Virginian Bordeaux: Boxwood Winery

Situated in the midst of picturesque Loudoun County estates, Middleburg’s Boxwood Winery is both right at home and far from the ordinary. The winery is the realization of a dream for owners Rita and John Kent Cooke, the former Washington Redskins owner and president, who bought the estate in 2001. The Cookes commissioned renowned architect Hugh Jacobsen to design a winery with modern, clean lines, but one that agrees with its surroundings.

The result is a four-part complex that is stunning in its simplicity on the outside while filled with high-quality, high-tech streamlined inner workings. Boxwood is dedicated to making wines in the Bordeaux tradition, and as such the hillsides around the winery are densely dotted with vines of Bordeaux varietals, all certified by the French government.

Seamless and Serious

Rachel Martin, daughter of the owners, studied winemaking and sensory evaluation in California and Bordeaux. She now manages and oversees the operations at the winery. To her, “It’s all about omplexity and quality.”

Painstaking work goes into achieving the complexity for which Martin and her team, which includes consulting winemaker Stephane Derenoncourt—one of Bordeaux’s greats—strive. One hundred percent of the grapes used in their wines are estate-grown, all of the harvesting is done by hand, and the primary sorting is done in the vineyard, meaning that
only clean, ripe fruit is brought to the winery for further sorting before processing.

Inside the winery, one encounters a remarkable harmony of architectural form and function that encapsulates the entire winemaking process, from start to finish—something not at all common in Virginia wineries. Each of the four buildings is dedicated to one step in the winemaking process: After being destemmed on the press pad, the whole, uncrushed grapes are brought into the chai, where they are transferred into custommade stainless steel tanks whose temperature can be monitored and adjusted by computer, on site or remotely. The sort of wholeberry fermentation the grapes go through in the tank is done with nuanced flavor in mind. The fruit is harvested based on its ripeness and maturity, says Martin. “When berries are not crushed, wine ferments little by little and adds to the complexity.”

Before its 21-day stint in the vats, 25 to 30 percent of the juice for the estate’s two red wines is bled away from the tank. “We’re reducing the ratio of juice to skins in order to extract more flavor,” Martin explains. Next, “punch-downs, pumpovers, and delestage”—techniques rare in Virginia wine that are used to gently extract juice from the berries—are performed, and the juice is then transferred to an adjoining building for the next stage.

Stainless steel pipes run between all of the buildings, and the wine is transferred from one to the next through these pipes, cutting down on the use of hoses and adding to a more sanitary and controlled environment. After leaving the vats, the wine is pumped through the pipes into barrels in a circular underground cellar, an architectural jewel in itself. Here it ages, separated by varietal, for 12 months. The French oak barrels used are acquired from three very select cooperages.

Vine to Bottle

Derenoncourt, acclaimed winemaker and consultant to toprated wineries in Bordeaux and beyond, determines the final blends for Boxwood’s wines, Boxwood and Topiary. Both of these wines are reds of traditional Bordeaux styles: Boxwood is in a left-bank style, made up of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Petit Verdot. Topiary, a softer wine more reminiscent of Bordeaux’s right bank, comprises Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Malbec. The winery also produces a limited edition Rosé, made of entirely Cabernet Franc with 24 hours of contact with the skins. The winery is designed to produce a maximum of 5,000 cases a year of all wines.

Another element of the winemaking process at Boxwood that sets it apart from the herd is the on-site bottling facility that occupies one of the four buildings in the complex. It is rare for a winery to have the capacity to take the grapes through the entire process from the vine to the bottle, but at Boxwood, stainless steel pipes again take the wine from the barrels back to the tanks for blending and then on to the bottling stage. Two months later, the bottles are released.

Martin, who is dedicated to the Bordeaux tradition and passionately devoted to promoting Virginia wine on an international level, feels Boxwood’s wine is “a terroir-driven wine unique to Virginia, and I think it can go up against any highquality wine in the U.S.” Each year, she attends—usually as the only representative of a U.S. winery—the Bordeaux En Primeur tastings, a sort-of futures tasting for Bordeaux’s latest vintage.

“The world now knows about Virginia wine,” she says, “and it’s been very well-received.” Boxwood’s three wines can be tasted at one of the winery’s satellite tasting rooms, in Middleburg, Reston Town Center, and soon in Chevy Chase, all overseen by Sean Martin, son of the owners. The winery itself is closed to the public but is available for tours by appointment.

A New AVA

Another facet of Martin’s dedication to the product of her native Virginia is her two-year travail to put together a petition, submitted a year ago to the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), to establish Middleburg, Virginia, as an American Viticultural Area (AVA). If approved, this AVA will straddle Fauquier and Loudoun counties and is based on a composition of soil and geology that is unique within these tight boundaries.

The outcome is an issue of quality: “It helps the [Virginia] wine industry be viewed as a real wine region,” Martin emphasizes. “It increases our reputation and our credibility.” In order to use the AVA designation on a label, a winery must use a very high percentage of grapes grown within its respective AVA in the final product, and it must adhere to other strict guidelines of quality laid out by the TTB. The review of the application is a two-year process, and so, after years of collecting data, consulting with soil and geology experts, and formulating her argument, Martin says that the petition was “well-received” by the TTB, but she must now wait patiently for the results.

The award-winning architecture and sophisticated methods used at Boxwood may belie the grassroots approach taken by Martin and her very dedicated family to promoting Virginia wine. “We want Virginia wine to be on the international playing field,” she enthuses, but notes, “You’ve got to start at home. You have to increase your quality for your local consumer.”

Grace Reynolds is a native Virginian who has spent nearly two decades in the food and wine industry, both locally and internationally. She also teaches English at several Virginia universities.

Boxwood Winery
Tours by appointment only.
State Highway 626 at Burrland Rd., Middleburg
(540) 687-8778
contact@boxwoodwinery.com
www.boxwoodwinery.com

The Tasting Room
Middleburg
16 Washington St.
(540) 687-8080
Thurs.–Sun., 1 p.m.–7 p.m.
Reston
1816 Library Street
(703) 435-3553
Daily, 11 a.m.–11 p.m.