Virginia wines are kicking glass and taking names.

Winemaking in the Old Dominion has a long history – but it’s never been better than it is today.  That was the verdict of the Flavor tasting panel following a marathon night of sniffing, sipping, and savoring 74 Virginia wines on February 28.

For the second year, Flavor asked a panel of wine experts and enthusiasts to sit down and wrap their taste buds around five flights of Virginia wines. There were five professional sommeliers: Master Sommelier Kathy Morgan of Michel Richard Citronelle in Washington, D.C.; Jennifer Knowles of The Inn at Little Washington, Washington, Va.;  Andy Myers of CityZen at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, D.C.; Kevin Switz of Foti’s in Culpeper; and Ramon Narvaez of Adour at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C.  We were also joined by Dave McIntyre, wine columnist for the Washington Post.

At 7:30 pm, the panel raised their glasses in the quiet of the mezzanine at Washington’s Park Hyatt and got to work, fortified with bread, cheese, and charcuterie to clear the palate. They were ably assisted by the hotel’s efficient and gracious staff, which filled and cleared nearly 500 wine glasses before the night was over.

This year, unlike last, all the wines were red – a cross section of most of the varietals grown commercially in the state. They were submitted by winemakers who responded to Flavor’s invitation.  And this year, unlike last, there were a few “ringers” thrown in to confuse the tasters and challenge Virginia’s best – wines from France, Italy, California, and Chile, which were recommended by the Wine Guild of Charlottesville and Schneider’s on Capitol Hill.

It was a double-blind tasting. Each bottle was numbered and secreted in a white paper bag; neither the servers nor the tasters knew what was being poured in the glass, or even which wines were in the competition.  Each of our panelists scored the wines independently, but in most cases the scores did not vary widely.

Bordeaux Blends

First flight:  a daunting lineup of 32 Bordeaux Blends – the classic left-bank Medoc mix of Cabernet Sauvignon with Merlot, Cabernet Franc or Petit Verdot.  Best of show: the Linden 2008 Claret. Knowles tasted both plum jam and “definitely autumn leaves.” Myers found it “balanced,” with notes of “dark chocolate, leaves and red raspberries.” Switz remarked on its “beautiful mouth feel,” calling it “complex and well crafted.”

The runner-up was a ringer – Eagle’s Trace “Because” Red Table Wine 2007. Myers said it smelled of licorice and raspberries, tree bark and black pepper. It tasted of “sexy oak” and dark fruits.

Despite its strong showing, the Eagles Trace brought with it good news for Virginia: None of the professionals could distinguish this one as the California wine from among the Virginias they were tasting.

The Barboursville 2007 Octagon placed third. Knowles decribed the aroma as “dried thyme, earthy mushroom, cranberry, and violet.” Morgan detected crushed red rasberries and vanilla bean. Switz called it “well-crafted, pretty and fragrant.”

Glen Manor Hodder Hill 2008, Tarara Terranova 2008 and Michael Shaps Meritage 2007, produced at Wineworks, were all close behind.

Switz noted “olive and black pepper” in the Shaps Meritage. Knowles said the Shaps smelled of “new sweet oak.” She said the aroma was “a little volatile, a bit hot, with candied cherries.”

Knowles tasted “blue/blackberry cola” in Glen Manor Hodder Hill, while Switz got “smoke and tobacco.” Myers got “pizza dough, rubber and red spice, and dry, plummy fruit.”

To Knowles, the Tarara Terranova smelled of oak with hints of dill and red cherry. Morgan sensed “cherry, cabbage, and cinnamon stick.” Myers called it “green peppercorn and tomato water” on the nose.

Cabernet Franc

Cabernet Franc, the next flight, is primarily a blending grape in Bordeaux. But it shines on its own in Virginia and in the Loire Valley, where it makes a lighter-bodied red with lush dark fruit.

Top honors went to Chester Gap 2008. “Deep black cherry,” said Morgan. Myers liked the combination of “smoke, ash and dried fruit.” “Delicate berries and cocoa,” said Switz of the aroma. It tasted of “creamy cherries and malt.”

King Family 2009, which the tasters ranked second, reminded Narvaez of  “rosebud and spices.” Switz sniffed a floral perfume and found a “big fruit bomb” in his glass.  Knowles said it was “a little leafy” with spicy florals, cherry blossoms and red raspberry.

The number three wine in this category was another ringer, Lang & Reed Cabernet Franc 2008 from California. Knowles praised its “nice concentration.”

