New
Wines from an Old
Vineyard
Wineries are proliferating, and
succeeding,
in a state whose traditions date back 400 years
By Laura Williams-Tracy
Each year on the third Thursday of November a new
vintage of Beaujolais Nouveau is released all over the world. This
fruity young wine — only six weeks old — holds a promise for the
coming year’s vintage and is cause for celebration.
So, too, North Carolina’s adolescent wine industry is beginning to
harvest a reputation for growing quality grapes and producing fine
wines. Although far from the status of California, Washington State,
or even neighboring Virginia, Tar Heel wine is sparking fanfare among
wine connoisseurs.
With 250 vineyards and 21 wineries, North Carolina’s wine industry
is quietly growing into an important component of the state’s
tourism industry. Our rich farmland and mild climate produced more
than 500,000 gallons of wine last year. Five new vineyards have opened
since 2000 and three more are scheduled to open this fall.
Of course, it’s a long way from the days before Prohibition, when
North Carolina was the largest wine-producing state in the country.
The industry’s history is deeply rooted in the colonial heritage of
Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony on Roanoke Island, where a 400-year-old
Scuppernong vine was cultivated. Scuppernong is a type of Muscadine
grape that is native to North Carolina and is responsible for the
sweet wine the state became known for.
But today, most new growth in wineries and vineyards has been for
Vitis Vinifera, the European-style bunch grapes used to make such
popular wines as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Chardonnay. While
Muscadine grapes have always grown well here, agricultural
developments have made it easier for North Carolina grape growers to
cultivate the grapes that put California and other states on the
proverbial wine map.
North Carolina now ranks 12th nationally for total grape production
and 10th for wine production. Annual retail sales of state-produced
wine is $25 million. The gross value of grape sales in North Carolina
in 2000 was $2.66 million. In just the last decade alone, the number
of commercial vineyards in the state grew from 68 to more than 250.
Still, North Carolina wine remains a specialty product in a niche
market. But the fact that many wineries sell out of each year’s
vintage before the next year’s is released is creating a demand for
grapes and fertilizing the growth of an industry.
“North Carolina has yet to develop a permanent home in the public
mindset as a place where premium wines are grown. But it’s not
because North Carolina wine growers aren’t capable,” says Andy
Allen, extension associate for viticulture at North Carolina State
University.
Winemaking is still a young industry in the state, with the oldest
Vinifera vines just 30 years old. Advances in plant science have
provided new tools for grape growing that are helping the industry.
There’s growing interest in wine and grape production in many areas
of the state, Allen says. Since the industry began its rebirth in the
late ’70s, the coastal region has been home of Muscadine grapes,
while bunch grape vineyards started clustering along the Yadkin River
from Winston-Salem west to Asheville and points south. That’s where
the majority of wineries are located today.
But new plantings are going in the ground in Wake, Orange and Alamance
counties in the heart of the Piedmont.
The state’s climate is almost ideal for growing grapes. The soils
are fertile and well drained and rarely are there sudden hard freezes
to kill the plants.
The North Carolina climate closely mirrors California’s in all but
one important way. California’s summers are dry while North
Carolina’s oppressive summer humidity makes vines susceptible to
bacterial diseases. To combat the problem, plant scientists have taken
rootstock from American varieties of grapes that are resistant to such
diseases and grafted them onto vine stock from desirable wine grape
rootstock, producing a plant that resists such diseases. The plants at
Biltmore and Westbend vineyards in Lewisville are the oldest examples
of such plants, and at 25 to 30 years old, they are healthy and
disease-resistant.
But the proclivity to plant disease means grape growers must monitor
and spray for insects and disease more often than their Californian
counterparts. And, of course, an infamous North Carolina hurricane can
come along and damage crops at harvest time or harm vines with high
winds.
See a list of Tar Heel wineries,
complete with addresses and web pages
 Cholesterol Fighters
North Carolina’s Muscadine grape is the true native grape of the
state.
