#11 - 2021 Rendezvous, RDV Vineyards with Joshua Grainer MW

Joshua Grainer MW is MD and winemaker for RdV Vineyards in Virginia. He makes wines of critical acclaim, overcoming numerous challenges to do so. Josh provided a very useful overview of the history and current state of the Virginia wine production. He explained the environmental challenges, including combatting downy mildew. The Virginia climate and soils tends to give grapes with high pHs and Josh unpacks his expertise with high pH winemaking. The 2021 RdV "Rendezvous" is a superb Bordeaux blend that expresses what Virginia wine can do.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:23 Virginia
• 6:57 Environmental Challenges
• 13:51 pH and Potassium balance
• 22:08 Outro

Transcript

Mike - Hello,  I'm here with my friend, Nelson Pary, and I'm Mike Best.  And I'm with Josh Grainer from RDV Vineyards in Virginia. So we're very, very excited to host Josh here. Josh is the winemaker at the estate, and we are gonna kick straight off with question number one. 

Nelson - So Josh, probably for many people who are listening, even the fact that they make wine in Virginia is a news completely.  We would like to know a bit more of the history of Virginia,  where the vineyards are located, what varieties were planted, how much under vine there is, the size of the industry, but most importantly, how your estate fits  inside the history of winemaking in Virginia. 

Joshua - Awesome. Mike Nelson, I'm so pleased to be here. Thanks for having me. Love to talk about Virginia. We actually have a pretty long history in terms of the United States here. And so it all actually begins with the first colonists arriving in Jamestown. So on the eastern edge of the United States, and there was actually a decree by the House of Burgesses that required each male colonist to plant 20 vines. Now we have to kind of acknowledge that where these original colonists landed was very swampy Atlantic climate and with all kinds of new pests and animals  to set them back quite a way. So it never really got off the ground, but the passion never left and so moving forward a little bit, late 1700s, our founding fathers, individuals such as Thomas Jefferson were trying to establish vineyards, actually with the help of some Italians, and get things going on the  mountains out here in the western part of the state. Again, there was a number of setbacks that kind of kept the industry from succeeding at that point, and the most notable ones being phylloxera and things such as powdery mildew, stuff that Europe hadn't yet seen, but we would introduce in a  few short decades. And then more recently, with American Prohibition and that sort of thing, it always kept the industry from evolving greatly. But we have a similar trajectory actually as the Willamette Valley in Oregon, meaning that in the late 70s, early  80s, what we consider the modern Virginia wine industry got off the ground. What Virginia has always benefited from was its proximity to Washington DC and the rather affluent coastal communities. And so what that's meant is it's a  very regional market to date in the sense that it's hard to ignore  the  efficacy  of direct consumer sales. So most of Virginia wine gets drunk within a hundred miles of where it was produced. Unlike the Willamette Valley who had Oregon and maybe Seattle, they quickly had to kind of identify a regional identity, Pinot Noir, bring it up to a quality level that one could compete against California or the wines of Burgundy and then take that  show on the road. Whereas Virginia, we were both blessed with and cursed with kind of staying local and staying small in that sense. So hence the reason most of your listeners may have never even realized that Virginia is producing wine at this point. So now kind of moving into the current day model, really high quality, wine is grown all throughout the state, but the really high quality producers are what I would say in the Western end of the state, as we move inland a couple hundred miles, we hit the Piedmont region of Virginia, which are the foothills to the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Appalachian Mountains that run North and South across the state, and then into the Shenandoah Valley, which is rockier soils, more mineral driven soils  that are producing wines of greater concentration and ripeness. 

Nelson - So if we would have to do like a history of winemaking in Virginia, looking at producers, know, when we say, you know, for every region, we always have like a couple of names. Is there anyone that was considered by you guys like the trademark or someone to follow or let's say that the white making models were coming from outside. So maybe you were looking towards more California and what is happening in Napa, for example.

