CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.—You can’t tell the story of Virginia wine without also telling the tale of our nation’s first oenophile, Thomas Jefferson—or tasting the fruits of the winery that bears his name just a few miles from of this picturesque college town.
Many remember our third president as the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. But he also was a self-taught architect and serial entrepreneur who grew tobacco and wheat as a cash crop at his mountaintop estate, Monticello. He also oversaw several cottage industries, including a small textile factory in which a team of enslaved women and children made rough cloth to clothe those on the plantation.
A fine wine connoisseur, Jefferson also was passionate about trying to make his native Virginia a great wine-growing state. Two centuries later, his dream is realized at Jefferson Vineyards, the 400-acre vineyard he started before the Revolutionary War with an Italian neighbor that’s considered America’s first wine company. Today, it makes award-winning Bordeaux-style reds and other wines bearing his name and signature under the careful eye of winemaker Chris Ritzcovan.
But first, a little history.
Like many colonists, Jefferson made scuppernong wine from homegrown indigenous grapes. In 1773, he decided to also experiment with vitis vinifera brought over from Europe after befriending Italian viticulturist Filippo Mazzei. Jefferson would later give Mazzei 193 acres south of Monticello on which to grow a combination of vines from Tuscany, Piedmont and Burgundy. By 1778, Mazzei had purchased an additional 700 acres and was planting on both farms to see what would work.
It was a miserable failure. A severe frost destroyed the baby vines in 1774. And following the Revolutionary War, during which soldiers allegedly trampled on the replanted vines, phylloxera, a microscopic pest that lays eggs on the roots of grapevines and eventually kills them, did the vines in.
After he became president in 1801, Jefferson tried again in two vineyards in Monticello’s south orchard, with rooted vines and cuttings of 24 German and French cultivars—some of which had never been grown in America. That failed as well, and so Jefferson replanted with native grapes in 1811. Eventually, the land was converted to other agricultural uses.
It wasn’t until many decades later, when viticulturists started grafting vinifera grapes onto native American rootstock, that winemakers were able to grow hearty, weather- and pest-resistant grapes with the desired varietal characteristics of European wine. Many French hybrids grow successfully in Virginia now, along with Italian and Spanish varietals.
Still, it wouldn’t be until 1981 that Jefferson’s optimistic dream of making “as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good” would be realized. That’s when the Woodward family—who in 1939 purchased the property Jefferson and Mazzei originally attempted to grow on—hired Gabriele Rausse to replant the grounds with Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and other varietals.
By 1984, two vineyards were producing enough grapes for their Simeon Vineyards to make wine. After passing to the third generation in 2013, the vineyard—renamed Jefferson Vineyards in 1996—changed hands again this spring when the family sold the winery and around 400 acres to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Monticello for tours.
“We couldn’t ask for a better partner,” says its 40-year-old winemaker, Ritzcovan, who grew up in a family of farmers and home wine makers. He joined the vineyard’s wine team in 2007 as the assistant winemaker to “do something fun” after graduating from the University of Virginia with a degree in environmental science and urban planning, and took the top job in 2013.
There are more than 40 wineries on a wine trail within the Monticello American Viticultural Area, and “everyone does such a fantastic job making incredible wines, you can’t pigeon us into one varietal or wine,” says winemaker and trail president Stephen Barnard.
Jefferson Vineyards is located in the shadow of Monticello, just 2 miles down the road from the historic estate. The president’s northeast and southwest vineyards were replanted in 1985 and 1993, respectively, and has produced several vintages. There are currently 22 acres under vine, including some of the best Viognier in the state, according to Ritzcovavn.
The vineyard’s unique terroir along Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains also makes it a great place to grow Chardonnay, Riesling and Petit Manseng, a white variety grown primarily in southwest France. Visitors also will find bottles filled with Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot, a full-bodied red wine that’s become a star varietal in Virginia.
Unlike some of its competitors, Jefferson Vineyards dry farms everything, meaning it relies only on natural rainfall for growing the grapes in its four vineyards. Then again, less water is usually your friend when it comes to grapes, says Ritzcovan, and Virginia’s clay soil is good at retaining necessary moisture.
Its oldest and most storied vineyard was planted with eight varietals in 1981 and sits on 12 acres purchased by Philip Mazzei in 1774. Its 5-acre Sunnyfields vineyard near the base of Montalto was planted with Petit Manseng, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot vines in 2003. Just a little over an acre of Pinot Gris and Chardonnay planted in 1983 greet you at the entrance.
In all, they produce about 100 tons of fruit a year, or enough to make upwards of 7,000 cases of wine—boutique by California standards, but medium range for Virginia, where most wineries are family owned.
Everything from the planting to the fermenting to the bottling is done in a holistic nature. “It’s tangible production, not just a cog in a set of gears,” says Ritzcovan.
Ritzcovan concedes Virginia wines didn’t have a great reputation when they first came out in the early ‘80s, but that’s because it was a new business. The state’s landscape and climate is diverse “and it can take 10 years to make a great wine,” he says.
Even today, they fight the stigma that a Virginia winery is risky business.
“But we’re getting past it because the industry has blown up,” says Ritzcovan.
Today, the beauty of Virginia wine isn’t just that it can actually be quite good. It’s also that the state’s unpredictable weather assures vintage variation resulting in wine that’s a little different each year.
No wine ever tastes exactly the same as the previous vintage, but the differences are more recognizable in a place like Virginia that has neither a semi-arid nor Mediterranean climate, he says.
“The cold of the 2014 vintage, the heat of 2010, 2017 or 2019 or even the rain of 2011 and 2018 are all reflected in each sip or swirl of the glass,” he says. “I view wine as a reflection of place. It’s not a product based on recipes that can be replicated year after year.”
Customers who visit Jefferson Vineyards’ tasting room are educated in these nuances and learn the full story of each bottle.
“It’s an essential part of what makes wine so complex and fun to talk about,” says Ritzcovan.
