Here are some wine articles that have caught my eye recently.

I haven’t done a post like this for awhile, in part because there are several people doing wine news summaries like this. But these articles are especially interesting to me — and I hope to you as well — because they focus on small regional producers, as well as major issues I’ve written about here on WineLine, such as the current anti-alcohol movement I call The New Prohibition. And one sparks my wanderlust.

Aside from my own scrolling here on Substack and elsewhere, I rely on a few news compilations to stay up to date on wine. The Spill is a relatively new one from Tom Wark, who authors the Fermentation newsletter here on Substack. While Fermentation is a great read for anyone wanting to follow industry trends, Wark aims The Spill more at consumers. The articles he highlights are less hand-wringing over current market conditions and more about how to experience and enjoy wine.

More Cab Franc love: Dan Redding, in My NoVa Wine Blog, profiles Virginia winemaker Robbie Corpora and upcoming releases from his new label Podere Piccolo (which, a quick Google search suggests, may easily be confused with an existing Italian winery). “Robbie is making Cabernet Franc that is a unique and exceptional expression of vineyard and growing season – wines with soul and vitality,” Dan writes. (Link)

And Even More Cab Franc Love: Paul Vigna, in The Wine Classroom, profiles 61 Vineyard in Maryland’s Montgomery County, a small winery raising eyebrows for its Cabernet Franc and other wines. (Link)

Coals to Newcastle. Wait, what? Northern California Wine Country is all abuzz about Pierce’s Disease after grape vines infested with glassy-wing sharpshooters were sold are area Costco warehouse stores. No, apparently the wineries themselves don’t buy their vines from Costco, but the invasive insects could spread from home gardens to commercial vineyards and cause as much as $166 million dollars a year in damages, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The infested vines were shipped from a plant nursery in Fresno to Costco stores in 24 counties, including Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Marin. (Gift link)

Alcohol Is Good for You! (Unless it isn’t.): Tom Wark, one of the leading wine community voices against The New Prohibition, reports on a new study that shows light-to-moderate alcohol consumption may have protective effects on cancer rates.

“Heavy drinkers had an increased risk of cancer death, and light drinkers had a decreased risk of cancer mortality, and there was no association between moderate drinking and cancer mortality,” Wark reported in Fermentation. (Link)

But before we could pop open some Champagne and toast these findings, The New York Times reported on a U.S. government study that argues more than one drink a day dramatically increases the chance of premature death. This was the Alcohol Intake and Health study, intended to support the new dietary guidelines, that was withdrawn last year because the Biden administration has appointed noted anti-alcohol activists to oversee it. The Trump administration decided not to submit the report to Congress, but it was published June 9 in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. (Gift link.)

On Tap in Old Tappan? The Winemakers Co-Op, a group of New Jersey wineries, will have wines available by keg in some of their tasting rooms this summer. This is a pilot program aimed at sustainability to gauge customer response. (Link)

“Our member wineries are focused on implementing sustainable initiatives in both the vineyard and winery,” said Danna Shapiro, Executive Director of The Winemakers Co-Op. “Because so much of our wine is sold directly through tasting rooms, kegged wine presents a compelling opportunity to reduce packaging waste while also broadening tasting room selections. This pilot will help us better understand the environmental and financial impact, as well as consumer reception of the format.”

Tablas Creek in Paso Robles, California, switched to kegs in their tasting room a few years ago, citing the savings in expense and carbon footprint by not using bottles. This is something more wineries should do; making wine available in kegs will also help place wines in by-the-glass programs in restaurants.

My corkscrew is my passport: Jamie Knee, aka The Petite Wine Traveler, writes from Cannes. No film festival updates or celebrity sightings, just an evocative ode to the rhythms of the Mediterranean lifestyle, and of course Provence rosé. (Link)

“Rosé here is not merely a pairing choice; it is part of the setting itself, as essential as the sea breeze and the late afternoon light, belonging wholly to the beach clubs and terraces, to the long lunches and the quiet understanding that no one should be in any hurry whatsoever.”

Put your money where the green is: Robert Joseph, in Wine Thinking, looks at data (Ugh! Why would anyone do that?) and concludes that people who say they prefer sustainable or environmentally friendly wine don’t actually shop that way. So the movement toward lighter bottles, regenerative farming and fair treatment of employees and suppliers is coming from governments, writers and the convictions of growers, not from consumers. (Link)

“If, like me, you believe in reducing the use of industrial chemicals, encouraging biodiversity and aiming to shrink your carbon footprint, by all means sign up for the sustainability programme that most closely fits your philosophy. But don’t imagine there’s a huge audience of wine drinkers who’ll be applauding you for doing so,” Joseph writes.

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It also helps to have a charismatic evangelist shouting your virtues from the rooftops, or the vine rows.

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The region is California’s Livermore Valley, and the evangelist is Steven Kent Mirassou, the sixth generation of one of California’s pioneering wine families. The Mirassou family story begins in 1854 in the Santa Clara Mountains south of San Francisco. Mirassou founded Steven Kent Winery in 1996 in the Livermore Valley, and in recent years has become a fervent advocate of that region and Cabernet Franc as its signature wine. He and his wife, Beth Mirassou, co-founded the Cab Franc Guild a few years ago and sponsor an annual Cabernet Franc festival called CabFranc-a-Palooza. Mirassou also extols Cab Franc’s virtues on his immodestly titled Substack, Wine Saves Lives!

The Livermore Valley Wine Community, a winery trade association, and the Tri-Valley Conservancy, an organization dedicated to preserving agricultural land in the East Bay region, have also endorsed Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc as Livermore’s signature wines, even providing financial help to growers who replant vineyards with those varieties. These factors coalesce to shine a bright light of publicity on Livermore Valley.

And thirsty wine writers are responding. If you’ve read much about wine lately you may have seen articles about Livermore Valley producing top-notch wines, especially from Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. You’ll probably hear more about Livermore in the months to come.

It’s not just hype. During a short visit to the valley last month,1 I learned that Livermore is about much more than those two grape varieties. It’s a small but vibrant community that is primed to surprise. And if you’re in the San Francisco area and you don’t want to deal with traffic and high tasting fees, you have an alternative.2

Much to Like

There’s a lot to like about Livermore Valley wine country:

• Easy Access: Livermore is about 35 miles from the San Francisco Bay and an easy drive from San Jose and Silicon Valley as well as Monterey to the south, Sacramento to the north and Lodi to the west. “Easy drive” of course assumes you time your trip to avoid rush hour traffic.

• It’s Small: There are just over 50 wineries, and you might meet the winemaker or owner in the tasting room. That gives Livermore a frontier vibe that more famous regions like Napa and Sonoma have lost. Vineyard acreage has declined from about 4,000 acres two decades ago to approximately 1,400 today, reflecting a move away from selling grapes to larger companies outside the valley toward concentration on estate wines.

• The Wines: Don’t expect big and oaky. And although Livermore is east of the Bay Area, don’t expect excessive heat and ripeness. Livermore wines tend to be balanced and lithe, primed more for the dinner table than the trophy case.

The Livermore Valley is bowl-shaped, rather than a deep V. Driving east from the Bay Area, you don’t get a sense of mountains on either side like you do in Napa. In the morning, you may see fog, demonstrating a maritime influence from the San Francisco Bay, just about 35 miles to the west. The bigger influence from the bay is wind, which barrels down I-580 like Silicon Valley commuters rushing to get home in the afternoons. (Those aren’t frost fans whirling over the Altamont Pass east of Livermore at the entrance to the Central Valley.) The wind accentuates the diurnal temperature shifts and slows ripening, extending harvest into November and yielding balanced wines without the sugar and alcohol spikes common in hotter climes. The wind also thickens the grape skins, lending more color and extraction to red wines.

This Ain’t Your Father’s Cabernet (Sauvignon)

“When I first started making wine 30 years ago the goal was to make the most expensive wine, the biggest Cabernet Sauvignon we can, because we’ve got to compete with Napa,” Mirassou told me. “Now the mission has changed dramatically. A $30 bottle of Cab Franc from Livermore is affordable, it’s delicious, and it increases the amount of joy that’s spread in the world.”3

(I did notice streets named Rutherford and Oakville, but few other indications that Livermore has a lingering inferiority complex about Napa.)

On the choice to tie Livermore Valley’s wine reputation to two signature varieties, Mirassou said: “We are very purposefully building some kind of identity for our growing area.” He has a West Coast perspective on how wide open the field is for Cab Franc, something I take issue with as an East Coaster. But that’s for another article. Livermore has a voice for Cab Franc, with its own expression distinct from the Loire Valley and certainly from Napa. It’s also a different expression than the grape achieves in New York or the Mid-Atlantic.

(There may also be a subtle dig at Napa and “King Cabernet” in the choice of these two signature varieties. Modern DNA research has determined that Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc are the genetic parents of Cabernet Sauvignon. Score one for the old folks!)

Don’t sleep on other varieties. Pruett Farms Winery makes some excellent Chardonnay (ironically from Dijon clones, not the local Wente clone) in a reductive style — racy and energetic.

Iberian varieties also do well in Livermore, if the Verdelho, Tempranillo, Monastrell and Graciano I tasted at Las Positas Vineyards are any indication. Perhaps as a holdover from a time of experimentation before the valley began focusing on two signature varieties, Las Positas has an impressive 17 varieties planted over 20 acres of vines. So while the variety is delicious, there’s not much of any to go around.

At Darcie Kent Estate Winery my group tasted a stunning Hazel’s Block Albariño, which that week won best in show white honors at the California Signature Wine Awards. Darcie and David Kent (no relation to Steven Kent Mirassou or Steven Kent Winery) said they are increasingly focusing on aromatic white wines. They produce citrusy Sauvignon Blanc from the Musqué clone as well as savory Cabernet Franc under Darcie Kent and a sister label, Almost Famous.

Darcie Kent Estate Winery is California in a microcosm. The property was once owned by Bing Crosby. Darcie, the sixth generation of a Swiss family that began making wine in Missouri in the 1880s, is a talented artist whose work adorns the winery’s walls and labels. During the covid pandemic, Darcie and David decided to branch out by opening a dispensary on the property, so there’s one-stop shopping for your recreational needs.

And There’s History, too!

We can’t call Livermore an “emerging” wine region, given that Robert Livermore planted the first grapevines there in the 1840s. The first wineries were established in 1883, and their names are familiar today: Concannon, which first put Petite Sirah on a label in 1961, and Wente, which produced the first varietally labeled Chardonnay in 1936 and is still identified with the Wente Clone of Chardonnay.

“There’s a little bit of Wente in every winery and vineyard in Livermore,” says Julio Covarrubias, a Mexican-born grower who worked for Wente Vineyards for more than 40 years and bought a vineyard from them in 2001 he now calls Casa de Viñas. My group visiting him on a warm May afternoon tasted a delicious Petite Sirah made from his fruit by nearby Mitchell Katz Winery.

There’s also a generational change underway, lending new energy to the valley’s vibe. Wente Family Vineyards, which claims to be the oldest family-owned winery in the United States, is on its fifth generation. Steven Mirassou’s son, Aidan, is involved in the winemaking at Steven Kent Winery, while Aidan’s sister, Sara, is director of hospitality, continuing the family legacy into a seventh generation. Darcie and David Kent’s daughter Amanda is taking a bigger role in running that family winery.

“We’ll never be large like Napa,” David Kent said. “But Livermore Valley is just getting started.”

If You Go:

Livermore Valley is doable as a day trip from the East Bay, maybe even San Francisco itself. For dining, Uncle Yu’s at the Vineyard in Livermore is a winemaker hangout for traditional Chinese-American cuisine, and if the owner’s in a good mood, he may even sing some opera for you. (He’s good!) Nearby Pleasanton also has an In’N’Out.

Golfers can book a tee time at Wente Vineyards, then lunch at The Grill followed by a tasting. (Or, if you’re adventurous, the other way around, I guess.)

In the Glass:

In addition to the wines mentioned above, here are some other Livermore Valley gems I’ve tasted recently.

The Steven Kent Winery Cabernet Franc 2023 Ghielmetti Vineyard Livermore Valley, CA. 13.7%. As with the rest of his single-vineyard series, Steven Kent Mirassou has crafted a sleek, elegant Cabernet Franc. This one has a bit of pyrazine character of the variety, giving a hint of green pepper flavor many Cab Franc fans find appealing (including me).

The Steven Kent Winery Cabernet Franc 2023 Sachau Vineyard Livermore Valley, 13.5%. Ripe and juicy, yet elegant with great structure and texture. There’s a confidence in these wines.

Fenestra Winery, Cabernet Franc 2022, Livermore Valley, 14.1% Juicy, spicy, with black pepper, olive and tea over Bing cherry and plum.

In the News:

Good + Tasty

Cabernet Franc Offers Life's Most Sublime and Quotidian Pleasures

Cabernet Franc is the Pedro Pascal of grapes…

Read more

a month ago · 20 likes · 6 comments · Kathleen Willcox

https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/06/04/livermore-new-downtown-transformation-development/

https://www.diablomag.com/travel-places/beyond-the-bottle-how-livermore-wineries-build-community/article_00da4ba4-45db-47a7-97e3-da34b18862ee.html

These woeful trees are just one reminder that 2026 is painfully out of whack.

They were victims of the frost, or freeze, or apocalyptic weather event, whatever you want to call it, of April 21, when temperatures plunged to 24F for several hours just days after a warming spell in the 90s shot the world into an exuberant burst of growth.

April frost is not unusual in the Mid-Atlantic. We’re used to the warnings to bring our tomato plants inside and cover our garden beds. We’re not used to losing our maple trees.

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Headlines about the devastation of April 21 focused appropriately on vineyards, with many wineries in Virginia, Maryland and southeastern Pennsylvania reporting as much as 90 percent crop loss for 2026 in the initial aftermath. The effects on our gardens illustrate how severe this frost was.

A month later, the impact of the frost on local vineyards still isn’t clear.

“This is my 47th year growing wine grapes,” Jim Law of Linden Vineyards in Virginia wrote in his email newsletter on May 22. “It feels like it could be my first. I truly don’t know what to expect of vintage 2026.”