Joshua - It's good question, Nelson. so, you know, again, kind of going back to that 70s, 80s, there's been a couple pioneering producers within the state that are still doing really well down in the central part of the state. There's a producer called Barbersville, and they're actually owned by an Italian family, the Zonin family. They invested there in the 80s and have continued to produce  a lot of both Italian inspired wines, varieties such as Nebbiolo and Fiano, but also with Bordeaux style of wine. So Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, et cetera. Up in the Northern part of the state, another really well regarded producer is a gentleman named Jim Law of Linden Vineyards, leaning into a little bit higher elevation production. So we're now talking around 1200, 1500 feet at elevation producing Chardonnays, but also producing again that Bordeaux style red wine. Particularly with RDV vineyards, when we formed ourselves back in 2006 is when we established our vineyard. We looked at those two producers and said, hey, they've done a great job. We admire them greatly. We have a little more understanding about site selection and just a new vineyard material and so forth these days. So how can we take  that to the next chapter that they've built upon? And so what we decided was we spent two years actually searching for this rather unique site. We are located in the northern part of the state, about an hour west of Washington, DC on this really rocky granite knoll just kissing the Blue Ridge Mountains. Got these beautiful 25, 30 % slopes to the south-southeast and  developed a wine style based off of Bordeaux at this point. And that wine style is largely linked to the similarity in seasonal moisture and temperature that Bordeaux would have. 

Mike - Question number two, this actually came up in this year's diploma exams. So that doesn't mean necessarily that Virginia won't appear in the D6 for another 20 years. It means you need to be cognizant of all the wines of the world. And the question was, Josh, I don't know how you'd fair with this question, but word for word it is, what are the environmental challenges faced by wine producers in Virginia? And  so we'd like to hear some more about this. 

Joshua - Sure, Mike. And  it's my personal mission to make sure that D6 brings Virginia back into the conversation much quicker than 20 years from now. So in terms of environmental conditions, I had referred to Bordeaux as kind of being a model for us and a lot of growers in the state. And that's because  we have seasonal moisture throughout the year. And so we have reliable moisture every month of the year, equating to almost 700 millimeters of rain on average through the growing season. So that's April through October in our hemisphere. And of course with that  brings two main issues to the industry and the ones that initially thwarted the colonists efforts and continue to challenge producers that perhaps have not selected the most conducive sites for it. And that's dilution and disease pressure, specifically during the growing season and at the harvest point. so disease pressure would come down to the mildews that we're all fairly familiar with. So downy mildew being a big one. And then of course, rot potentials if those rainstorms happen to come during the September, October timeframe. And of course, in that latter timeframe, if we're picking up moisture on the vines, producers and more water retentive sites can have issues with dilution and so forth. 

Mike - What would be really, really helpful is to get, and maybe you're going to come to this, a couple of very, very specific, kind of concise examples of what you or other producers or the general form is of how do you deal with that as an extreme and what are the effects of sort of ravaging down in downy mildew and how do you mitigate against it? 

Joshua - With downy mildew and disease pressure like that, a lot can be  mitigated through really good site selection and a really attentive viticulture. Virginia is unforgiving of both bad site selection and the lazy grower. You have to be a very good grower to get a top quality fruit here. And that means a lot of hand work. A lot of canopy management to keep the vines clean, and then having  soils that are both sloped. It's almost impossible to grow great grapes on flat land out here. And also, we're really free draining. Virginia is almost like looking at a tie-dyed shirt when you look at the soil maps. It's a very old geology, so it swirls and mixes. And so a lot of times what that equates to is very small vineyard sizes, but hopefully the growers selecting the most conducive soils to getting rid of the moisture that  is in excess of  the plant. On the counter aspect of it though, Mike, I do want to touch on the fact that while we have moisture and we need to do a lot of input in the vineyard  to manage that disease pressure, another big topic within the world right now is regenerative ag and regenerative viticulture. And a lot of what my colleagues in  drier places are working to achieve, Virginia achieves very naturally. it's, in my opinion, one of the most diverse ecological systems I've seen in terms of viticulture.  It's highly,  highly healthy soils a lot of times because moisture is bringing life. And yes, it brings challenging aspects to the vineyard, but it's also bringing a lot of positive. And so it's. the attentive grower, the observant grower that's monitoring that and adjusting accordingly. So oftentimes you'll see permanent cover crops as part of the management behind our viticulture here, as well as just that really high touch viticulture. 