“It’s name is Vitis Rotundifolia, but that’s too hard for a
southern boy to say so we call them Scuppernongs,” jokes Jonathan
Fussell, whose father and uncle started the state’s oldest operating
winery, Duplin Wine Cellars, in Rose Hill.
Duplin Wine Cellars was growing grapes in 1971 for a New York winery
when the grape market bottomed out. The men decided to salvage their
investment by making their own wine rather than selling their grapes
at greatly reduced prices.
Today, Duplin produces 350,000 gallons of wine a year, operates at
full capacity and sells every drop it makes.
Part of the explosion of popularity of this sweet-tasting wine is due
to research data released in 1996 which showed Muscadine wine had
seven times the power of regular wine to reduce high cholesterol.
“When that hit the news our sales shot up tremendously,” says
Fussell. “We’ve grown more than 600 percent since that came
out.”
Duplin’s Hatteras Red is a top selling wine in eastern North
Carolina, and it also produces a medicinal tonic with the antioxidant
called resveratrol found in Muscadine grapes.
Such a strike of good luck certainly helps any wine marketing
campaign. But others in North Carolina’s burgeoning wine industry
say they struggle to get their product tasted, purchased and revered.
A Family Business
The North Carolina Grape Council was established in 1986 to stimulate
the growth of the state’s grape industry by sponsoring research,
education and promotional programs. The council is funded by a portion
of the excise taxes on the sale of wine bottled in North Carolina.
Because most North Carolina wineries are small, family-owned
businesses, few have a marketing or advertising budget. And they say
poor funding of the Grape Council is a major inhibitor to growth of
the industry.
The council’s budget is $175,000, which pays for a director’s
salary and funding for research on grapes at North Carolina State
University. What’s left over is put toward promotional materials.
The council can’t afford radio or television advertising and has not
even had a budget for print advertising. Instead, it produces a few
brochures, and maintains a web site. This year the council helped
organize only the state’s second wine festival, held in June in
Tanglewood Park in Clemmons.
Compare that with Virginia’s Department of Agriculture, which
receives just under $500,000 a year for viticulture research and
marketing. That money doesn’t pay for salaries, and more than
$300,000 was committed this year to paying for marketing programs.
The department prints some 400,000 Virginia Winery Tour Guides that
list the hundreds of wine-related events happening in the state
throughout the year.
“The Virginia General Assembly really got behind the industry when
it was in its infancy,” says Mary Davis-Barton, wine marketing
manager for the Virginia Department of Agriculture. “Funding has
doubled in the seven years that I’ve been here.”
Davis-Barton says it helps that the state’s tourism office
recognizes that Virginia’s 65 wineries have a significant impact on
drawing visitors to the state
The North Carolina Grape
Council works at a grassroots level to promote North Carolina wines by
educating wine shop merchants about the state’s offerings and
encouraging them to give the product shelf space. The job is getting
easier, says the council’s director, Tania Dautlick, because “20
years ago wine produced in North Carolina was not delicious. Now it
is.”
To gain greater awareness for North Carolina wines, industry
supporters are pushing a bill that was signed into law on July 4 that
will allow wine tasting in grocery stores, wine shops, cooking stores
where alcohol is legally sold but can’t be sampled.
Dautlick says the new law will help sales by making it easier for
North Carolina wine novices to sample a new wine before purchasing.
“This legislation is not going to be earth-shaking, but it will make
the laws friendlier and more conducive to the wineries doing
business,” she says.
Building Brand Awareness
Building a respected brand that could compete with the nationally
known wineries such as Barringer and Robert Mondavi has been Biltmore
Estate Winery’s goal since it started producing grapes in 1978.
“We recognized early on that it didn’t matter if we could become
the best wine in North Carolina. That was too narrow of a field,”
says Jerry Douglas, senior vice president of Biltmore Estate Brands
Group. “If we were selling our wine for $10 a bottle we had to be as
good as every other $10 bottle, including the California and French
wines.”