Merlot

Merlot, a grape often derided for its use in characterless everyday wines – remember the movie “Sideways”? — fares well in Virginia. Five of the eight entries won praise from the tasting panel. King Family Merlot 2009 Monticello placed first. McIntyre noted its “good texture and sweet, ripe soft tannin.” Chester Gap scored again with its 2008 Merlot, in which Knowles tasted “cherry and cola.” Michael Shaps 2007 Monticello Merlot smelled of “earthy forest floor” to Switz, but he tasted “bacon!”  Veritas Vineyard and Winery 2009 Merlot also showed well; Myers detected “rose water,” while Morgan noted “sweet cherry, plum and thistle.”

Petit Verdot

Next up was Petit Verdot, another grape that old world winemakers usually consign to blending but which thrives in Virginia and here stands on its own.  The winner was Jefferson Vineyards 2005 Petit Verdot Reserve, which Narvaez described as “rich,” with “spice, blueberries and bacon fat.” McIntyre said it had “nice balance with a cherry/cocoa finish.” Morgan got “bright cherry, raspberry, wild strawberry, and nettle.”

In second place was Flying Fox 2008, in which Morgan tasted “wild strawberry…and violets.” Opolo 2005, a ringer from California’s Central Coast, had “dark fruit and spice,” according to Narvaez’s notes. It was rated third.  Close behind was the Delfosse Winery 2008 Petite Verdot which was “full,” with “good tannins and alcohol,” said Myers. Knowles said it tasted “rich, with medium acid” and smelled “very floral — violet and purple rose petal.”

And Now for Something Completely Different

Finally, as midnight approached , so did the wild cards. We sampled other varietals from Virginia – most of them are better known elsewhere. Barboursville’s 2008 Nebbiolo was the panel’s first choice, beating out the last of our “ringers,” a 2006 Cascina Adelaide Langhe Nebbiolo, from the home of the Nebbiolo grape, northern Italy.

Citronelle’s Morgan sniffed out the Italian ringer — but preferred the Barboursville.  McIntyre found the Barboursville “quite pleasant,” with notes of “cherry and slate.”  Myers called it “pleasant and quaffable.”  Knowles said it tasted richer than she thought it would from the fragrance, which she described as “strawberry, rose petal, white raspberry, cherry, and a little spicy.” Sitz said it was “elegant and complex… beautiful.”

The 2007 Syrah from Delaplane also got kudos from the panel.   Narvaez praised its “intense rich red fruit.”  McIntyre noted its “caramel, toast and sulfur” perfume.

Tying for fourth was the Winery at LaGrange 2008 Tannat, and Delfosse’s 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon.

The Tannat grape is originally from southwestern France and is now widely planted in Uruguay.  Morgan said La Grange’s 2008 evinced “blackberry, black cherry and vanilla. “ She said it was “powerful, tannic.” Knowles said it was “grapey and neat, with almost cardamom notes and cinnamon stick.”

In the Delfosse 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon, Myers detected “dark, granite, and black fruit, spice and juicy fruit. Nice.” Morgan called it “very pleasant Jolly Rancher raspberry.” Knowles smelled red licorice, red plum, a little dried herb.” On the tongue she tasted red fruit, strawberry, medium acid and cranberry.” Switz jotted: “smoked, pleasant, mushroom.”

When the tasting ended after midnight, the sommeliers did socially what they do professionally – they drank. But this time, it was crisp, cold beer – a welcome change after sniffing, tasting and spitting 74 wines.

In the corner, though, Knowles, snuck a look at the master list of the wines she had tasted and scribbled notes to herself. She told Flavor she is considering adding more than two dozen of the Virginia wines that competed in the blind tasting to the famed cellars of the Inn at Little Washington.

As always, however, it’s your taste buds that should guide you. And the more you taste, the more you’ll appreciate the nuances in the glass. Start with the winners here – the best palates in D.C. and Virginia have done the hard work for you.

-Journalist Bill Plante is CBS’s Senior White House Correspondent. A 30-year resident of D. C., he is also a well-known wine aficionado.

By Bill Plante • Photographs by Molly McDonald Peterson

© Molly McDonald Peterson

People have been making wine in Virginia since the 17th century. So why don’t diners see more Virginia wines on restaurant lists in and around the nation’s capital?

Flavor publisher Melissa Harris hears this very question from both consumers and winemakers. “We convened this tasting panel,” she explains, “because we wanted to expose some of the area’s top sommeliers to what we believe are wines that would pair well with high-end food.” (For more from Harris, see page 10.)

Harris asked more than 20 Virginia winegrowers to send samples of their work—the best red and white wines for pairing with food—and then invited a panel of sommeliers to taste and evaluate the 63 wines that were submitted.