Law’s Hardscrabble vineyard suffered damage from 0 percent to 100 percent “depending on where you were standing,” he said. “This presents a complexity of vineyard management that I am still trying to wrap my head around.”

It didn’t help that this week, just as surviving vines were pushing secondary tendrils and beginning to flower, the Mid-Atlantic was socked in by several days of cool rainy weather. “Pollination succeeds best under warm, dry conditions,” he wrote.

The rain at flowering is affecting even those vineyards that escaped devastation on April 21 by limiting fertilization and fruit set. While this may not hurt quality, it can reduce quantity in a season already hit hard. “This vintage will likely go down in Virginia wine history as one of the most challenging, if not THE most challenging we have faced,” said Christine Vrooman, co-owner of Ankida Ridge Vineyards near Amherst, Va. Ankida escaped significant damage on April 21 because of its high altitude, but the vineyard was in full flower when this week’s rain set in.

Chelsey Blevins, winemaker at Fifty-Third Winery in Louisa, Va., chronicled the sporadic growth of her Albariño vines after the frost on her Facebook page. “I don’t think we’re going to make much Albariño,” she said. “Most of it will probably go into a blend, if we decide to keep the fruit.” Frosted vines were slow to drop their dead leaves as the cool weather slowed recovery, and some vines were dead and destined to be ripped out — and probably not replaced with Albariño.

At Burnt Hill Farm in Clarksburg, Maryland, vintner Drew Baker decided the freeze was an opportunity — if not an imperative — to make changes in the vineyard.

“Many varieties are starting to bounce back,” he said, including Regent, a hybrid red developed for its resilience in a challenging climate. “For me, it’s becoming a real case study of what works here even after a generational frost event. So, we’re going to make some changes.”

The frost hit especially hard on lower parts of the slope at Burnt Hill, forcing some difficult discussions about replanting at a vineyard that was just beginning to hit its stride. A block of champagne clone Chardonnay, intended for sparkling wine to welcome guests to Burnt Hill, was “largely killed,” Baker said.

“Instead of trying to rehab it, we’re going to remove it and transition that block from vinifera to a more climate-resilient variety.” That involves removing the trellis system and pulling the vines, planting summer buckwheat to feed pollinators and protect the soil. Buckwheat harvested in the fall will be milled onsite into flour to be used in Burnt Hill’s kitchen. The ground will then be replanted with hard red winter wheat which will become bread flour in the spring, when the block will be replanted with a new grape variety.

“In the big picture, we’re taking this as an opportunity to make a change, and that’s what I’m most excited about,” Baker said.

These dreary assessments a month later, as well as the visible reminders in our own gardens, should strengthen our resolve to support local wineries this year. Not everyone will have the resources to replant large portions of their vineyards. Surviving vines may not fully recover for a year or more. They need the support of the wine community: Visit an extra winery or two, buy an extra bottle. Ask for local wines at your retailer or favorite restaurant.

For at least a few years, and probably much longer, we will be discussing the impact of the “generational frost” of April 21, 2026, on viticulture in the Eastern United States. This story is only beginning.

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What became known either as the Paris Tasting of 1976 or the Judgment of Paris had modest beginnings, and it almost didn’t happen. British wine merchant Steven Spurrier and his American colleague, Patricia Gallagher, wanted to explore wines from California to mark the U.S. bicentennial as part of their program for the Academie du Vin, Spurrier’s wine school for expats in Paris. Spurrier and Gallagher each traveled to California to scout wineries, and they struggled to get wines to Paris for the tasting. (Anyone who has shlepped wines home from a trip abroad can relate.) They invited some French wine luminaries to come and taste these novel wines from the New World, but only at the last minute did Spurrier decide to do the tasting blind to neutralize any preconceptions about quality. Only one reporter, George Taber of Time magazine, was curious enough to attend.

We all know the results: Chateau Montelena Chardonnay 1973, crafted by Miljenko “Mike” Grgich, and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars SLV Cabernet Sauvignon 1973, made by Warren Winiarski, edged out some of the best white Burgundies and red Bordeaux. Taber’s short writeup in Time magazine excited consumers and winemakers back home. The Paris Tasting proved Europe, especially France, didn’t hold a monopoly on world-class wine or terroir.

In the years that followed, French wineries invested in California, Argentina, Chile and elsewhere. In Mendoza, Nicolás Catena was inspired to find the best sites to grow Malbec and launched a revolution that continues today. Eduardo Chadwick did the same with Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, pitting his own wines against French classics in tastings modeled after the Judgment of Paris.

Years later, Winiarski reflected on the significane of the tasting.

“We were trying to bring wine back from the nadir of Prohibition and elevate it to national consciousness,” he told me. “That tasting was affirmation that it could be done. The official hierarchy did not have the ability to keep people from making beauty wherever they were.”

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History held a dinner last month to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Judgment of Paris. The museum has highlighted the tasting several times before, including for the 40th anniversary, which I wrote about for The Washington Post, and bottles of the winning wines from Chateau Montelena and Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars are on display in the museum’s exhibit on U.S. food history.

This year’s dinner featured three Napa Valley wineries included in the Paris tasting: Clos du Val, Freemark Abbey and Mayacamas Vineyards. Although their wines didn’t “win” and go down in history, they contributed to the paradigm shift that elevated California and other regions in the world of wine.

Bernard Portet, who crafted the Clos du Val 1972 Cabernet Sauvignon included at Paris, spoke at the dinner of the impact the tasting had on the U.S. wine industry.

“The effect was huge,” Portet said. “Nobody knew about Napa Valley in those days, and suddenly they read about it in Time magazine. In the months after that, we had all sorts of influx of tourists coming to see what we were doing.”

Spurrier often spoke and wrote about the backlash he felt from the French wine community for conducting the Paris Tasting, but Portet said he heard mostly positive comments from his fellow Frenchmen. Many of the visitors to Clos du Val were Bordeaux friends and colleagues of his father, who had been technical director at Château Lafite Rothschild. After the tasting, they were interested in knowing what he was doing in Napa Valley.

I had the pleasure and honor of knowing Spurrier and Winiarski during my wine writing career. Spurrier was a fan of Virginia wines (true to form from Paris, he reveled in good wine from unheralded regions) and we judged the Virginia Governor’s Cup competition together for several years and even traveled together to Okanagan Valley in British Columbia in 2019. He wore his fame well and always made anyone he was talking to feel special, including winemakers as he critiqued their wines.

I met Winiarski when the Smithsonian opened its food history exhibit in 2011. He was a major donor for the museum’s food history program, in part because he wanted to preserve the legacy of the Paris Tasting and his achievement. He was soft-spoken and professorial, and my eyes would spin when he described the golden rectangle as his ideal of a balanced wine. He was generous, though a hard edge appeared when something didn’t live up to his expectations. Every time I spoke to him, I learned something, even if I wasn’t quite sure what. He even gave me his cell phone number, and I wish I had abused that privilege more often before he passed.

And I met Mike Grgich twice. He came to D.C. for some event at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant celebrating a milestone of his winery or career, and I have a treasured photo of me with the two of them (which of course I can’t find now). In 2016, Grgich was too frail from back issues to travel to D.C., but I visited him in Yountville as I was researching my piece on the commemoration.

Spurrier, Grgich and Winiarski passed away since that last celebration, and the memory of the tasting and its impact will fade over time. I’ve even seen some grumbling from within the wine community about the attention Napa Valley still basks in because of it, but I think that misses the point. Yes, the two winning wineries were in Napa, but the real winner was California wine in general and the realization that Europe, especially France, didn’t have a monopoly on world-class wine.

Even today, wine lovers in Virginia, New York, Texas and elsewhere delight in wrapping bottles in paper bags so they can prove to themselves and anyone nearby that their local wines stand tall among the world’s best. Efforts to produce top-class wine in China, Armenia or Bulgaria can trace their inspiration back to the Paris Tasting.

If Spurrier and Gallagher hadn’t done the tasting, or if Taber hadn’t attended, wine would have improved around the world anyway. But progress might have come slower. And the story would certainly be much less interesting if the Judgment of Paris hadn’t prompted the whole world to ask, “Why not here?”

Little known — or understated — facts about the Paris Tasting:

Chateau Montelena is in Calistoga in Napa Valley, and its triumph in Paris has been celebrated as a win for Napa. But its chardonnay was labelled as from Napa and Alexander Valleys, and most of the grapes came from Sonoma County, in Alexander Valley and from the Bacigalupi Vineyard in Russian River Valley. Today, Chateau Montelena continues to make chardonnay in a similar style from Napa Valley fruit.

Many wine lovers today may know of the Paris Tasting from the movie “Bottle Shock,” a highly fictionalized account that focused solely on Chateau Montelena and ignored Stag’s Leap’s victory among the red wines. Winiarski refused to cooperate with the movie and was omitted altogether. Grgich also declined, and was consigned to a brief cameo as an older guy wearing a beret. The Barrett family of Montelena participated and reaped the publicity from the movie. Spurrier was portrayed by a sneering Alan Rickman, very much out of character. Years afterwards, Spurrier described the movie as “more bulls**t than bottle shock.”

The best reference about the Paris Tasting is George Taber’s 2006 book, “Judgment of Paris,” which tells the story of the tasting and explores its global impact on wine. Spurrier’s memoir, “A Life in Wine,” includes his account of the event, and the Academie du Vin Library, a publishing imprint founded by Spurrier, has published “Judgment of Paris,” a 50-year retrospective.

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We over-romanticize wine. The idyllic lifestyle, walking among the beautifully manicured vineyards, dining al fresco while turning our large fortunes into smaller ones to live the good life, communing with the land to express its voice in our glass as an expression of fine art. It all sounds as glossy as the magazines that chronicle this utopia.

But dammit, wine is farming, and farming is hard. And Mother Nature is a capricious taskmaster as winegrowers in the Eastern United States learned in late April, ironically just a day before Earth Day.

An stretch of summer-like temperatures in the 90s had encouraged vines to push their buds and tendrils into action. But on the morning of April 21 temperatures plunged well below freezing throughout much of Virginia, Maryland, southeastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and into southern New York. It soon became apparent that the damage to the 2026 vintage in some areas bordered on catastrophic.

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Growers have reacted to the frost with frustration, resignation and despair, along with a call to consumers to support local wineries in a time of need. If wine is indeed community rather than an industry, it’s time for us to step up. Visit an extra winery or two. Buy an extra bottle or two. As one winery said on social media, “Hug a farmer.”

Locavore restaurants who celebrate their local farmers can help by featuring local wines on their tasting menus or special sections on their lists for higher visibility. Schedule an extra winemaker dinner or two this summer. Help your neighbors get through this.

Spring frost is not unusual in the Mid-Atlantic. Home gardeners know not to put fragile plants in the ground before Mother’s Day. Winegrowers are accustomed to spending spring nights in their vineyards when temperatures dip, ready to light fires, run fans or frost dragons — noisy contraptions that shoot flames briefly along the vine rows to warm the air — to mitigate any damage. The wealthiest may even hire helicopters to buzz the vineyards and keep the air moving. But that Tuesday morning the temperatures dropped too low and for too long and with no wind for any of these measures to help.

“A frost is not a frost is not a frost,” said Nate Walsh, co-owner and winemaker at Walsh Family Wine in Loudoun County, Virginia. “The temperature at 500 feet is not the same as the temperature at 700 feet. The April 21st frost was a radiation frost, where clear skies and calm winds allow heat to escape the earth’s surface and rise into the atmosphere, creating an inversion where cold air from above settles.”

The damage was “nauseating,” Walsh said. “Frost doesn’t frustrate winegrowers. It doesn’t sadden us. Frost fills us with dread.”

A full accounting of the loss will take weeks, until the vines recover and push any secondary shoots for a more limited crop. But initial assessments were dire.

Lee Hartman, winemaker at Bluestone Vineyard in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, described the disaster as a “slow moving train wreck,” beginning with the 10-day forecast warning of plunging temperatures even while the valley basked in early spring warmth. He and his crew made their usual preparations and lit fires to warm the air, but “this wasn’t just a frost. It was a hard freeze.” Even before he doused water on the fires, Hartman was trading messages with fellow winemakers telling of the extent of the damage.

The night was “unlike anything we’ve seen before,” Emma Pope, communications manager at Black Ankle Vineyards in Mt. Airy, Maryland, posted on the winery’s Facebook page. “We’re choosing to be optimistic before we make a final assessment, though we are dealing with the possibility that this year’s fruit is largely if not entirely lost.”

Not far away, the Baker family reported similarly catastrophic damage at their two vineyard sites, Old Westminster Winery and Burnt Hill Farm. “The primary buds appear to be 100 percent gone,” Drew Baker, who manages the vineyards for the family operation, wrote on Burnt Hill’s website. “Across both farms, we believe we may have lost upwards of 100 tons of fruit.”

That could mean roughly 72,000 bottles of wine that will not be produced at Old Westminster and Burnt Hill this year, Baker said. And while that revenue will be lost, expenses, from payroll, equipment repairs, farming inputs and more, remain. The vineyards must be maintained as if they were bearing a full crop in order to keep them in optimal shape for next year.

In Virginia, Jim Law of Linden Vineyards reported his first significant loss since planting his Hardscrabble Vineyard in 1985. Because of the elevation and slope of the vineyard, he estimated the damage at 20-30 percent. Even so, he said, “It is difficult to convey the gut punch of walking the vines after a devastating event like frost or hail. You feel physically sick and emotionally devastated.”

Spring frost damage to vineyards has become a familiar global refrain during the era of climate change, as warmer weather in late winter and early spring nudges vines out of dormancy and promotes early growth. Even “normal” frosts are more damaging than they were when vines slumbered longer into spring. Burgundy suffered major crop damage in 2016, 2017 and 2021. This year, Texas experienced early vine growth followed by a damaging frost, and Champagne recorded its worst frost year since 2003, with an estimated 40 percent crop loss.

With the extent of the damage in the eastern U.S., growers are pleading with consumers to support their local wineries by visiting and buying current releases. In the Mid-Atlantic, those will include many high-quality reds from the outstanding 2023 vintage. We can help the wine community by celebrating that vintage while helping growers survive this one.