Today, Biltmore’s White Zinfandel is the third-best selling in the
state, trailing only the national brands produced by Beringer and
Sutter Home.
Housed in a renovated dairy complex on Asheville’s Biltmore Estate,
the winery opened its doors in 1985 and now attracts 950,000 visitors
a year, who are also drawn to the winery’s flagship attraction, the
Biltmore mansion. Biltmore Winery claims to be the most visited
individual winery in the country. California’s Napa Valley draws 2
million visitors a year, but its tourists spread their time over a
host of wineries.
Even with such great tourist appeal, Biltmore’s wines are
distributed only in the Southeast.
Gaining marketing share and getting the product on shelves across the
state is another challenge for wineries, especially the smaller ones.
With limited or non-existent advertising budgets, wineries have to
expand beyond their in-house tasting rooms to boost sales volume.
While some try to distribute their product themselves, others turn to
professional distributors.
Rockhouse Vineyards in Tryon recently turned to a distributor for
help. Husband and wife team Lee Griffin and Marsha Cassedy of
Charlotte had been distributing their wine since their first vintage
in 1998.
But with 850 cases expected to be produced this year, they simply
couldn’t handle the volume. The Rockhouse product is now in about 40
retail outlets and is moving into the South Carolina market.
Griffin admits that turning to a distributor is a tradeoff. Wineries
must sell their product to the distributor at greatly reduced prices,
as much as 75 percent off retail, to allow the distributor and
retailer to receive their cut of the profit.
“We’re getting into new markets so we expect to be able to
increase our volume,” he says.
Shelton Vineyards recognized that it would be easy to be ignored among
the mass of outstanding U.S. wines and hired its own sales person to
work with its distributors, teaching and talking up the product.
A new vineyard established in 1999 along the Yadkin Valley region in
Dobson, Shelton Vineyards is one of the largest Vinifera vineyards and
wineries on the East Coast. By the end of the year the vineyard will
have more than 200 acres of producing vineyards.
Shelton’s new 33,000-square-foot winery opened in May 2000 with the
capacity to produce 30,000 cases of wine each year. In just its first
year it will produce 10,000 cases totaling more than 23,000 gallons of
wine.
With such a significant investment in such a large vineyard and
showcase winery, Shelton has been working to build its brand even
before the first vintage hits grocery store and wine shop shelves this
fall. Shelton Vineyards has invited wine tasters from restaurants and
finer stores to visit and sample the wine out of the tank before its
bottled.
“It’s a constant job of marketing and selling the wines,” says
Sean McRitchie, vice president and general manager.
One Grape at a Time
North Carolina wine advocates say getting naysayers to taste the
state’s wine is the only way to overcome a very real stigma that
North Carolina wines are inferior to others grown in the United
States.
California’s wine reputation only grew in the late 1970s when in a
blind taste test French judges chose its products over wines grown in
France. Washington State, Oregon and New York wines have gained their
formidable reputations only in the past two decades.
As North Carolina’s recipe has been refined and perfected, industry
watchers are seeing the state’s credibility grow.
“People used to buy North Carolina wines as a novelty or a
souvenir,” says Douglas of Biltmore’s wines. “Over time
people’s perception has changed. Now they buy it because they like
it and because they want to serve it to their friends.”
Shelton’s McRitchie, who worked for years at Oregon vineyards and
wineries, says North Carolina has all of the right ingredients to
become an even bigger player.
“North Carolina has a long way to go to build its name as a wine
state. It’s just at the starting line,” he says “But it has tons
of potential with its soil, climate and a growing market.”
Angelus Rickenbaker, a certified wine educator who heads up the
Carolina Wine Club, held a class on the history of wine making in
North Carolina in Charlotte in March. Students tested French and North
Carolina wines and Biltmore Estate Winery’s Chardonnay was the hit
of the evening.
“I think it’s going to happen for North Carolina wines,” she
says. “But it only happens one grape at a time.”
Return to magazine index
|
|