Mike - We've seen  in Europe in 2024, of, you know, in mainstream way,  downy mildew being  an incredibly  strong factor  on a relatively poor growing season. depending on where you've been. And the effects of that, I mean, you're speaking from the experiences in England, which obviously is very marginal climate, but particularly in the West where it rained more, you just end up with a place that has a very little leaf cover to begin with then when those leaves are gone, it's not even about the grapes. Once you've lost the leaf cover, can't photosynthesize, you can't ripen, and you are basically stuck there. that isn't in a relatively cool climate. It's not going to ripen. So I guess that importance of being on top of spraying, of that kind of disease management, of opening up the canopy, of having the trailer set up in the right way. You can't really name one factor, I suppose, or can you? I'm guessing here, but I'm sort of putting words in your mouth. I don't really think there's one way that you, one particular thing that is the key. It's the mix of all of them. Is that right or do you have any else to say about that? 

Joshua - Mike, you're hitting it right on the top of the head. a  very attentive spray programs.  Virginia is a challenge in the sense that with vinifera grapes and organic viticulture, it's a real difficulty. And it becomes a question of not necessarily being able to manage downy mildew. with copper, that's possible, but it becomes a question of sustainability. How many times are you gonna put that tractor through the vineyard? How much copper are you gonna apply? The carbon footprint, the vineyard compaction, and that sort of thing. most growers honestly choose to have more of what we would call a conventional program to approach these such that they feel it's a bit more of a sustainable program in our climate, as well as, you know, almost everyone's growing on that very laser thin vertical shoot positioning to get as maximum sunlight and airflow as well as management of cover crops. So we're farming  the ground cover as much as we're farming the grapes sometimes to kind of steer the vigor within the plant. And then yes, meticulously managing the leaf and fruit to ratio balance and that sort of thing to ensure really nice airflow. proper sunlight infiltration. It's almost the opposite of California where they're seeking shade and in humidity, we're seeking the sunshine. 

Nelson - I wanted  to switch to varietals. I guess that by having such an extreme climate it might be harder than  to make consistent cab sauv but at the same time it would be easier to make a good amount of merlot which is something that we don't do anymore. you think about  it Bordeaux, Bolgheri, Napa, making merlot is becoming  like a hassle. How this climate really selects the final blends for you guys. 

Joshua - Yeah, yeah. And so you're exactly right, Nelson, in the sense that Merlot is one of the top three most planted varieties in the state. I believe it's either number one or two right up there with Chardonnay, like most places in the world.  But  what Merlot does do, especially in our climate, is it's a bit more forgiving of moisture. It wants a bit more moisture than Cabernet Sauvignon. So it's only but the droughtiest sites that really excel with Cabernet Sauvignon. where Merlot can start to reach that level of ripeness without over ripeness. I would argue that Virginia right now, you really have to seek out and search for  over ripe wines. Traditionally, our wine style is on the critical edge, let's go back 20 years where it was much cooler and we didn't have as good a site selections. The Virginia wine was known to be a bit too herbaceous, a bit too vegetal. We're now finding that sweet spot where we can get nice bramble fruit ripeness, a crispness, but without  a heaviness or a lack of energy behind the wines.And so we're in a pretty sweet spot now. again, kind of coming back to the future of it between site selection and proper rootstock selection, we can continue to manage the varieties such as Merlot for a number of decades, I believe. and it is a good grape for the state. 

Nelson - Even if the bottle has 14 % alcohol, the thing that is surprising to me is that I can feel the ripeness of the fruit, but I don't feel the alcohol at all. 