I thought about the frost this week as I walked my dogs along the trail in the woods near my house in the Maryland suburbs just north of Washington, D.C. This suburban oasis of nature was not unscathed; lesser celandine, a non-native invasive but very attractive ground cover plant, was scorched in places, as if someone had randomly sprayed herbicide. Some shoots of mountain laurel, our area’s glory in May, withered and browned.

Yet the mountain laurel will still bloom and the woods will be as glorious as ever this summer. The native American grape vines I find throughout these woods will thrive and sprout, continuing their climb through the tree canopy in search of sunlight. If they produce any grapes, they will be well above my sight line, treats for the birds in hopes they spread seeds to help new vines grow.

But vineyards are not natural. They’re imposed by mankind upon the environment, like any other farm or orchard, and therefore more susceptible to the vagaries of nature and climate. The ramifications can be profound.

Think of it this way: If you or I have a bad day at work, most of us can take a hot shower and make it good tomorrow. Winegrowers suffering a frost like that of April 21 in the Mid-Atlantic have just lost most if not all of their product for 2026, with implications for years to come. It’s as though Mother Nature gave them a withering performance assessment after the first quarter instead of waiting until the end of the year.

At Allegro Winery near York, Pennsylvania, owner/winemaker Carl Helrich is planting vines this spring to replace some of the thousands he lost to a hard freeze in 2018. Now, with much of his vineyard once again frosted, “it feels like planting flowers in a graveyard,” he said.

“I spent the last two or three days doing a lot of soul searching about what we are doing here, and so many times on the verge of tears because we care so much about these vines, and I know it’s been really hard on my crew to come out here after spending so many days since November, pruning these vines and getting them ready for the growing season,” Helrich said in a video post on Facebook.

He compared growing grapes in Pennsylvania to the Greek myth of Sisyphus rolling a stone up a hill only to start over after the stone rolls back down.

“We think we have everything figured out,” he said. “And then Mother Nature decides to kick us in the ass.”

Please leave a comment here to share your experience with the frost or to show support for your favorite winemakers. And please share this post with your friends to increase awareness about the plight of Mid-Atlantic wineries.

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Last month, I had the pleasure of attending an intimate tasting at the Chilean ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C. The guest of honor was Felipe Müller, CEO and chief winemaker at Viña Tabalí, a pioneering winery in the Limarí Valley in northern Chile. I had over the years tasted and enjoyed Tabalí’s lower tier of wines, and this would be an opportunity to sample some of Müller’s premium efforts.

Limarí is a young wine region, with the first vineyards planted only in the early 1990s. Chile’s wine history dates to 1551, when Spanish explorers planted Mission vines (typically called País in Chile) in the south. Wine migrated northwards, through the Maule, Central, Colchagua and Maipo valleys, and by the mid-1800s was well established around Santiago and the Aconcagua Valley to the capital’s north. Bordeaux varieties, especially Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Carmenère, became Chile’s signature wines.

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More recently, wine has moved to the north and toward the coast, or higher into the Andes foothills, looking for cooler climates. The Casablanca and Leyda valleys have become known for crisp, tasty Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir.

The Limarí Valley is further north, about a four-hour drive north of Santiago, and the river valley extends from the coast to the Andes, given it a variety of terroirs. The dry, cool climate reduces disease pressure and helps keep the wines fresh. Syrah, Cabernet Franc and Malbec can grow in Limarí, but the stars are Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, so naturally winemakers and publicists like to call the valley “the Burgundy of Chile,” Müller said.

At Viña Tabalí, “We are not about big volumes, and not about average wines,” Müller said. “We decided to show something different from Chile.”

Tabalí has three vineyards in the Limarí Valley. Talinay vineyard, about 12 kilometers from the Pacific Ocean, features chalky, limestone soils, a rarity in Chile, where granitic soils are much more common. The vineyard’s rolling slopes are covered daily in spring and summer by fog from the Humboldt Current. Talinay is planted to Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Malbec, Cabernet Franc and Syrah.

A bit further inland, Espinal vineyard still benefits from the ocean winds, perched on an alluvial terrace surrounded by deep ravines. The soil is clay over volcanic rock, with veins of calcareous soil in various parts of the vineyard. Grapes here are Chardonnay, Viognier, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec and Syrah.

The Rio Hurtado vineyard lies to the north and east, near where the Limarí river descends from the Andes. At about 1,600 meters, it’s the second-highest elevation vineyard in Chile, Müller said. Here, Malbec and Viognier are planted in basaltic fractured soils over volcanic rock.

The first wine Müller poured was a sparkler called Tatié, a joint venture between Tabalí and Champagne Thiénot. A 60-40 blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, aged 30 months on the lees, the wine featured crisp, mineral and yeasty aromas, promising complexity. The acidity on the attack was quite firm, but after the wine and I became acclimated to each other, I enjoyed the expressive stone fruit flavors. Priced in the U.S. at $35-40, it’s a steal.

Next was the Talinay Caliza Chardonnay 2023, Tabalí’s top Chardonnay, named for the vineyard’s limestone soils. Barrel fermented and aged for 12 months with no secondary malolactic fermentation, the wine was citrusy, mineral and intense. As he savored his own creation, Müller sighed and said, “I love wines with tension.” U.S. retail price is $60-$70.

Talinay PAI Pinot Noir 2020 was smoky and flinty from the limestone, with rosehips and berries emerging with a little coaxing. The palate was bright and lively with tension and medium weight and a long finish. Müller said the original vine material came from Geverey-Chambertin and Vosne Romanée, but this wine seemed unmistakably Limarí. U.S. retail $70-$80.

Roca Madre Malbec 2018 came from the Rio Hurtado vineyard. It featured dark vibrant color and a lithe structure on the palate. It definitely tasted “warmer” than the two Talinay wines (as in, from a warmer climate, though not strictly speaking a “warm” climate). It’s quite floral, with aromas of lavender and violets, and features the smooth disappearing tannins Argentina is famous for in Malbec. U.S. retail $60-$70.

Finally, the DOM Cabernet Sauvignon 2018 came from the Dom vineyard in Maipo Valley, south of Santiago. This was classic Chilean cabernet, deep in color, with aromas of blackcurrant, sage and mint. I felt as though I had stuck my nose into a fresh-picked bouquet of herbs. Outstanding, elegant, lithe and long. I didn’t note a price but it should be in the $60-$70 range.

These premier wines from Viña Tabalí are not cheap, but given their quality they are fairly priced. My only complaint is that they may have ruined me for Tabalí’s more affordable wines. At the very least, when I try those, I’ll be reminded of the wines from Talinay, Roca Madre and Dom.

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We discussed Tim’s heritage as a third-generation Italian-American winegrower, his work with his father at the pioneering Robert Mondavi Winery and the now famous winemakers who honed their craft there, and how the fourth Mondavi generation is already making wine. We also covered the ups and downs, from critical acclaim to vitriol when Tim stuck to making wines of elegance and nuance rather than chasing power and ripeness. A crucial and fascinating point is what Tim calls “the second coming of phylloxera” in the 1980s and 1990s, which prompted Robert Mondavi Winery to go public to finance replanting — a move that ultimately led to the family losing the winery in 2004 — and claimed the older vineyards that produced those elegant wines Tim favored.

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Dave McIntyre

Hello everyone. Welcome to WineLine Live! My name is Dave McIntyre, author of Dave McIntyre’s WineLine here on Substack, and it is my immense pleasure and honor to welcome today Tim Mondavi, who is going to share some of his stories and insights about Napa Valley Cabernet over the years. Tim should need no introduction to anyone who is into Napa Valley or California wine. But the reason that we have him on today is because of a couple of important milestones. Tim has recently released the 2023 vintage of his two proprietary red wines, Continuum and Novicium, from his Continuum Estate winery in Napa Valley. And this is significant because 2023 was the 50th vintage of Tim’s being a full time wine grower, as he calls it, having started full time at his father’s Robert Mondavi Winery in 1974 and just in coincidence, this year, 2026, is 60 years since Robert Mondavi started his winery in Oakville and pretty much ignited the current California wine craze, or at least Napa Valley growth to what we know today. So Tim, welcome. Congratulations on your anniversary. It is such a pleasure to have you on. I see lots of people are joining us. Folks, feel free to send us a chat message, and we can try to intersperse some questions or something if you have some questions for Tim. But Tim first again, congratulations, but please tell us a little bit about the two wines that you have just released and what they mean to you.

Tim Mondavi

Well, thank you. First of all, I’d like to say thank you Dave for having me on and also thank you for being able to elevate the awareness and culture of fine wine in America. You have played an important part of that for a good portion of your life, and I guess we have that very much in common, so

Dave McIntyre

I think you’re impact has been greater than mine. But thank you.

Tim Mondavi

We all do our part, that’s for sure. But yes, I have seen a lot over the years. I was lucky enough to grow up at Charles Krug Winery, which is the oldest operating winery in Napa Valley, established in 1861, and as a result of that, the history of Napa Valley is important to me, and my family has played an important part of it. My grandfather, Cesare Mondavi, got us involved in wine in 1919. Being of Italian heritage, he and my mother, my grandmother, I’m sorry, were able to welcome people to their table. My grandmother was a fabulous cook. Being of Italian heritage, ... perhaps the single most important social institution in life is the sharing of a meal, and they would always elevate that with wine, and so it is a part of their culture, part of our culture, and that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. And I believe, if you look around the world, the wine world, that wine just facilitates good social interaction and a healthy way of living. So I was very fortunate in growing up in that at Charles Krug. It was my playground as a young boy. You know, five year olds would play in the sandlot. I would play in the pumice piles, and my jeans would get turned purple, and my mother hated it, but I loved it. And so it was. It was quite something. When my father left Charles Krug to start Robert Mondavi Winery in 1966 I was a 15 year old boy, and I was lucky enough to put the first valves on the first tanks of Robert Mondavi Winery. I worked with Warren Winiarski for a couple of years, when he was the fellow who worked with my father, at my father’s direction, and then Mike Grgich followed him. And so those are names that anybody knows who is familiar with wine, particularly now with the 50th anniversary of the Judgment of Paris. I was very lucky to get to know them and become good friends with them. In fact, they came to the blessing of the grapes for the ‘23 vintage, which I’m holding here in my glass, both of them, Mike Grgich and Warren Winiarski. And that was quite a wonderful celebration.

Tim Mondavi

But yes, my father put me in charge of the wines in ‘74 when I completed studies at UC Davis, and then, many great things have happened. My grandfather pointed the way to Napa Valley because he saw that the soils and climate were fabulous with good proximity to the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay to maintain the freshness and vibrancy of our wines. So my grandfather pointed to Napa Valley for my father, and my father took us to the stars and so many great things happened. Baron Philippe de Rothschild visited California, saw that there was a lot of buzz going on, and approached my father in 1968 to propose doing things together. But it was too early then, and he came again 10 years later in 1978. And that gave rise to Opus One.

Dave McIntyre

That gives me two points. First, an aside. You mentioned that your grandparents came to California, not initially, Napa Valley, I believe, but to California in 1919, and if I recall the story, they were to buy grapes to send back to the Italian community in Minnesota, because they would be allowed to make their own wine for personal consumption under Prohibition. So, it occurs to me that at least one good thing came out of Prohibition, in that the Mondavi family came to California,

Tim Mondavi

I often say that my grandfather was smart and lucky. He was smart and he was very entrepreneurial. He was lucky in that he married very well. My grandmother was a fabulous cook. My grandfather first came and worked the iron ore mines in Minnesota as a laborer. His brother was killed in a mining accident, so he went above ground and had a boarding house. All the smartest paisanis wanted to be around my grandmother’s table because she was such a great cook. And it is interesting to note that Prohibition, I think it was Senator Volstead, was from Minnesota, and Prohibition began there. So these people had their ear to the ground, and they heard not only that Prohibition was coming, but they also heard what the exceptions were. The church ladies that were hell bent to make their wayward spouses sober were really going after hard liquor, but the church ladies couldn’t go against the church. The church needed wine for the sacraments, so that was the first exception to Prohibition. Secondly, the doctors had always taken the Hippocratic oath, and Hippocrates recommended wine for what ails you. And so wine was an exception.1 You could go to a doctor, and he would prescribe wine. You’d get it from the pharmacist.

Dave McIntyre

I always heard “feed a cold, starve a fever,” but maybe it was “Merlot for cold, Cab for fever.”

Tim Mondavi

I think that’s a more sophisticated level of science. Thank you for that, Dave. I have not heard that, but it sounds like a proper diagnosis.

Dave McIntyre

I just made it up.

The other thing that occurred to me from what you said before -- you mentioned Warren Winiarski and Mike Grgich being early winemakers who helped your father establish the winery, and of course, they were the makers of the two wines that won the 1976 Judgment of Paris. They are by no means the only famous winemakers who came through that winery back in the day.

Tim Mondavi

Robert Mondavi Winery in 1966 was the first new winery from the ground up since Prohibition, and the first to use new technology. My father believed that the biggest problem throughout the wine world, whether it be Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rheingau, the Mosel, anywhere in California, the biggest problem was poor cooperage. And so the solution to that was stainless steel fermenters and new French oak barrels, as well as German ovals. We also did a lot of work with UC Davis to understand the microbiology of wine better. My father was one of the first to really have enough confidence that there was a future in wine, and so he was willing to invest in quality. He was also smart enough to realize that we didn’t know everything. In Europe at the time, everybody was following tradition. But my father said, No, we can’t do that. Prohibition wiped out our tradition, and so we had to create one anew, and we did that with the help of UC Davis. One of the things that I loved being able to do was conduct some of the most advanced and appropriate discovery of what makes great wine tick in the experimental program we had at Robert Mondavi. Robert Lawrence Balzer, who was the Parker of his day, said that we were the test tube winery because we experimented with anything and everything. We had a lot to learn, so we weren’t willing to just carry on with the way things had been. And so we had to recreate the book on how to produce great wine.