Five of the Capital foodshed’s most popular sommeliers made up the tasting panel: Derek Brown of The Passenger (D.C.), Scott Calvert of The Inn at Little Washington (Washington, Virginia), Gina Chersevani of PS 7’s (D.C.), Andy Myers of CityZen at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel (D.C.), and Todd Thrasher of Restaurant Eve (Alexandria, Virginia).

The tasting took place on a Monday morning in the spacious country kitchen in the Georgetown home of Beverly and John Fox Sullivan. Dozens of red wine bottles, sheathed in brown paper bags to completely obscure their labels, stood at attention on the sideboard. Dozens of whites waited in cartons out in the chilly garden.

Ten volunteer servers ringed the large round table in the Sullivans’ kitchen, pouring wines, changing stemware, and refilling glasses of water and plates of crackers to help clear the panel’s taste buds.

Blinded by the Flight

Sound like fun? Sure! But remember, this was a tasting. Swirl, smell, sip, savor, and spit 63 times while keeping it all straight in your notes. From start to finish, the tasting took four hours.

Each wine was given a number that identified its flight and glass. For example, “WB3” was a white wine in the third glass of the second flight. Several hundred white and red wine glasses were brought in from a catering company and tagged with these same codes. Then the panel was given forms with these same codes for recording their tasting notes. The results were not revealed to anyone—until now.

Sauvignon Blanc & Pinot Grigio

The tasting began with five wines made from Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio grapes. It was an auspicious beginning.

The clear winner was the Veritas 2008 Sauvignon Blanc. “Excellent fruit,” noted Calvert, adding “great acid in the middle and follows into the finish.” Thrasher noted “honey on the nose” and “mouth-filling.” There was a tie for second: The Glen Manor 2008 Sauvignon Blanc garnered “grapefruit, medium-dry” in Chersevani’s notes and “light regal characteristics” in Brown’s. Thrasher’s notes on the 2008 Barboursville Pinot Grigio included “orange blossom, dry, good acidity,” and Brown described it as “clean, tart, grassy.”

Chardonnay

Chardonnay, the next flight, spurred a debate around the table. (Should it be grown in Virginia’s hot, humid climate?) No consensus was reached on a clear winner, but four were highly praised. Brown liked the “lemon curd, cut apples” and oaky finish of the panel’s favorite, the Gadino 2007. According to Thrasher, the King Family 2008 was “rich in the nose,” which Calvert also said was “very lush and soft in back.”

Brown liked the Tarara 2008, too, describing it as “spicy and woody.” Calvert praised the Linden 2007, which tasted of apple, “a bit of cinnamon, a bit of mineral, too.”

Viognier

Viognier, the perfumed white grape of the Rhône Valley, was almost extinct a half-century ago. But it has since made a comeback, and it seems to do very well in Virginia. The panel sampled 13 different Viogniers and found some too high in alcohol, overripe, or funky on the nose. But Viognier’s unmistakable tropical-fruit, peach, and apricot lushness brightened many of the other samples.

With no wine clearly in the top spot, Chersevani noted the “stone fruit” of the Rappahannock 2008 Noblesse, Brown noted the “floral characteristics” of the DelFosse 2007, Calvert noted the “peach” and “wood spice” of the Chester Gap 2008 Boisseau, and Thrasher noted the “sweet finish” of the Sugarleaf 2008.

Cabernet Franc

Two hours in, the tasters and their tired palates took a much-needed break for a buffet lunch. Then they went back to work on three flights of red wines.

First up was Cabernet Franc, generally regarded as Virginia’s most successful red grape. In Bordeaux, it’s generally blended with Cabernet Sauvignon. But in the Loire, Cab Franc shows off as a lighter-weight wine with delicious dark fruit, the same result it can produce in Virginia.

The crowd pleasers: the Rappahannock Cellars 2007, “light spice . . . medium bodied, quite tasty” (Brown); the Sunset Hills 2007 Reserve, “sweet blackberries, sage—a mouthful” (Chersevani); and the Veritas 2008, “ruby red, spicy, and sweet on the palate” (Thrasher).

Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot & Petit Verdot

In the next group, we tasted three classic red grapes—Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Petit Verdot, another Bordeaux blending grape particularly suited to the Virginia climate.

