Scott Elliff / Monday, September 30, 2024

Virginia's True to Our Roots Authenticity

Keep'n it Real in Virginia Wine

Scott is the owner and winemaker at DuCard Vineyards in Etlan, Madison County, Virginia, where he has been growing grapes, tending vines, and crafting award-winning wines for 20 years. VWM sat down with him to get his perspective on the state of the Virginia wine industry and its future. Scott provided his commentary on Virginia wine.

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I can hardly believe it’s been over 20 years since I planted vines at our Madison County country property. Next year, DuCard Vineyards will be celebrating our 15th anniversary as a Virginia farm winery.

Time flies, of course. In the old days, the industry was largely people like me: individual entrepreneurs, maybe a bunch of guys with a few acres among them, wanting to make great wine and hoping some tourists would stop by, taste it, and take some home. Today, that choice is becoming more and more local to consumers. Farm wineries like us, certainly, and other kinds of wineries more akin to wine shops or bars.

There are also countless new categories of alcoholic beverages: cideries, urban microbreweries, ‘farm breweries’, and distilleries. And what the heck are those ads on NFL games for Bud Light Seltzer anyway – they advertise specifically that it does not have any Bud Light in it? The more options there are, the harder it is to stand out and appeal to a specific ‘niche’ market of some kind.

At DuCard, we’ve gone out of our way to be a boutique winery. We farm in a ‘green’ and sustainable manner on an amazing mountainside site. We offer artisanal, high-quality wines made from grapes grown, lovingly tended, and controlled by us in the old-fashioned way, in small quantities and Sold only on-site at our tasting room; the emphasis is on providing a personal and memorable consumer experience. That’s a mouthful, but we’ve been able to come pretty close to living it.

Historically, this was the niche the entire Virginia wine industry pursued. Wine tasting was generally associated with a trip to the countryside: looking out onto vines and rubbing elbows with the vineyard manager and the winemaker. Most of the time, the owner, who frequently acted as the manager and winemaker, also poured the wine. You sipped on local wines while listening to music on the patio and enjoying other suitable on-site events that the Virginia legislature has specifically given an exception to “farm wineries” to do, under very minimal local restrictions, in the name of growth and rural offerings. You’ll still find many pioneers who laid the foundation for the industry involved at the older wineries in the state – grape growers, winemakers, and visionaries on whose shoulders we all stand.

Virginia True to Our Roots

Even today, the state motto is “Virginia Wine: True to Our Roots.” But the landscape is changing. Every day, someone asks me in the tasting room: Do you grow your grapes? Do you make the wine yourselves, here on the property? Wow. Uh, yeah, and yes. Of course, duh. Until the past year or so I never heard anybody pointedly ask that. Maybe consumers are becoming savvier about the changes that are going on. It’s becoming a big business, with 6.6 million bottles of Virginia wine produced last year, over 2 million visitors coming to our tasting rooms, and an overall economic impact of more than a billion dollars. And, maybe not surprisingly, new ways of operating are being launched by a new generation of business-savvy and well-capitalized entrepreneurs.

The Virginia Wine Today

There are now “Virginia farm wineries” that grow few of their own grapes. They are not a farm, and they let others worry about the pesky farming details - frost, humidity, mildew, harmful insects, hurricanes, tractor maintenance, labor availability, and all the rest. By using ‘leases,’ they can still call the fruit their own. And PS, some of that fruit comes from California, too, to boost production. Now there are “Virginia farm wineries” that grow the grapes but do not make the wine which has their name on the label. By farming out the work of winemaking to others, they can avoid having to invest in expensive equipment, tanks, barrels, and all the rest, and prevent the inevitable vagaries, risks, and challenges that processing, fermenting, and aging the wine entails. These people are often in the middle of planting some grapes and maybe building their own winery later, but the allure of these new methods may mean they never will. Maybe I should be envious. It all seems ‘easier’ than the dirty fingernail, sweat the details work we do every day at DuCard in the vineyard and the winery. These new-style operations—often quite elaborate wine-themed bars located close to major population centers and using the same ‘farm winery’ privileges—can open for business and earn a return on investment right away rather than waiting years for new grapevines to produce grapes, and then waiting even longer to make and age the wine before they can sell it. Weddings and other large events can also bring good cash flow, but not infrequently, they will be more of a sideline or ancillary activity for any wine that might be associated with them. Contracting out to experienced winemakers some cases nationally or even internationally known-located elsewhere in Virginia certainly helps improve overall wine quality and enables us to better compete against France, California, and others. (P.S. We’re doing pretty well in that regard already). And growing the grapes in “off-site” locations allows new vineyards to be situated in the most suitable (and lower cost) places, spreading weather-related risks across multiple sites and enabling economies of scale that drive operating costs down. OK, so these guys are smarter than me, I guess. Are these new “business models” popular and successful? Sure, look at the crowds. But I think something is getting lost along the way. They just don’t seem real.

In this newfangled kind of operation, the consumer will probably never meet the guys tending the grapes, or the woman for that matter, increasingly so, making the wine — or to experience their passion. The owner isn’t likely to be found out on the patio sharing personal history or answering questions. The bar staff isn’t as likely to have any details about the wine or be personally involved with the grape growing or winemaking. It’s less associated with the actual uniqueness or sense of place (the famous French term is “terroir”) where the grapes were grown. And that annoying and inconvenient trip to the boondocks no longer seems to be necessary—ironically, it is what often fulfills the soul, helps to reconnect one with nature and gives a welcome glimpse into a more traditional lifestyle.

Issues Challenging the Virginia Wine Industry

Our industry is not blind to the issues. We need to evolve and want to continue to be a great success story for Virginia. But common sense dictates that to be a “Virginia farm winery” you must be farming grapes and you, yourself, need to produce the wine that reflects your unique location and style. Our success over the past decades has been based on the complete authentic experience – not ‘just’ the wine in the bottle, for most Virginia wineries in the industry. We are moving in the direction of tightening things up regarding who qualifies as a Virginia farm winery and what we can uniquely offer — though the devil is in the details, as always. The world has many niches, so there’s room for everyone and I expect we’ll eventually sort it all out. In the meantime, I deeply hope that you will keep on searching out and celebrating authenticity at places like DuCard Vineyards where we are and remain True to Our Roots.