Dave McIntyre

And a lot of other people were learning too. I mean, some of those famous names that came through Robert Mondavi were Zelma Long, who went on to Simi and South Africa, I believe. And Paul Hobbs, who was instrumental in developing the wine industry in Argentina later. And of course, he has several of his own labels, and works around the world. I know he’s very active in Armenia now, and I think Bulgaria as well.2

Tim Mondavi

Helen Turley worked with us for a bit of time, and she and John Wetlaufer formed their own winery. There was a fellow, I’ve forgotten his name offhand, but he went up to Oregon and developed things there. Carol Meredith with Steve Lagier. Steve worked with us for a number of years. Carol Meredith is a famous name as a professor who worked in the genetics of the vine, and Steve was very much a scientifically oriented guy. He was very much involved in our experimental programs, both in the vineyard as well as in the cellar. Phil Freese, who met Zelma at Robert Mondavi Winery, and they married and became the dynamic couple consulting around the world. Phil was the vine whisperer, and Zelma made the wines sing. So there were so many people that have come through. The University of Robert Mondavi, it was called and so, yeah, we were kind of the epicenter of this resurgence.

Dave McIntyre

It’s an amazing legacy, when you think about it. And now, of course, it’s going into another generation, but I think I distracted you a little bit from telling us about the Continuum and Novicium, and you have a third wine too that you want to mention.

Tim Mondavi

Well, let me go back and set the stage for that. I was lucky enough to be the winemaker for my father at Robert Mondavi Winery from 1974 to 2004. That gave me the opportunity to be the co-winemaker at Opus One for from its birth, 1979 until 2004. We worked in Italy as well, developing Tenuta Luce, and we ended up owning Ornellaia and Sassacaia for too brief a period of time. We worked in Chile with Eduardo Chadwick in developing Siena and Caliterra.

But it was my love of Burgundy that drove home the importance of site. Yes, they talk about site in Bordeaux as well, but in a much different way. Burgundy really articulates the importance of site better than anywhere in the world. And I’m a huge believer in that. And so to that end, I was also a part of developing the appellation boundaries for Napa Valley itself and the hillsides versus the valley appellations. And if you think about appellation, appeller is “to call” — if you don’t know how to call yourself, how can people take you seriously? And so you have to have a broad overview, since our goal was to produce wines among the very best in the world. We would always compare ourselves to the best in the world in ways that many other people hadn’t at the time. We saw the appellation systems of Burgundy, as I mentioned, and what Baron Philippe had done at Mouton Rothschild in Bordeaux, how it was a statement of character potential, but also useful from a marketing perspective. And so we were able to develop an appellation system for Napa Valley that separated the hillside from the valley floor.

The world was an exciting place in the ‘70s. At Robert Mondavi, we grew and grew. The world was accepting California wine in a way that it had not before. And so there were more vineyards being planted, more opportunities going on, and all of a sudden, phylloxera happens. Phylloxera came in, and since over 80% of the vineyards of Napa Valley were planted to AxR1 rootstock, it threatened 80% of the vines and our vineyards. All of a sudden, we were cash limited, so we went public in ‘93 under one set of rules that gave us control, and we carried on with that. And that allowed us to develop the relationship in Italy with the Frescobaldis, in Chile with the Chadwicks and others. But then the rules of being public changed, and we lost control of the company, and so everything came crashing down at the end of 2004.

So all this amazing opportunity for me to learn in the epicenter of discovering what makes great wine tick with all the experimental programs we had at Robert Mondavi, to see how other people produced great wine in various parts of the world, Bolgeri, or Montalcino in Italy, Chile, working with Michel Roland there in Bordeaux. And also I asked him to consult with us at Robert Mondavi so to see how all these different people lived the culture of wine. And all of a sudden it comes to a full stop at the end of 2004. We were heartbroken, but we had a bag of money. And I’ve discovered that if you’re heartbroken, it’s a whole lot better to have a bag of money than not. And but that’s not enough. You have to have a new dream, a new love. And so Continuum for me is that.

So we had all of this history, all of this background of working alongside some of the greatest wines of the world at Mouton Rothschild, Ornellaia and Masetto, and Siena in Chile. And so I looked for exactly the right spot worthy of fulfilling our vision of producing wines among the very, very best in the world. And so Continuum is our Grand Cru on top of the world.

And I wish it were a clearer day. I would love to show you, on a clear day, we can see the San Francisco Bay and the buildings on the other side of it. You can see the Mayacamas range to the west. You can see the Vaca range to the east. You can see the valley floor below us. And you can see the history of my family from Sunny St Helena winery, starting in 1933, to Charles Krug in 1943 to Robert Mondavi in ‘66. You can see it all. It’s all there, and it points the way to our present and our future.

So Continuum is born of all of this history and a passion to produce wines at the very highest level, and also to ultimately fulfill my family’s dream that my father drilled into my head, that my grandfather put into my father’s head, t to honor a site. Continuum is our commitment to producing a wine to be recognized as a first growth of the world. And given that we have been here now nearly 20 years on this site, given that we were responsible for the vineyards at Robert Mondavi Winery for 30 years, you know, I can see the differences of them, and I can see the result of the differences, the differences of soil, the differences of climate.

Cabernet Sauvignon does extremely well here in the hillside or in the valley floor, and Cabernet Franc and Merlot do even better here than, I think, in the valley floor. Christian Moueix, who I admire greatly, and who probably knows more about Merlot than any one in the world, having given birth to Petrus, has said the valley floor is not appropriate for Merlot. He says it’s too hot, and I would also say that it’s probably too vigorous for Merlot, but up here in the hillsides, it is not as hot as the valley floor. We are at 1300 to 1600 feet of elevation, as opposed to 150 feet in the valley floor. Our afternoon peak temperatures here are 10 to 12 degrees cooler than the valley floor. Our nighttime temperatures, by contrast, are warmer than the valley floor. Cold air sinks, so the valley floor is colder at night, hotter in the afternoon, than where we are.

Our wine is an extension of our site, evolving the varietal mix to honor what this site does best. First of all, Cabernet Sauvignon is the variety that has strength. It has ageability. It’s the most important variety. However, Cabernet Franc has a more ethereal fragrance, more supple on entry, the tannins are a little bit leaner, and it tends to melt into the wine in a nice way that Cabernet Sauvignon doesn’t. Merlot gives a little bit of flesh and fat, and Petit Verdot gives some muscularity, but also some earthiness.

After a while, my daughters came to me and said, Dad, we got to have a white wine. I said, No, not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Well, finally I relented, and so they came up with a way of honoring their grandfather, with Sauvignon Blanc. In the past, Sauvignon Blanc was produced in two ways. In Napa Valley, at Charles Krug, it was very clean, very light. And in the wake of Prohibition, everything was done with the repression of fault being a principal element. Repression of fault means avoiding microbial problems. So the wines tended to be very lean, very light, and perhaps overworked. Or Sauvignon Blanc would be produced as a sweet wine. My father wanted to do it differently, and so Fume Blanc was born by having a wine with suppleness and richness. It was inspired by the wines of the Loire, but with a bordelaise orientation. What I mean by that is that the maturity of the fruit was a little bit more Bordeaux, like the varietal mix, also had a good portion, maybe nine, 10% Semillon, and the wine was barrel aged. It was richer than the very over processed wines of the distant past. So Fume Blanc became very successful.

One of the first things I did at Robert Mondavi was keep the old vines that were doing very, very well in the ground. I Block Sauvignon Blanc was planted in 1945 and were among the very oldest vines in Napa Valley for Sauvignon Blanc. And so my daughters said, we’re going to carry on with this, we’ll find something farther afield from Napa Valley.

The fires of 2017 and 2020 convinced us we need to have a little bit of geographic diversity. Organic farming is a must. Old vines is a bonus. And my daughter Chiara was able to find these vineyards planted in 1940s and the 1960s that have been organically farmed their whole life. And Sentium was born. And I love this label because it is my daughter’s hand. It is kind of the zen of labels in that it is simple.

My father used to say making good wine is a skill. Fine wine is art. I evolved that to say artistic wine is an expression of man’s harmony with nature. Now the next generation, led by my daughter Carissa, have said on the back of the Sentient label, a koan that kind of captures the essence of our winemaking philosophy, and that is “to live in greater harmony with nature, complex and sublime as a wildflower.” And that ties things together in my mind, because the winemaking is simple to protect the nuance very old vines express. So I’m quite delighted. And everybody that tastes it says, Wow, that is, that is an amazing one, unlike other California Sauvignon Blanc.

Dave McIntyre

Where are those old Sauvignon Blanc vineyards she found?

Tim Mondavi

In the Redwood Valley in Mendocino County, so about an hour and a half north of Napa Valley.

Dave McIntyre

Excellent. Okay, well, we are beginning to run up to the quarter of the hour now, and time is flying, which actually reminds me of the inscription on your Continuum label for your anniversary vintage. This is written, I guess, in Tim’s handwriting, “My 50th vintage, in the blink of an eye,” and then Tim’s signature. So those 50 years have obviously, I guess, gone quickly for you.

Tim Mondavi

Absolutely. And they’re still flashing by every year. They get faster.

Dave McIntyre

And I don’t know if you see in the chat, but Kate Reuschel mentions that she enjoyed the 50th anniversary wine at the Wine Writers Symposium group tour recently.

Tim Mondavi

Yes! They came up here. We had a professor of soil that came up, and it was a rainy day, but it was quite inspiring. He was an interesting academician who shows the limits of looking only at science, in my view, but that is a different story.

Dave McIntyre

I know we’re running out of time, but you mentioned the phylloxera from the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, and how 80% of Napa vineyards needed to be pulled out, and the effect that had on Robert Mondavi Winery. When we spoke yesterday, in preparation for this, you mentioned phylloxera’s impact on the overall style of Napa Valley Cabernet and its growth at about that time, into this sort of big, powerful cult Cab, relatively higher alcohol style that was very popular but also a little bit controversial, and you always bucked that trend. And you were in the headlines for bucking that trend.

Tim Mondavi

Oh yes, I was.

Dave McIntyre

I only raise it now because I think the sensibility for a lot of people, is coming back to that ideal that you stuck to during that time. So I want to give you a chance to describe that evolution and where you stood with it.

Tim Mondavi

Warren Winiarski also was among among those that held to a more classic, elegant style of wine, which we pursued at Robert Mondavi as well. Jon Bonne, who used to be the wine writer from the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote about the classic wines of California. His premise, if I understand it correctly, was that these old vines [produced wines] much lower in alcohol. They were elegant, they were balanced. They were terrific. I saw them growing up as a child at Charles Krug. You could not get 23 degrees sugar from those vines, because the vines were diseased. My mother would ask me to go out and get some of those beautiful red leaves for our dining room table. Well, these red leaves were of vines that were had fan leaf virus and leaf roll virus, and so that precluded the vines from producing a lot of sugar. And so these wines were, by nature, leaner and brighter and much lower in alcohol. And that was terrific, and it all seemed to work in balance.

Tim Mondavi

Then came the second coming of phylloxera in the early ‘80s. All the vineyardists and winemakers got together and said, How do we deal with this? We moved towards higher density planting, rootstocks that were resistant to phylloxera, the right varieties in the right places, canopy management that was completely different. This led to a renaissance in the vineyards. But these young, virus free vines would race to sugar accumulation well in advance of the character development of the tannin, evolution of flavor. So people could achieve much higher sugars, and the tannins and the flavor would lag. So that is what led to many people saying this is the way of the future. We held on to the past ideal of leaner wines. I was accused terribly. I was given the slur of being Francophilic, and I said, don’t throw me in the briar patch. Don’t do it.

Dave McIntyre

Yeah. that had to be an insult to a proud Italian-American.

Tim Mondavi

Oh, it was, it was intended to be an insult. Nobody could touch my father, right, but they could mop the bathroom floor with me. I went from being on Parker’s hero list to being used to scrub the bathroom floor. But at any rate, elegance and finesse is always something. But now we are in another era where those vines have become older. Those vines are slower. And I do believe that old vines do make more elegant, more refined wines, because they don’t accumulate sugar so rapidly. The sugar is slower, the phenolic development is greater and in better harmony with wine or with the flavor, and so we can achieve better flavors at lower sugars than we could shortly after phylloxera. So I think we are in one of the very best times in wine, because our technology is so far advanced beyond what it was 50 years ago, and now the plant material is older, too. And I’m a big believer that old vines do make better wine. Our oldest vines were planted in 1991 ... and it still is one of the very best of our vineyards, consistently, and the majority of our vineyards planted in ‘96. And so these vines are mature and in their prime, and because we are caring for them that way. At To-Kalon, the I block Sauvignon Blanc became famous, but there was its Cabernet brother that was planted the same year, called the Monastery Bloc, and those vines were well into senility. Cabernet Sauvignon is a little bit like the thoroughbred. It has a short, shorter lifespan. Sauvignon Blanc can last longer. I loved [the comedian] George Burns. He would get up there on the stage and joke about his age while puffing on a stogie and say, “If I knew I was going to live so long, I’d have taken better care of myself.” And so I kept those vines on the ground, saying we need to take care of the young vines so that they will be healthy when they are older. We still believe that you have to care for the vines with the idea that they will go into 30, 40, 50 years, and we’re doing that. Old vines do make a difference.

Tim Mondavi

All right. Well, that’s absolutely fascinating. Okay, final two questions, first, and I warned you about this yesterday, but I’m wondering you’ve lived in the public eye, as far as wine goes, the wine community all your life, and people probably think they know a lot about you, but is there something about you that we don’t know that would tell us a little bit more about who Tim Mondavi is?

Tim Mondavi

Oh, golly. Well, in terms of hobbies, I love snow skiing. I used to do more water skiing, but haven’t done that much lately, but I still snow ski when we have snow, and so that is great fun. But also something that is perhaps more emblematic is, I’ve always been fascinated by nature, and scuba diving allows you to be immersed in a completely different set of nature. We walk among these magical trees around us, and we don’t even notice them. But when you’re underwater you enter another realm. All of a sudden, everything is amazing. Everything is amazing. And so I am fascinated by nature, and that is part of what I think is allows me and my family to have the opportunity of celebrating the magic of grape growing, of seeing what you do in the vineyard then manifest in the wine, year after year after year. Seeing how we can nudge things a little bit, honoring Mother Nature, honoring that she is on first. No doubt about it, she’s angry with us now, and wildfires are an extension of that. All science is a sense of discovery as to what are the rules of nature. They’re complex, and for every rule, there’s an exception, and so respect for the endless complexity of nature is something that this koan on the Sentium back label expresses. It’s part of what I am very proud of for my next generation, the fourth generation of my family, for being very actively involved in carrying on that period of discovery.

