In recent years, Virginia has aggressively billed itself as an East Coast alternative to the wine country destinations of California and the Pacific Northwest. And unsurprisingly, Virginia wineries have sprung up like magazine articles apologizing for Kanye West’s self-confidence. But with very few exceptions, the wines coming out of the Old Dominion generally either cost far more than they should (Chrysalis Vineyards’ passable viognier runs a hefty $29 per bottle, while Alban Vineyards’ excellent Central Coast California viognier runs about $10 less.), aren’t made particularly well, or are vigorously overoaked.
If you subscribe to the notion that the wine is “made” in the vineyards, Virginia is simply a tough place to make great wines. Why? The soil is too good. Grapevines in poor soil produce fewer, more concentrated grapes. By and large, Virginia soil pampers the vines as if they were Dorothy Gale enjoying a mani-pedi in the Emerald City. What’s more, rather than cultivating varietals that grow best in the Virginia soil, many Virginia wineries raise grapes whose names sell well when bottled. Cabernet sauvignon and delicate pinot noir do not grow well in Virginia, yet wineries continue to grow them and bottle the juice because they know that a daytripper is more likely to pick up a bottle of something they know rather than a bottle of something that can grow well in Virginia — viognier, cabernet franc, chardonnay, riesling, or, more probably, seyval blanc or horton.
Maryland suffers from the same good-soil problem. But the Old Line State’s draconian wine-import/export laws have stunted the growth of the wine industry there. Why should a farmer grow grapes to make wines if it’s nearly impossible to sell them? Notwithstanding the legal limitations, a few wineries have popped up in Maryland. Perhaps the best-known Maryland winery is Linganore Wine Cellars — whose sickeningly sweet, mostly fruit-based wines have singlehandedly proved that the late Jermaine Stewart was wrong to think that you can have a good time drinking cherry wine with your clothes on. Fortunately, there’s at least one Maryland winery that’s doing the best with what the soil offers and charging fair prices for its wares — the Basignani Winery.