The Sugarleaf 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon edged out the other wines in this flight. Brown found it full of “black cherry juice” and “juicy on the palate.” Three more wines were close behind: Calvert remarked that the Gadino 2007 Petit Verdot was full of “spice, cardamom, clove” and that its palate “is sweet cassis.” The finish of the Chester Gap 2007 Merlot was “long-lasting [with] a bit of violet” in Thrasher’s notes. Brown tasted “cinnamon, vanilla, cherry, plum,” and a “peppery finish” in the Rausse 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon.

Meritage

By this flight, the winter sun had begun to abandon the garden beyond the kitchen, but the tasters’ perseverance was rewarded by the final flight of 15 Meritage wines. The term Meritage was coined by the California wine industry for wines blended in the Bordeaux style, using traditional Bordeaux grape varieties.

The Boxwood Winery 2007 Boxwood bottling won praise from Chersevani, who wrote simply, “Green peppercorns, wood. I like it.” (This was a leap beyond the usual wine descriptors.) Brown called it “full-bodied, luscious.” Chersevani also praised the Linden 2006 Hardscrabble Red, writing, “Cherry, tobacco. I like it.” Myers and Thrasher preferred this one as well. Thrasher described it as “woody and cedar notes, sweet in the mouth.” Thrasher also lauded the Delaplane 2007 Left Bank: “Comes together nicely.”

The Road Ahead

It’s important to note that over these four hours of intense focus and concentration, the tasting panel frequently disagreed. Take their comments as a guide, but trust your own palate. The more you taste, the more tuned in you’ll be to the nuances in the glass.

Our professionals all agreed that Virginia isn’t the easiest place to grow grapes and make wine. As Myers put it, “Jefferson gave up [on growing vines] a long time ago, and he was a very smart dude!”

But they also agreed that the Virginia wine industry, while still in its infancy, has made tremendous strides in recent years as growers figure out which varietals do best on which parcels of land. And these sommeliers expect Virginia wine to continue improving.

Harris, Flavor’s publisher, points out that some restaurants are fond of Virginia wines but find them too expensive. “Most wineries in this region are small, so they find it difficult to match the price of other wines on the restaurants’ lists.”

As diners committed to local food begin to request local wine, the industry will see increased sales in the district, says Harris. “People will pay more for a meal made with sustainably raised local ingredients. Our hope is that they do the same for locally made wine.”

Journalist Bill Plante is CBS’s senior White House correspondent. A 30-year resident of D.C., he is also a well-known wine aficionado.

The Tasting Panel

Derek Brown is a wine and spirits professional who has become a leading voice in the new cocktail renaissance. His latest project is a cocktail club and laboratory called the Columbia Room, inside his D.C. bar, The Passenger.

Having gained national recognition for her cocktail creations at D.C.’s Rasika and Arlington’s EatBar, Gina Chersevani is now the master mixologist behind the bar at D.C.’s PS 7’s.

Scott Calvert, former president of Tastevin, Inc., a consulting and wine wholesale firm in New York City, currently serves as the wine director for the world-famous Inn at Little Washington in Washington, Virginia.

After a four-year stint as the assistant sommelier, caviste, and captain at the Inn at Little Washington, Andy Myers became the head sommelier for CityZen, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in D.C., in 2006.

Mix master Todd Thrasher currently serves as the general manager, sommelier, and liquid savant for Restaurant Eve. He is also a partner in PX in Alexandria, Virginia.

The Standouts

Whites
Sauvignon Blanc & Pinot Grigio
Veritas 2008 Sauvignon Blanc, $18.00
Glen Manor 2008 Sauvignon Blanc, $22.00
Barboursville 2008 Pinot Grigio, $14.99
Chardonnay
Gadino 2007 Chardonnay, $20.00
King Family 2008 Chardonnay, $19.95
Tarara 2008 Chardonnay, $30.00
Linden 2007 Chardonnay, $28.00
Viognier
Rappahannock 2008 Noblesse Viognier, $17.50
DelFosse 2007 Viognier, $25.00
Chester Gap 2008 Boisseau Viognier, $19.00
Sugarleaf 2008 Viognier, $27.00

Reds
Cabernet Franc
Rappahannock Cellars 2007 Cabernet Franc, $24.00
Sunset Hills 2007 Cabernet Franc Reserve, $40.00
Veritas 2008 Cabernet Franc, $18.00
Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot & Petit Verdot
Sugarleaf 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon, $30.00
Gadino 2007 Petit Verdot, $27.00
Chester Gap 2007 Merlot, $19.00
Rausse 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon, not yet released
Meritage (Bordeaux Blends)
Boxwood Winery 2007 Boxwood, $25.00
Linden 2006 Hardscrabble Red, $39.00
Delaplane 2007 Left Bank, $28.00