Dave McIntyre

And final question, and then one request after that, before I let you go. Final question, What wine do you drink when nobody else is around?

Tim Mondavi

Oh, golly, well, I Well, there are a couple neighbors here in Cabernet country. I’m a huge fan of Naoko Dalla Valle, both personally as well as professionally. Her vineyard is just down the hill from ours. She’s about 400 feet of elevation, and we’re 1300 to 1600 feet. We share this same lava flow. I love her wines, and that helped confirm to me that being in this area was pretty darn good. So dalawali wines, I mentioned earlier the Detert Family Wines, we have good friendships with the Deterts. We had a very long friendship with them.

Dave McIntyre

Next to To-Kalon, correct?

Tim Mondavi

Yes, that’s right, but they delivered grapes to Charles Krug prior to ‘66. But that’s a great site. It’s a good western most portion of To-kalon. And then I drink a whole lot of Pinot Noir. I had assumed wrongly that it would be easy to establish Continuum as a first growth among the first growths of the world. I think we’re being recognized as such, but not to the extent that I would like, but it’s happening. But then I was going to go to the extreme Sonoma Coast and produce a Pinot Noir, and my sons, Carlo and Dante, as usual, beat me to it. The next generation is able to go beyond me from a viticultural and winemaking perspective. I was able to stand on my father’s shoulders, and hopefully they are able to continue this upward trajectory. I love wines of the Sonoma Coast. I’m a big purchaser of Littorai and of Hirsch. Last night I had the Hirsch Reserve Pinot Noir, 2018. And Raen, of course! I would be remiss to not include my son’s wine, and they have been recognized at a very, very high level. The extreme Sonoma Coast, with this cool climate just in from the cold Pacific Ocean, is why those wines have the vibrancy and excellence that they do.

Dave McIntyre

Okay, so we’re not going to see you at Gott Burgers with a glass of two Buck Chuck.

Tim Mondavi

[Looong pause] No, you got that right.

Dave McIntyre

Now, the request: You spoke very eloquently earlier about the role wine played in your cultural and family upbringing as an Italian-American with Italian traditions and wine as part of dinner and part of sociability and community. And your father embodied that and preached that. He was a strong advocate for that ideal, for all his life and career, and he wrote a mission statement, I believe he called it, which sounds like a PowerPoint business proposal sort of thing, but would you please read that for us as a sort of a benediction.

Tim Mondavi

Reading something here, it says somebody “writes about wine’s importance in culture, religion, history and even politics.” Well, that was you, Dave. That’s what I’m reading here about you. So good on you. My father had his mission statement that was similar to yours, but a bit earlier, I suspect. So let me read my father’s mission statement, which is, “Wine has been with us since the beginning of civilization. It is a temperate, civilized, sacred, romantic, mealtime beverage recommended in the Bible. Wine has been praised for centuries by statesmen, philosophers, poets and scholars. Wine in moderation is an integral part of our culture, heritage and way of life.”

Dave McIntyre

That says it all. And on that, Tim Mondavi, thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom and insight and thank you for making wine all these years.

Tim Mondavi

It is an absolute joy. And thank you, Dave, for helping to share that joy with like-minded people that love good wine, good food and conversation.

While my first WineLine Live! with Dr. Laura Catena was for paid subscribers only, I’ve decided to make this available to the public to reach a wider audience. I’ve now made that first interview public as well, so if you haven’t seen it, now’s the time.

And later this month I’ll talk live with Jessica Dupuy, author of Direct to Press here on Substack, about her new book, “Italianity.” Watch this space for exact date and time for that don’t-miss interview.

I hope you’ll join us!

And now, to the wines …

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Old Vines, Expressive Wines

Writing an article for this month’s issue of The SOMM Journal on old-vine Grenache from Australia, I was able to test several bottlings from Thistledown Wine Co. in McLaren Vale. Thistledown was created in 2010 by Giles Cooke MW, an Englishman working in wine distribution who wanted to restore Australia’s image for fine wines.

“I was frustrated by the misconception that Australian wine is all big, alcoholic, sweet, jammy industrialized production without nuance,” Cooke said. He wanted to present wines with medium weight, balanced and food-friendly. He looked for Shiraz in Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale, but was nonplussed by the price. Grenache was out of favor, and therefore cheaper, so he worked with that.

Thistledown’s Grenache offerings come from bush-trained, own-rooted and dry-farmed vineyards, most planted in the aftermath of World War II. Making top quality wines from these vineyards “comes down to picking a lot earlier, so the fruit is a lot healthier and you get wines that are vibrant, bright and true to the sites,” Cooke said. Treating it more like Pinot Noir than like Shiraz, in other words.

“People are beginning to wake up to the fact that Australia isn’t just about weight and power. It can be about nuance and site.”

Cooke gives his wines whimsical names, such as Thorny Devil and She’s Electric, referring to a long-ago bird that got fried on a power line and fell among the vines, igniting a fire that destroyed half the vineyard. Thistledown’s This Charming Man Single Vineyard Clarendon Grenache 2024 from McLaren Vale was recently named the 2026 Wine of the Year by the Halliday Wine Companion, Australia’s leading wine guide.

Most of these are small production and you’re most likely to find them in restaurants such as Del Frisco’s and Mastro’s steakhouses. Gorgeous Grenache, an exuberant blend from several regions, is priced for by-the-glass programs and may have some retail availability. My samples were provided by Southern Starz, the importer.

I hadn’t tried Thistledown wines before talking to Cooke, but I was familiar with similar single-vineyard old-vine Grenache from Yangarra, made by Peter Fraser, who tragically passed away last December. Together, these wineries are making distinctive, delicious wines with soul and character. If you see them on a restaurant list or a retail shelf, consider giving them a try.

In the glass …

Here are some other wines I’ve enjoyed recently. Some of these are older and therefore no longer available, but showing how they age.

Clément & Florian Berthier, L’Instant Sauvignon Blanc 2022. Vin de France. 12.5%. Organic. Clément and Florian are 5th generation brothers carrying on the family winemaking tradition in the Loire Valley, around Sancerre and Coteaux du Giennois. This Sauvignon Blanc is a great value at about $15-17 on Wine-Searcher.com (for the 2024). This 2022 is now drinking beautifully, with aromas of white flowers and ginger, flavors of guava and Asian pear, and a rich texture. (Imported by Elite Wines.)

Parr Collective, Scythian Wine Co., Lone Wolf País Munoa Ranch 2021, Temecula Valley. This light, aromatic red is part of Raj Parr’s efforts to save old-vine Mission vineyards in southern California. I opened it for a dinner with friends, and it was over-shadowed by more conventional styled reds. Lucky me, I got to finish the bottle over the next couple of nights, when aromas of cherries and wild scrub transported me in spirit to the Old West. (~$42 on the website)

Drouhin Oregon Rose Rock Pinot Noir 2023, Eola-Amity Hills, Willamette Valley, Oregon. 14.1% From Domaine Drouhin Oregon’s second property, in the Eola-Amity Hills, this is juicy, spicy pinot with great verve and tension. Flavors tend more to dark fruits than the red berry nature of DDO’s main property in the Dundee Hills. This is one of the (many) reasons I love Oregon pinot so much.

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SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is driving much of journalism toward listicles, articles structured around lists designed as clickbait. I confess I’m a sucker for any article offering me five new recipes for cauliflower, because I cling to a sliver of hope that someday I will learn to like it. But here are some about wine you might actually see, maybe, who knows?

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• 5 Kosher Wines to Make Your Son’s Bris Less Awkward (This was my daughter’s idea years ago when I was grumbling about listicles and the need to write about kosher wines for Passover, which, as a lapsed Methodist, is not exactly my strong suit. I never did pitch it to my editors at The Washington Post.)

• 5 Vins Français to Flex Your French Pronunciation Skills (Château CwahSSAWHN!)

• 5 Cancers Lurking in That Bottle of Wine. (This refers to what I call The New Prohibition, the “no safe level of alcohol” crusade that is trying to turn our discussion away from moderate, responsible consumption to abstinence. More on that here and here.)

• 5 Warning Labels to Read Before Pulling That Cork!

• 5 Wine Rules You Really Don’t Need to Follow

• 5 Wines that Pair Perfectly with Anything You Cook in Your Air Fryer

• 5 Oaky Chardonnays to Drink with Your Sous Vide Grilled Cowboy Steak, Because You Know You Wanna

• 5 Idiotic Reader Comments to Make You Cry

• 5 Soulful Pinots to Drown Your Sorrows While Watching the News

  

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“I’m a longtime reader and fan of your writing, if not your politics,” he said. His comment was the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove, simultaneously conveying praise and disapproval while establishing boundaries. Man, I wish we still discoursed like this instead of shouting bromides and insults to try and “own” our opponents with a funny meme and a furrowed brow.

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“Well, we’ll always have wine to share together,” I said, and thanked him for his kind words. We clinked glasses, exchanged pleasantries about the delicious gold medal-winning wines being poured that evening, and went our separate ways.

Our exchange reminded me that more unites us than divides us. Wine brings people together to share a meal and a few hours of joy despite our differences.1 That’s why I refer to the wine community — including readers and consumers — rather than the wine industry. Together, we are so much more than production, distribution and sales statistics.

A few minutes later the evening’s awards ceremony began. Applause grew as the 12 winemakers who made the top-scoring wines for the Governor’s Case took the stage, including a loud cheer for Jonathan Wheeler of Trump Winery and his 2018 Blanc de Noir sparkling wine.

All the winemakers on stage had reason to be proud, Wheeler perhaps more so. Trump Winery was the only winery to win six gold medals in the competition this year. (Wineries are limited to six entries.) Two of Wheeler’s ciders also won gold medals in a separate competition. When you cover the labels and take the sour taste of politics off your palate, the wines are pretty darn good.2

Then Gov. Abigail Spanberger, newly elected Democrat and Virginia’s first female governor, was introduced to great applause to announce which of the 12 wines had won the Governor’s Cup. She spoke for a few minutes about the importance of wine to Virginia’s economy and tourism and the international acclaim Virginia wine has received. Just two weeks earlier, she gave the Democrats’ response to Trump’s State of the Union speech, but this night wasn’t about politics. That didn’t stop several people in the crowd from speculating on the irony should she have to present the trophy to Trump Winery.

In the end, Valley Road Vineyards was displayed on the screen behind Spanberger as the winning winery. Blue Bee Cidery in Richmond took top honors for that category. The crowd cheered a female governor presenting the state’s highest trophy to a female winemaker and then resumed the evening’s festivities. A whiff of politics couldn’t dim the cheer of celebration and a community united by its love of wine.

In Memoriam: Michel Rolland

The global wine community lost a giant March 20, with the passing of Michel Rolland. He was 78.

Rolland was the original “flying winemaker,” a globe-trotting consultant who helped Bordeaux regain its mojo in the 1970s and then shaped the rise of Napa Valley cult Cabernet as consultant to Simi, Harlan, Newton, Screaming Eagle, Araujo, Dalle Valle and other wineries. He was instrumental in Argentina’s rise to prominence and even had his own winery, Clos de los Siete, in a partnership with other wine families.

Rolland’s career arc paralleled that of Robert Parker, the world’s most influential critic. Parker championed many of the wines Rolland consulted on, helping build his reputation and demand for his services. It also made him a target for Parker’s critics.

As W. Blake Gray wrote on Wine-Searcher in his excellent tribute to Rolland:

Rolland created the type of wines Parker loved: rich body, plenty of fruit, soft tannins. He sometimes faced the accusation of creating a generic international style of red wine, where the great wines he made in Argentina were indistinguishable from the great wines he made in France.

Rolland chafed at that critique, as did many of his fans. He was credited with championing green harvesting and leaf pulling, as well as careful selection of grapes in the winery, practices we nearly universally think of today for high-quality winemaking.

“Michel was an incredible innovator who changed how wine was made and how grapes were grown,” Napa Valley winemaker Aaron Pott wrote on Facebook. “His work has transformed the wine trade. He created new ways of looking at wine, tasting wine, evaluating ripeness and quality. … This was not just a man with a ‘style’ that he imposed on vineyards but a man that understood how to make great wine from great sites.”

Rolland started his consulting company in 1973 in Libourne, in Bordeaux, with his wife, Dany. Both had graduated the year before from Bordeaux’s Institute d’Oenologie. The couple sold their majority share in the business in 2020, according to Wine Spectator.

Over his career, Rolland reportedly worked with more than 100 wineries in 20 countries. He even made it to Virginia, where he consulted for Kluge Estate in the mid-2000s. (Kluge Estate is now Trump Winery.)

Reader feedback, please!

Last week, I did my first WineLine Live! with Dr. Laura Catena of Catena Zapata winery in Argentina. We enjoyed a fascinating discussion about her efforts to preserve the genetic heritage of old vineyards in Mendoza.

I conceived of WineLine Live! for paid subscribers, as a thank you for your financial support. And while only a few people joined live, the video now has more views than I have paid subscribers, so I guess that’s pretty good. Even so, I’m considering opening future installments to anyone on Substack to reach a broader audience.

So my questions to you: Should these be public? And what format do you prefer? Live gives a chat feature with the potential for viewers to interact with me and the guest, while a video post would just be that. Another alternative is a podcast, which would just be audio, without video of my chins.

Please let me know in the comments.

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In the Glass

A few wines I’ve enjoyed recently:

Bonny Doon Vineyard Take Me to Your Liter, Le Cigare Volant, Red Wine of the Earth. 2023, Central Coast, CA. Blend of Grenache, Syrah Cinsaut and Petite Sirah. Delightful wine with expressive red fruit flavors, casual drinking. Doon lovers of a certain age will remember Randall Grahm’s Big House Red; this is more in that style than his original Le Cigare Volant, modeled after Chateauneuf du Pape. The liter bottle makes it an even better value. I see this online at about $15. Great value.

Albert Bichot Bourgogne Pinot Noir Origines 2023. 13% - Textbook pinot noir and an excellent, affordable entry (regional) Burgundy. Wine Enthusiast Top 100 Wines of 2025. $24 at Total Wine & More.

