine buff, tried to make European style wine in Virginia. Conditions defeated him.
For more than 200 years Virginia remained in the wine-making doldrums, though recently it has been hitting the headlines in the wine press.
Last week a gaggle of Virginian wine-makers came to London, interested to know what the fuss was about, and we went to meet them.
Here was modern winemaking in the raw – wineries created by outsiders who have decided that Virginia is the next ‘happening’ wine place.
Middle aged and affluent, some of those involved are drop-outs from the intense world of American commerce. They have utilised their riches, hired wine- making experts and are applying their marketing know-how to making Virginia the wine world’s next New Zealand.
Patricia Kluge is a dominant figure in Virginian wine making. Some say the success or failure of her venture could make or break Virginia’s attempt to become a leading quality wine producer.
At 57 years old, she is one of America’s wealthiest women. Born in Baghdad to British parents, her family fled Iraq and came to London in the early 1960s. She became a nude model for the sex magazine Knave and married its aging owner, Russell Gay. After a while she tired of her life and went to America.
There she met with a man even older than Gay, the much married John Kluge, who was building a network of local media stations. Kluge became very rich when his business was bought by Rupert Murdoch, who used it to create his Fox television network.
But John Kluge was fickle in love and wanted to move on. Their divorce saw Patricia Kluge awarded a substantial part of her husband’s newly acquired wealth.
She first dabbled in property and then diversified into wine. Vast sums have been spent creating the Kluge winery, situated a stone’s throw from the site where Jefferson had once failed to develop a Virginian wine industry.
No expense has been spared. Kluge’s winery bristles with expensive, cutting edge technology and foreign wine consultants – including the bete noire of traditional wine-making, Michel Roland – have been hired.
But Kluge is not without a rival for the accolade of Virginia’s top winemaker. Brad McCarthy is a Virginian, born and bred and is also part owner and chief wine-maker at Kluge’s next door neighbor, the Blenheim winery.
McCarthy learned his wine-making working in the fledgling Virginian wine industry and later traveled to California and Europe. In contrast to Kluge’s outsourced talent and technology-based wine-making, McCarthy champions a minimalist, low tech, terroir-influenced approach.
But this is not a simple case of David and Goliath. McCarthy’s business partner in the venture is the South African born, Virginian resident Dave Matthews, who was rated by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the richest rock stars in the world.
Kluge has already had some success. One of her wines was sold by posh restaurants with the bottle served in a bag designed by Lord Linley. It became a fashion must-have and sold out.
McCarthy is carefully crafting a solid reputation on a region-by-region basis in America, building demand and increasing production.
Events such as this visit to London are raising Virginias wine making profile and generating significant interest and publicity.
The wines being promoted here were mainly the same old bunch of fashionable favourites – Chardonnay, Cabernet and Merlot with a predictable emphasis on Viognier.
They sport the new ‘in’ wine taste, somewhere between the powerful and fruity wines of the new world and the gentler, more structured European approach.
They are middle-of-the-road wines, similar in concept and style to the new generation of up-market South African wines currently being launched on the UK wine market.
They are not available in London yet but wise market restaurateurs will make room for them on their wine lists.
The Virginians are definitely coming. |
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