Loma Larga Pinot Noir 2021 “Coastal Cool Climate Wine”, Valle de Casablanca, Chile. An older sample, showing beautifully. Spicy and fruit forward. I’m seeing widely varied pricing online, from $18-$32. At the lower end, it’s a terrific value. 13.5%

Dr. Loosen Riesling Dry 2016, Mosel, Germany. Found this “in the stack.” And it stacked up well, shedding some of its youthful acidity for opulent Riesling character, including a hint of the mineral oil older Riesling often features. A great value, as I’m seeing it as low as $14 online. 12% abv.

Red Tail Ridge Blau Franc Blend 2024, Sans Oak, Finger Lakes. 13.4% abv. The name is a neat portmanteau of Blaufrankisch and Cabernet Franc, thus Blau Franc. The blend is 50-50, no oak involved. The Blau dominates on the palate, with the spicy caraway seed (think New York deli rye bread). The Franc adds body. The result is juicy, energetic and joyful.

Sokol Blosser Estate Rosé of Pinot Noir 2025, Dundee Hills, Willamette Valley, Oregon. This first rosé of 2025 was a welcome respite to our cold, snowy winter here in the Mid-Atlantic. Oh man, I needed this! Bright and energetic, exuberant even, it perks up the mood and goes down fast. 13%. Certified B Corp. Ingredient and nutrition labeling, and in a modest way that doesn’t occupy a lot of label space. (Since it’s not required, presumably there are no minimum font size requirements.) More wineries should follow this example.

The highlight was Governor Abigail Spanberger presenting the Governor’s Cup for best in show to Valley Road Vineyards and winemaker Corry Craighill for its 2023 Cabernet Franc Reserve.

“Tonight reflects the dedication, innovation, and agricultural strength that continues to elevate Virginia as one of our nation’s premier wine regions,” said Spanberger, who took office in January. “Valley Road Vineyards’ 2023 Cabernet Franc Reserve showcases the exceptional craftsmanship and quality on display tonight, and I look forward to supporting these incredible vineyards over the next four years.”

It was a banner year for the competition, as the reds from the fabulous 2023 vintage made their first appearance. Frank Morgan, who has managed the competition for the last three years, broke down the entries and results on his blog, “Drink What YOU Like.”

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More than 670 wines were entered this year from 155 wineries. A record 214 wines and 10 ciders earned gold medals. In total, 113 wineries and cideries received at least one gold medal, compared to 87 wineries, cideries, and meaderies in 2025.

“Several factors contributed to this record-setting performance,” Morgan said. “Most importantly, wine quality across the Commonwealth continues to rise, reflected in higher average scores overall. … The exceptional 2023 vintage also played a significant role in the number of gold medals,” accounting for 35% of total entries and 52% of all gold medals.

The competition is divided into two rounds of judging. In the preliminary round, several panels of judges award gold, silver and bronze medals. In the final round, 12 judges (most of whom did not participate in the first round) taste all the gold medal wines and score them anew. The top 12 wines from this round become the Governor’s Case, which celebrates the diversity and quality of Virginia wine. The top scoring wine wins the Governor’s Cup. The final round judges are not all hometown cheerleaders. This year’s panel included three Masters of Wine and a Master Sommelier.

The full 2026 Virginia Governor’s Cup Case includes:

• 7 Lady Vineyards, 2023 Meritage

• Barboursville Vineyards, 2024 Vermentino

• CrossKeys Vineyards, 2024 Cabernet Franc

• Fifty-Third Winery and Vineyard, 2023 Two Springs

• Glen Manor Vineyards, 2023 Vin Rouge

• Granite Heights Winery, 2024 Humility

• Michael Shaps Wineworks, 2023 Cabernet Franc

• Pollak Vineyards, 2023 Merlot Reserve

• Trump Winery, 2018 Blanc de Noir

• Valley Road Vineyards, 2023 Cabernet Franc Reserve

• Winery at La Grange, 2024 Petit Manseng

• Woodbrook Farm Vineyard, 2024 Petit Manseng

Richmond-based Blue Bee Cider received the 2026 Cider of the Year recognition for its 2024 Hewe’s Crab, a traditional apple variety from Virginia’s colonial era.

Interestingly, the Valley Road Cabernet Franc Reserve 2023 was from a new vineyard, planted in spring 2021. The third-leaf vines produced expressive fruit that captured the savory elegance the variety is known for.

A new generation

Craighill is a popular winemaker among Virginia wine fans, crafting wines at Septenary winery as well as Valley Road, both in the Afton area west of Charlottesville. She is not the first female winemaker to win the Governor’s Cup, but in her remarks accepting the honor, she noted that she stood on stage between Virginia Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry Katie Frazier and Spanberger, the commonwealth’s first female governor.

She also noted that “we are the new generation.” And she’s right; to be honest, Virginia wine is getting a little long in the tooth. It’s refreshing to see the younger generation of winemakers getting acclaim.

I’m part of that long-in-the-tooth crowd. This was the 44th year for the Governor’s Cup competition. My first as a judge was 2000, and while I have not judged every year since then, I’ve probably judged more Virginia Governor’s Cups than anyone else, including the years when there were separate competitions for white and red wines. This does not win me an award (unless FIFA comes through with one) but it does allow me some perspective.

The Virginia Governor’s Cup used to be about identifying wineries who were doing something right during an era of exploration. Today the goal is to recognize the broad quality of Virginia’s best wines. So to those of you thinking, “What good’s a competition if everybody wins?” — the point isn’t to identify losers. Under Morgan, wineries have been limited to six entries, so that already weeds out a lot of the chaff. Judging the final round is actually quite difficult because the quality among the gold medal wines is so consistent. (This year, out of the 210 in the final round, there was only one I thought didn’t belong there.)

Nor does the Governor’s Cup necessarily go to “Virginia’s Best Wine.” Several highly regarded wineries don’t enter for various reasons. Any of the 12 in the Governor’s Case could easily have scored highest. Many of the winemakers pouring their gold medal wines at the gala could have stood on that stage when the case was announced; many of them have in years past and probably will in the future. Valley Road won because its wine stood out a little bit more among 210 wines tasted over three days by 12 judges.

There were some dejected winery folks at the gala who thought their wines should have scored better. I hope they will enter again next year, because their wines might indeed score higher. And the big winner ultimately is the entire Virginia wine community.

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(April 2, 2026 - As I try to develop WineLine Live!, many people have urged me to make them public rather than limiting them to paid subscribers. So I’m making this video public and will make future episodes open to all.)

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The announcement came Tuesday in a news release (dated March 2) from the winery and Luca Paschina, the general manager and head winemaker at Barboursville, about 20 miles northeast of Charlottesville. Paschina will stay on as president and chief executive officer “when a new investor group assumes ownership this month,” the release said.

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The official statement didn’t mention other employees at Barboursville. Winemaker Daniele Tessaro and vineyard manager Fernando Franco both told me they will continue in their current roles.

The sale price was not disclosed, as is typical when non-publicly traded companies are sold. Somewhat atypically, the identity of the investor group taking ownership was also not disclosed.

Rumors of a sale began years ago and reached fever pitch last summer, with rampant speculation about who might be the purchaser. Paschina wouldn’t say who the ownership group is or whether he himself is part of that group. He did tell me the investors are American and not currently involved in the wine industry.

In the news release, Paschina is quoted as saying, “Our investor group, with no other wine industry interests, fully supports Barboursville’s mission to craft world class wines and provide outstanding hospitality, while preserving the grounds of the historic vineyard estate and elevating the prestige of Virginia wines nationally and internationally.”

Barboursville was founded in April 1976 by Gianni Zonin, a leading wine producer in Italy, on the former estate of John Barbour, a governor of Virginia and friend of Thomas Jefferson. The estate, which includes the ruins of the house Jefferson designed for Barbour, now has 170 acres under vine, with 650 more acres of forests, meadows and wetlands. Barboursville produces an average of 37,000 cases of wines each vintage. The estate includes a small inn and an outstanding restaurant called Palladio, named for the Italian Renaissance architect who inspired Jefferson’s designs for Monticello and the Barbour mansion. When Paschina created a flagship red blend in 1998, he called it Octagon, for the shape Jefferson used in designing both mansions. The only way Barboursville could be more seamlessly intertwined with the mythology of Jefferson as “the nation’s first oenophile” would be if it were located at Monticello itself.

Much of Barboursville’s growth and success came under Paschina, a 3rd-generation winemaker from Piemonte who was hired by Zonin to take over the winery after the 1990 harvest. In the past 35 years, Paschina, now 65, built Barboursville into a pre-eminent destination in Virginia’s wine country, with his keen knack for hospitality and savvy marketing. He hired Franco in 1997 to maintain the vineyards and Tessaro in 2008 to help with the winemaking.

And the wines have been outstanding. Barboursville under Paschina has won the Virginia Governor’s Cup competition several times, most recently last year for the 2023 Vermentino. Decanter magazine recently named Octagon, the flagship red, one of the top 50 U.S. wines.

Paschina said his goal under the new ownership is to build upon Barboursville’s hospitality, possibly increasing available lodging at the inn and investing more in the vineyards. In his conversations with me, he said his fear was that a winery group or venture capital firm might buy Barboursville to plunder the brand and “turn it into Disneyland.”

“I love this place,” Paschina said. “I want to retire here. But there are a few more things I want to do first.”

The sale means the Zonin family will not be part of Barboursville’s 50th anniversary celebrations in April. Paschina will preside with two new titles, his characteristic bonhomie and a message of continuity, assuring the Zonin legacy — and his own — will live on.

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Esther Mobley, in the San Francisco Chronicle, has a great perspective on these closures and layoffs, noting that the wine industry can take advantage of this downturn to reposition itself for the future. She doesn’t make the direct comparison, but it brings to mind the AxR1 phylloxera crisis of a few decades ago that forced many wineries to replant their vineyards. Today, vineyards are again being ripped out in Napa Valley because of weak consumer demand.

“On one hand, it’s a sign of vineyard owners giving up on selling their crop. On the other hand, many are using it as an opportunity to rethink what their vineyards look like as they contemplate an eventual replanting a few years down the line: Should there be less Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa Valley? Should the vine rows be wide enough to accommodate electric or autonomous tractors? Should the fruiting line be higher so that sheep, now a popular grazing accessory in vineyards, can’t eat the crop?”

(This is a gift link to the article, which should give access without a paywall for 2 weeks, though the Chronicle may ask for your email address.)

Even the Supreme Court’s ruling last week striking down President Trump’s tariffs was not a complete victory. Yes, a wine company, VOS Selections, was a main plaintiff, and importers across the nation now hope they will receive refunds of the tariffs they have paid over the past months. But the ruling doesn’t give us clarity on a path forward, and the president is vowing to impose tariffs under other authorities.

Before the SCOTUS ruling came down, Eric Asimov wrote in the New York Times about U.S wineries suffering under the tariffs. Far from benefitting from trade barriers against foreign competitors, U.S wineries are paying more for bottles, barrels and winery equipment, as well as losing their export markets. (Gift link)

In Memoriam

We’ve lost a few wine icons recently.

• Daniel Cathiard, co-owner with his wife, Florence, of Château Smith-Haut-Lafitte in Bordeaux, died in late January at age 81. A member of the French alpine ski team in the 1960s (along with Florence), they transformed Smith-Haut-Lafitte into a Bordeaux power house and expanded into Napa Valley in 2020 with the purchase of the old Flora Springs property. The Cathiards have also been stalwart supporters of Heart’s Delight, the annual wine auction benefitting the American Heart Association. James Suckling gives a glowing tribute.

• Pierre Trimbach, of the famed Alsace winery Maison Trimbach, died in a traffic accident on January 31. He was 69. Wine Spectator praised him for maintaining “the iconic style of Trimbach: pure, precise, mineral-driven wines with extraordinary longevity,” even as other wineries pursued riper styles.

• Dan Duckhorn, co-founder of Duckhorn Vineyards in Napa Valley, died February 25, age 87. Duckhorn Vineyards was a champion on merlot, even after the movie Sideways tanked that market. He did go into pinot noir, founding Goldeneye Vineyards in the Anderson Valley. The Duckhorn Portfolio also includes the value Decoy brand, as well as Canvasback from Washington state. (Note the waterfowl theme.) Wine Spectator details his contributions.

• Lord Sandwich, a goofy, adorable goldendoodle with more than 20,000 followers on Instagram, crossed the Rainbow Bridge on February 10. He was 13. He is survived by his brother, Sir Soup, and his humans, Alison Smith Story and Eric Story (aka “the fun parent”), of Smith Story Wines in Healdsburg, California. Sandwich’s daily exploits, chronicled by Ali Story in Sandwich’s voice on Instagram, became an organic and engaging way for the Storys to market their wines. Sandwich greeted visitors in the tasting room and accompanied Ali on marketing and delivery trips throughout California and to her native Texas. Sonoma Magazine chronicled the tributes from his online fans. I wrote about Sandwich for The Washington Post in early 2018. When I last met him in person (in “pawson”?), my Washington Nationals had just won the World Series and in my thoughtless exuberance, I placed my World Series cap on Sandwich’s head. I still can’t believe I was so tacky to do that to such a dedicated Giants fan, but he took it like the good sport he was.

  

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[It also doesn’t hurt that the wines are delicious.

[Lerman told me that after introducing Shabo wines into the D.C. are market in March 2024, they are now in 20 states, with an expanding portfolio that includes a vodka and wines from a winery in Georgia. As we spoke, he was preparing for a call with a new distributor in Ohio, which he described as “the biggest state of the Ukrainian diaspora in the country.”

[Lerman’s still trying to get into large markets like California and Texas. But Shabo wines can be found in Total Wine & More stores in several states, as well as Vino Volo wine bars in several airports, especially Dulles and National in Washington, D.C., and Detroit. Look for Shabo wines in more Vino Volo outlets soon.

[Ukraine may have faded from Page One and from our attention. But these wines from Shabo can reconnect us with the horrors of the worst war in Europe since 1945, as well as the spirit, optimism and courage of the brave Ukrainian people who are fighting to preserve their democracy against foreign aggression. One sip may inspire you. — Dave McIntyre]

The following was posted here in March 2025.

Don’t get me started on Ukraine. I studied international relations in college and gradual school (where I gradually decided I didn’t want to go to school anymore), specifically U.S.-Soviet-China relations. So I know enough to remain interested in these issues, even though life took me along a different path. I don’t lord it in dinner conversations, because well, this is the Washington, D.C., area, and people here live this shit. And this is not a political newsletter, so I’ll leave the Ukraine situation and the betrayal of our foreign policy and our allies to more knowledgeable and eloquent voices, such as Alexander Vindman and Timothy Snyder. I highly recommend their analyses, by the way.

But then there’s wine. My first exposure to wine from Ukraine was in the late ‘90s at a tasting in D.C. of dessert wines from Massandra, a winery in Crimea established by Tsar Nicholas II to satisfy the Russian court’s sweet tooth. If memory serves, most of these wines were from the Stalinist heyday of the 1930s. They were delicious, and I felt strange tasting them, knowing that they were produced during an era of Stalinist induced famine in Ukraine that killed millions.

My next taste of Ukrainian wine came in 2022 at the inaugural Saperavi Festival held by Saperica, a group promoting the Georgian grape in the U.S. The festival was held at Dr. Konstantin Frank winery in the Finger Lakes. Frank was from Odesa and had been active in the Ukrainian wine sector during the 20s and 30s. Being of German ancestry, he managed to navigate the Nazi occupation and left when the Soviets retook Ukraine, eventually coming to New York where he was a leading pioneer in promoting vinifera wines in the Eastern U.S.

Last year at Vivinum, in Vienna, Austria, I wandered the back halls of the Hofburg Palace to find the wing where several Ukrainian wineries had a table. This was something you really had to want to taste, because they were tucked away in a corner, as it were. But the wines were delicious.

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Recently, I was privileged to taste wines from Shabo winery, near Odesa, which are just entering the U.S. market here in D.C. and eventually in other cities. And I’m here to tell you, these wines not only have a great Ukraine story (and aren’t we always told a wine needs a story?) but they are downright delicious to boot.

I’ll try to do the story briefly. Wine in Ukraine dates to the Phoenician era, and even the Ottomans recognized the value of lands around the Black Sea for viticulture. Shabo winery was founded in 1822 near the town of the same name, on the Dniester estuary southwest of Odesa, by a group of winemakers who emigrated from Switzerland. The Black Sea is to the east, Moldova not far to the west. The winery remained in Swiss hands until the Bolsheviks nationalized it around 1920. It languished under Soviet rule, and about 2003, the independent Ukrainian government put the winery up for privatization. It was purchased by the Iukuridze family, Ukrainians of Georgian descent, who modernized the facilities and vineyards. They brought on Bordeaux consultant Stephane Derenoncourt to help with the winemaking.

Shabo is now headed by Giorgi Iukuridze, whom I met at Ruta, a Ukrainian restaurant, in Bethesda, Maryland, with his importer, Sam Lerman, who has a story of his own. Lerman served in the U.S. Air Force and reserve for about a dozen years, with tours in Afghanistan, and wound up in the defense industry handling strategic procurement for the Pentagon. Logistics, crucial stuff. He’s not the “I’ll tell you but I’ll have to kill you” type, but he does lace his conversation with the occasional “don’t print this.” Suffice to say, in April 2022, less than two months after the Russians launched their full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he was contacted by some “retired Green Berets” and asked if he’d be willing to spend a few days in Ukraine on a very unofficial advisory mission to Kyiv.

“So that’s how I ended up in a Ukrainian safe house with three cell phones, a laptop, a bottle of booze and an AK-74,” Lerman said. When the others decided their mission was done, Lerman stayed for several more weeks.

“I absolutely fell in love with the mission, the people, the culture, the resilience and steadfastness in the face of absolutely overwhelming adversity,” he said. “I felt like everything I had done in my life prepared me for what I was doing at that moment.”

Lerman also fell in love with Ukrainian wine and was dismayed when he came back to the U.S. and couldn’t find any. On subsequent trips, because he couldn’t get Ukraine, its people, its struggle and its valor out of his mind, he brought back as much Ukrainian wine and booze as he could cram in his luggage, which apparently led to some fascinating discussions with Polish customs officers.

So one of Lerman’s ventures now is Spyrt Worldwide, through which he is now introducing the wines of Shabo into the United States. He’s donating some of the profits to support Invictus Global Response, a group of American veterans who volunteer to deactivate and remove landmines in Ukraine.

I don’t know if Lerman’s timing is good or bad, given the whipsaw nature of U.S. policy toward Ukraine under this new Trump administration. But any wine lovers who want to show support for Ukraine should try these wines, not just for the story, but because they are delicious and affordably priced.

Grape nerds will love Shabo too, because they feature a variety called Telti Kuruk, which translates loosely as “fox tail.” It’s a white grape originally planted during the Ottoman Empire that today exists only in Ukraine, and Shabo is the only winery with Telti Kuruk on its own rootstock, says Giorgi Ikukuridze.

Most of Shabo’s wines are line-priced in three tiers: Original wines will retail at about $15, Reserve around $25, Grand Reserve — oldest vines, hand-harvested and treated with special care (you know the drill) — about $55.

Here are some Shabo wines now available in the United States, through Spyrt Worldwide.

Primosecco ($14) - This charmat sparkling wine is Shabo’s answer to Prosecco, made entirely of Telti Kuruk, and should be a top seller. It’s fruity and aromatic, yet dry, and is absolutely delicious. If I had a restaurant, I’d be tempted to offer a flute of this wine to welcome guests, tell them the story, and then sell them a bottle of another Shabo wine to enjoy with their meal. (But of course, that’s why I’m not a restaurateur.)

Vaja Grand Reserve Brut 2016 ($60). This blanc de blancs is 100% chardonnay, aged eight years on the lees. It has impressive depth and elegance, with a fine bead of bubbles. It’s quite good and comparable to traditional method sparkling wines at this price.

Telti Kuruk Reserve 2023 ($25-ish). Nutty, herbal nose, lemongrass and ginger. Giorgi says “seabuckthorn.” I’ll take his word for it. He also says “this wine’s superpower is food pairing.” I believe it — the wine is delicious and seems to be waiting for a piece of fish or poultry to elevate.

Telti Kuruk Grande Reserve 2022 ($55-ish). Barrel fermented in 228-liter and 500-liter vessels. The flavor profile is similar to the Reserve but more intense with a honeyed note on the nose.

Chardonnay Grande Reserve 2019 ($55). Laser focus, great acidity and balance. The oak adds structure and a bit of toast on the finish. This is quite delicious, though it may not stand out in a sea of good chardonnay at this price level.

Cabernet Sauvignon Original 2022 ($15). Free-run juice that’s tank-fermented and then “straight to the bottle,” this is a delightful cabernet for weeknight dinner or for a by-the-glass program in a restaurant. Herbal nose, with green pepper, blackberry fruit. Juicy and fun.

Saperavi Reserve 2023 ($25). Dark red color (saperavi is a teinturier grape, meaning its flesh is red as well as the skin). Jammy black currant fruit, yet tart with good acidity. Beautifully balanced, with a medium-long finish. Aged six months in two-year-old barrels.

Saperavi-Merlot Limited Edition 2022 ($30). When I asked Iukuridze if his family in Georgia had been winemakers, he smiled and said, “Only in the way every family in Georgia makes wine.” But he couldn’t resist procuring some kvevri. This wine made in the traditional Georgian manner is tarry and mushroomy and very inky. My mind immediately went to the Northern Rhone Valley and the dense, powerful wines of Cornas.

Cabernet-Merlot Grand Reserve 2023 ($55). An 80-20 blend, sinewy on the palate, with flavors of blackcurrant, fig, and olive, with a long finish. Really lovely.

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Now, cave and cave, the French word for wine cellar, are false friends, not exact cognates. (The French word for a cave is grotte.) But a cave does have some ideal attributes for wine storage — namely, it’s dark and the temperature never fluctuates. People have gone to the depths of the Earth, or at least the oceans, looking for such ideal conditions to store their wine. The chalk crayères of Champagne are dramatic and legendary, and two of Napa Valley’s oldest wineries, Schramsberg and Beringer, have caves dug in the late 1800s by Chinese immigrant laborers.

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On the appointed day, I met Randy at Luray Caverns. It was a nice drive on a cold, clear winter morning, and since Beltway construction near the George Washington Memorial Parkway is FINALLY finished,1 I made it out of suburbia with enough time to stop in Sperryville (famous for a shop advertising “Antique Tables Made Daily”) for a latte and a donut before ascending the curvy switchbacks over the Blue Ridge into the Shenandoah Valley. As I pulled into the parking lot, nearly empty on a wintry Monday morning, Randy slid alongside my Tesla in his pickup truck and waved me into the passenger seat. Our private tour was to start in the back, through the offices.

Inside, Randy introduced me to Rod and John Graves, brothers whose family has owned and operated Luray Caverns since 1905. Also there were Chris Taylor, Randy’s associate winemaker, and Charlotte Roberts, Randy’s granddaughter. After brief pleasantries, Rod led our party down some narrow steps into the cavern, past the point of discovery where Andrew Campbell, William Campbell and Benton Stebbins discovered the canyons in August 1873. Rod gave me the condensed version of the history while pointing out modern improvements that have made the tourist attraction more accessible and less slippery underfoot.

Luray Caverns is the largest series of caverns in the Eastern United States. It’s an incredibly beautiful spot that looks like some ancient potter went crazy on an acid trip. Generations of Virginia school kids learned here that “Stalactites hang tight, stalagmites might reach.” Rod led us by Dream Lake, an underground pond that perfectly reflects the drama of the cavern ceiling. Alas, no one was playing the stalacpipe organ, the world’s largest musical instrument, as we walked by into Giant’s Hall, where Rod pointed out the Double Column. Not that I’d have missed it, 47 feet of limestone believed to have formed when a stalagmite and a stalactite met halfway. But we were here for wine, after all.

“My father wanted to plant a vineyard and grow wine grapes on the property, but he fell ill and was never able to pursue that dream,” Rod explained. “So I’ve been thinking of doing something like this for a long time.”

“A long time” suggests regulatory obstacles. Indeed, Rod said it took several years to convince Virginia ABC regulators he wasn’t attempting anything untoward by having a wine produced and bottled across the valley and trucked over to be lost in a cave for a year.

Rod led us through a narrow crevice and unlocked a metal door. This led to a chamber pretty much what you’d think of as a cave, minus the spectacular geological wonders of the main caverns. Under the dim illumination of a few lights I saw a dusty old card table on one side and along the other wall several plastic bins filled with dusty wine bottles. The bins held 30 cases of Luray Caverns Underground Red 2023, a blend of 60% cabernet franc and equal parts cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot.

These were specially designed bins from Italy, Rod explained, pointing to the detritus of a standard cardboard wine case that had disintegrated under the chamber’s humidity in an earlier test.

“The caverns are a consistent 54 degrees F throughout the year, but the air reflects the humidity from outside,” Rod explained. In mid-December, the caverns were comfortably cool. I recalled bringing my daughter there 20-some years ago on a typically muggy August day when the clammy air inside seemed to squeeze my lungs like a rancid sponge and the floors were slick with moisture.

Two workers began carrying the crates of bottles out of the storage cave to a hand truck in Giants Hall for the journey to the surface. Randy grabbed a bottle and began wiping off the grime. From a satchel, he produced some wine glasses and another bottle of the same wine that had spent the year at his winery. As he pulled the corks and started pouring the wine, I could feel the excitement Rod and John Graves felt as their project in honor of their father’s viticultural ambitions was coming to fruition.

We tried the cave-aged wine first. We held our glasses up to the feeble light to reflect the bright ruby of the young wine, from the excellent 2023 vintage in Virginia. Then we sniffed, swirled and sipped. As I began looking around furtively, Rod motioned to the ground.

“Just spit on the floor,” he said. Man cave protocol.

The wine was delicious, deep and savory with black cherry and berry flavors and accents of black olive and tea. We nodded and smacked our lips in appreciation.

Randy poured the second wine, the control that had spent the year at his winery, and we repeated the ritual. As we swished the wine around in our mouths, we all looked at each other quizzically.

“I’ll be darned,” I said after I turned and sprayed the cave floor behind me with the inky red wine. “It’s different.”

Everyone murmured agreement. The second wine didn’t taste quite as deep and ripe as the first. The difference was slight, but noticeable.

Now, I hear everyone saying, “But —” The control wine bounced across the valley in the cab of Randy’s pickup, it wasn’t at the same temperature as the cave-aged wine, which only moved about five feet, yadda yadda. We couldn’t expect it to taste the same. But really? It was the same wine, after all.

This was by no means a rigorous scientific experiment to verify the value of temperature-controlled wine storage. This was a passion project by two wine lovers who happened to own a cave. And since everyone agreed there was a difference, it’s at least a superficial reason to say, “Hey honey, I think we should upgrade our storage.” Man cave protocol, after all.

After we made our way out of the caverns, Rod had us pose before the green screen for the obligatory tourist photo. Randy gave me both opened bottles to take home.

I took a detour for a burger at Spelunkers in Front Royal2 before heading home. That night, I tried both wines with my wife, who agreed the cave-aged wine tasted slightly better, deeper.

By the next night, having left the bottles at room temperature with the corks stuck in, I couldn’t tell the difference. The memory lingered of thousands of years of geology, one of the most enjoyable days I’ve ever spent tasting wine, and the experience of sharing my childhood with my daughter when I brought her to Luray Caverns so many years ago.

That was special enough.

Luray Caverns Underground 2023, a cave-aged red wine, is now available for sale at the Luray Caverns gift shop for $40.

1

Me waiting for that Beltway construction to wrap up. Cave-aged, but not so well.

What’s black and white and dead all over? The Washington Post — Steven Colbert.

I’ve spent today trying to process and learn the extent of the carnage at The Washington Post. I’ll spare you the details, which are being reported elsewhere. The leadership installed by owner Jeff Bezos on Wednesday laid off more than 300 staff and reporters, eliminating the Sports section, decimating local coverage in the Metro section, and laying off reporters and editors covering Ukraine, the Middle East and India. As my daughter said, “Who needs coverage of India? It’s not like many people live there.”

Forty years ago, I met Katharine Graham in Beijing, when she wanted to meet with a few American students there. This was 12 years after Nixon’s resignation, 10 after “All the President’s Men.” Sitting in a cramped, squalid dorm room at Beijing University while this giant of American journalism asked us serious questions about our experiences there and our views of Chinese politics and society was freaking amazing. Other than my total awe, my main memory is how the other Posties in the room, sitting uncomfortably on the edges of beds or desks, scribbled furiously to record our every word. Or maybe they just scribbled. They were clearly in awe and terror in her presence.

I hadn’t yet heard the expression “I feel seen,” but looking back, that was the first time I felt seen by someone really important. After all, she had helped topple a corrupt president and stood tall for freedom of the press. She wore the First Amendment as perfume. And she wanted to know what I was thinking.

My writing career started about 9 years later with a few articles in the Food section of The Post, then later I became a weekly contributor for 16+ years as the wine columnist. I also contributed a few pieces to the Style, Home, Books and Weekend sections. Writing for my hometown paper was the honor of a lifetime.

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Today so many of the people who carried Mrs. Graham’s legacy are out of their jobs. The venerable paper she helmed, which gave a lot of people hope 9 years ago by putting the catchphrase “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” has all but gone dark.

As a freelancer, I never met many of the Posties whose bylines I followed regularly. In 16 years, I visited the Post’s offices only a handful of times. But my crowd at the Food section was not spared today’s layoffs. From social media posts, I learned that Olga Massov, deputy recipes editor who also edited my column for the last several years, was let go. So was Aaron Hutcherson, who wrote features, developed recipes and dished out cooking advice on the Food section’s weekly online chats.

Many of those let go today will be snapped up by the few remaining mainstream media outlets. Others will join the renegade media on Substack or elsewhere, or create their own newsletters and outlets. Some will pivot out of journalism. After this heartbreaking setback, most will be fine, because they are talented and innovative people. When you show up to work every morning not knowing what your day is going to be like, you learn to adapt.

The country, however, is losing an institution that for decades has embodied freedom of the press and the First Amendment. And we’re at risk of losing the First Amendment itself.

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And then I tasted DIRT. It was certainly in a class with the others, but it had an energy and tension that set it apart. This was a wine with something to say, and I wanted to listen.

To be fair, this wine wears its heart on its sleeve, or at least on its label. The essential information is there in modest type: DIRT Pinot Noir 2023, Mariah Vineyards, Mendocino Ridge. This is surrounded by an unusual amount of text in a ridiculously small typeface that made me want to check AARP benefits for eye care. The name stands for Directly Impacting Regenerative Transformation, the vineyard is certified regenerative by the Savory Institute’s Global Land to Market program, and the wine is lab tested to verify that it’s free of 500 potential chemical residues.

“This wine is a statement that it is possible to produce radically transparent and nature-positive wine without compromise,” the label promised.

As much as I learned from the label, I wanted to know more, so I reached out to Michael Frey, who makes DIRT wines along with his wife, Nicole Dooling-Frey. Nicole’s parents, Dan and Vicki Dooling, planted Mariah Vineyards in 1979 with Zinfandel at 2400 feet elevation in what is now the Mendocino Ridge AVA. Over the years they sold most of their fruit, with Fetzer Vineyards during the Paul Dolan era a primary client, and for a time some wine was sold under the Mariah Vineyards label. Today, Mariah Vineyards has 30 acres under vine, with Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Primitivo in addition to Zin.

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Frey, who hails from Switzerland, abandoned a hospitality career in his mid-30s to travel the world. He met Nicole in Peru and as their relationship grew decided to follow her home to California.

One day in 2018, Michael and Nicole had lunch with Paul Dolan, a friend of the Doolings since his days at Fetzer Vineyards. Dolan, who passed away in 2023, was a pioneer of sustainable and biodynamic viticulture in California, and at that time was helping set up the Regenerative Organic Alliance, an organization that would establish the Regenerative Organic Certification and promote regenerative agriculture.

Dolan “started speaking about regenerative viticulture, the possibility to bring back biodiversity, to sequester carbon, to create ecosystems rather than just extract from the land,” Michael told me. “It was so inspiring that we asked, ‘Why isn’t everyone farming this way?’”

After that lunch, the couple convinced Nicole’s parents to go all in on regenerative farming. They joined the Savory Institute’s program to measure and monitor biodiversity, soil health, water infiltration and other aspects of their land, an effort that is updated annually to measure and document improvements. They planted cover crop in the vineyard, including under the vines, to guard against erosion during the rainy season and cool the soil during drought. Sheep added biodiversity and nutrients while helping to maintain the cover crop. Following “Eco Agriculture” advocate John Kempf, they assessed sap samples from the vines against similar tests on the soil to identify nutrient deficiencies.

And then suddenly everyone was talking about regenerative viticulture.

So if you’ve been shaking your head while reading this, if you’re the type who looks at a sustainable or organic certification on a label and immediately thinks the winery is lying — because, well, Roundup — if you casually toss out the word “greenwashing” at wine tastings — then Michael Frey has something to show you. (Hint: it’s data.)

“And then we got to a point where regenerative viticulture became, in our opinion, a bit the buzzword,” Frey said.

“We saw social media posts about regenerative with drip-sprayed vines in the background, and we decided there’s a need for more transparency in the wine industry. And that’s how DIRT Wine was born.”

Radical transparency for Mariah Vineyards and DIRT Wine comes with an edge.

“I have strong opinions about a lot of things,” Michael said with great self-awareness. “I believe that every vineyard in California that is not working on climate resilience right now is really missing the boat. When I look back at my last seven years of involvement at Mariah, with the extremes we tackled, from heat waves to droughts to heavy rains — the future of wine is climate resilience. We have 100-percent ground cover, so no problem with erosion. When we have 110 degrees F1 in the vineyard, the vineyard is cooling itself. It’s a flourishing ecosystem, with a lot of beneficial insects. We are off the grid, powered by solar. We have our own spring, so we don’t spray chemicals on the vineyard because they will get into our drinking water.”

This transparency, backed with data, is how Frey hopes to differentiate his wine from others.

“As a grower in an ocean of wine, it’s difficult to sell fruit,” he said. Being vocal and transparent about farming practices is a way to stand out from others who banter about “regenerative” without putting in the sweat equity.

In addition to the Pinot Noir, DIRT Wines offers a Sauvignon Blanc that features some of the same energetic tension as the Pinot, and a Chardonnay, which I haven’t tasted. The wines are in 398-gram bottles, among the lightest in California. These are the initial releases of Michael and Nicole’s deep dive into regenerative viticulture and transparency about their farming practices.

Mariah Vineyards still sells most of its fruit, and I suspect we’ll see the name on more bottlings from various wineries as the new farming practices show results. For now, at least, Michael and Nicole have put their own wines out there as a statement of what this type of farming and transparency can achieve.

The initial returns are in, and DIRT is a winner.

My transcription app compiled this summary of Michael Frey’s description of the “radical transparency” he practices with DIRT Wine and Mariah Vineyards:

DIRT Wine: What “Radical Transparency” Means in Practice

• Measured ecosystem outcomes

  • Partnered with the Savory Institute for Ecological Outcome Verification.

  • 10 short‑term and 3 long‑term monitoring sites, measured annually for biodiversity, soil health, and water infiltration to prove actual land improvement, not just claims.

• Plant and soil nutrition data

  • Regular sap analysis of vines to detect nutrient deficiencies (e.g., high iron in soil but low in plant).

  • Cross‑checked with soil tests to adjust farming and close the gap between soil supply and plant uptake.

• Chemical residues and additives

  • Wines are lab‑tested for 500+ chemical residues.

  • No additives except about 30 ppm sulfur; spontaneous fermentations, with Sauvignon Blanc going through natural malolactic.

• Farming and climate‑resilience metrics

  • Dry farmed (no irrigation) with roughly 80 inches of rain a year.

  • 100% ground cover, including under vine, to reduce erosion and cool soils during heat waves.

  • Vineyard is off‑grid, with its own spring for water and solar power, reinforcing the no‑synthetic‑input stance.

• Packaging footprint disclosed

  • Uses a 398-gram glass bottle, intentionally lighter than typical “premium” glass to cut carbon footprint.

• Outcome‑driven philosophy

  • Publicly frames all of this as an outcome‑based approach—tracking measurable results in soil, plants, and wine rather than relying on buzzwords like “regenerative” and “clean” without evidence.

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The best — and worst — wine writing involves introspection and self-discovery.

Ahem. That’s arguably true about writing in general.

So let me start over.

Much wine writing here on Substack is about … wine writing … not about wine. That’s fine to the extent new and aspiring writers are exploring their craft and trying to define their voices or help their WSET studies. But we risk entering a loop of narcissistic navel gazing and self-congratulation meaningless to all except ourselves as we ponder the purpose of life (aka wine writing, which is, after all, why we exist, or at least what we live for).

I have a new rule: If I roll my eyes within the first three paragraphs, I click onward.1

Cevola casts shade on a dialog between Meg Maker and Terry Theise, published in The World of Fine Wine with the odd title “A Defense of Wine Writing”2 in which they bemoan the ubiquity of tasting notes. Cevola also pokes fun at a Substack by Bodhi Landa written as he reflected on their discussion.

Theise is a legendary importer as beloved for his joyful writing as for the German Rieslings, Austrian Grüner Veltliners and grower champagnes he introduced to U.S. wine lovers. Maker is a prolific artist and a “writerly writer” (I mean that in a good way) and author of Maker’s Table here on Substack. She also chairs the Circle of Wine Writers, so perhaps it’s understandable that she writes frequently about how everyone else should be writing. Landa is a New York City sommelier and wine director chronicling wine culture with Thirst Behavior here on Substack, often very humorously and insightfully.

I won’t quote from Cevola’s critique, humorous as it is. You can read it for yourself at the link above. What you won’t find there is a recognition that Maker and Theise actually put their finger on an interesting conundrum: The enduring importance of tasting notes. They despise tasting notes, as many writers do, including me.

Taste is subjective. I might taste jasmine and honeysuckle, and you may look at me as though I’m nuts; maybe it’s peach for you, or just okay, good wine!

Tasting notes are easy to parody for their flowery language, and writing them is tedious enough to encourage floridity. More than two decades ago, I wrote a humor piece for Wine Enthusiast titled “Chateau Viagra,”3 lampooning the testosterone-fueled lingo common at the time.

This push against the tasting note may be just another attack on the Robert Parker era. Parker comes up only briefly in their conversation and Theise fondly mentions “the good old days” before wines became fruit baskets. But Parker popularized the tasting note — the “gobs of fruit” and “hedonistic” flavors in wine that he tasted, or imagined he tasted, and implied that we should all taste as well.

Parker blazed a trail for all of us wine writers who followed, and we’ve inherited the tasting note format. Many of us struggled because maybe we don’t taste all those gobs of this and that and we embrace the subjectivity of taste. (I’m beginning to think I could spin this discussion down all sorts of political rabbit holes …)

Parker fashioned himself a consumer advocate, and his newsletter, The Wine Advocate, was the ultimate of “service journalism.” He told us which of thousands of wines available were any good, and why. He wasn’t the only one — Wine Spectator was emerging about the same time. They pointed us to wines worth our money.

But Parker was ascendant. As the Boomer generation became fascinated with wine, Parker set the standard for wine writing.

Burghound, Vinous, Jeb Dunnuck, James Suckling and others have used the Parker model, in which the tasting note is supreme. Annual vintage reviews tell collectors — if there are any left — which wines to buy, and whether they taste like black cherries or more like plums. A score of 90 can guarantee a wine sells, while 89 condemns it to languish on a store shelf.

How valuable is that now? I suspect more than Maker and Theise would prefer. “[P]eople still demand tasting notes,” Maker laments, referring to editors who commission articles from her.4 Wine writers may want to explore the esoteric and spiritual aspects of wine — that’s what we fall in love with — but many readers just want something for dinner tonight.

They aren’t sitting at the dinner table discussing the story of the winemaker and how that Chenin Blanc transmits the essence of the soil to our glass or how that madeira was made while Thomas Jefferson strode the Earth. They want something good for dinner, worth their money and their time. That’s the 92 points shelf talker, the newspaper review, or the social media tip from a friend. Wine isn’t romance for this audience, it’s a transaction. Writing for this readership requires tasting and describing a lot of wines.

And dedicated wine lovers — eminently able to find their own gems — want to know what treasures are out there. We (wine writers) can help, even if free samples or what Cevola calls “the press trip industrial complex” are involved.5 Wineries and winery associations continue to court writers because reviews help sell wines.

Maker and Theise discuss their ideal “transcendent” wine, one that “takes you away from itself.” This is every bit as subjective as a descriptive tasting note; a wine might take you away and leave me staring at the spit bucket. It’s almost a Buddhist search for enlightenment, as we need to be in a receptive mindset, free of ego and the noise of life, to experience such vinous euphoria. We all have our epiphany wines, they just don’t happen all that often.

Maybe we’re ready to move beyond the Parker era and the tasting note, away from a transactional approach to wine in favor of one more personal.6 An approach that doesn’t force objective value on our subjective perceptions, but also one that doesn’t spiral into flights of self-indulgent fancy and leave the reader craving a beer.

Substack and similar platforms may be ideal vineyards to cultivate this new approach. We’re self-published, with no editors bemoaning low audience click rates and demanding lists of the best cheap wines at Trader Joe’s. We write for ourselves, though we should at least pretend someone else is out there reading. And if occasionally someone makes fun of us for our efforts, we’ll just shrug it off and refine our approach.

We should be able to write about wines, transcendent and otherwise, without picking lint from our belly buttons. Just be true to ourselves and our experiences. In that way, we will be true to our readers.

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Edited to add: Meg Maker has been openly exploring her own personal approach combining her wine insights with her art, including this recent example:

Maker’s Table

A Pigeon and a Pinot Noir

Pigeons and wine? What’s going on here…

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5 months ago · 6 likes · Meg Maker