Joshua - It could be interesting just to kind of describe the wine as most of the consumers haven't probably tasted a Virginia red wine before. what I've found that when I work with my colleagues in California and I share my wines from Virginia, they say, oh, fantastic, very, very old world. And what they're meaning by that is there's that medium body, that savoriness behind there, a little bit more freshness perhaps than  that kiss of sunshine that some of them are achieving on the West Coast. And then when I take to my colleagues in the Bordeaux, they get a ripeness that they distinctively find. Sweet without sugar, but sweet the sense of generosity that they may not have in Bordeaux. And so it's this interesting middle ground. We're warmer than Bordeaux, but cooler than California with less sunshine hours. And so there's this middle ground where if Bordeaux's this earthy, savory component, we're more of this bramble savory component versus this very rich blackberry component, if you will, of the West Coast. United States. 

Mike - Okay, interesting. that's cool.  And obviously we can't talk about everything about the wine, but  just  the color and I guess, you know, having tasted lots of wines, this strikes me as a  high pH wine. It's quite purple. It's kind of soft plush  voluminous kind of style. Yeah, it strikes me as that. So high pH is a feature of Virginia winemaking. Is that fair? 

Joshua - That is a fair comment, Mike, and that has to go back to our climatic conditions. so oftentimes high rainfall soils reproduce a lot of potassium in them. And  if you'll allow me to get a little bit nerdy at this point. High potassium  means it gets taken up, it gets mobilized very readily into the plant. And what that means is that those grapes come in with a large amount of potassium in them. And now when we  put them in the fermenters with red wine, it's all on the skins, right? That potassium gets released and acts as a buffering agent against the pH. And so what that means is that a wine picked at a pH of 3.4, 3.5, sitting on the skins can easily climb to 3.7, 3.8, 3.9 just by the release of that potassium. Many of the winemakers in the state will choose to adjust that pH back down to what in analogy we would consider a stable state below 3.7. And basically what that's doing is making it more microbiologically stable. The challenge with that is we can start to create this sweet sour component. And so I don't know if sweet tarts are a thing for everybody, but it's a type of candy here in the US that has this very acidic, but also sweet kind of component to it. And it can throw the wine out of balance. So particularly here at RDV, we choose not to do that. We choose to accept the wine as it is, don't make an adjustment to the wine. And so it does have a bit of an elevated pH. I think the wine still shows a unique profile of freshness behind it, which maybe is attributed to the granitic soils. I find that in Cote Routier, Beaujolais, Alsace, all the way up into Austria that these granitic soils provide a certain energy that sometimes can't be explained by their chemistry. Another side topic we can go off on another podcast. But that being said, we'll accept that. then what it results in is us needing to be very attentive in the cellar. And what I mean by that specifically is to monitor Brettanomyces or any other spoilage mechanisms that can survive in such high pH wines and ensure that they don't take a foothold.  Very clean, very attentive winemaking behind it. 

Nelson - What is the correlation then between, at least when you're looking at the data, between the pH and the total acidity then? Because the wine itself, I mean, I can still salivate.  It's not the biggest waves of saliva that I've ever had in my life, but it's pretty constant and it never leaves.  for sure, this is a wine that many people would at least consider, you know, at least a medium plus. So how does that happen? 

Joshua - Yeah, and so that is the it doesn't necessarily  equate to a loss of acidity when the pH goes up. And so you need to add acid to get the pH to come down. but the acid balance of those grapes that were picked at 3.5, 3.6 pH  will still largely remain in there. And so we're retaining our acid, but with the potassium, it's not a factor of necessarily ripeness. It's a factor of the potassium that's elevating the pH. So we retain the beautiful freshness behind it. And that's why I choose not to make any adjustments because in my sense, Nelson, as you point out, I believe the acid balance is already there in the wine. 

Mike - It is worth pointing out that yes, it is possible to have high acid, high pH wines, even though it's confusing as that might seem face value.  

Joshua - A perfect example of those high acid, high pH wines would be a Mosel producer will choose  to leave, some of the greatest Mosel producers will choose to leave their skins in contact with the grape, like a Riesling grape to elevate the pH to get potassium out of it  such that  the fermentation or the pH is a little more conducive to fermentation at that point. And so we're dealing on the  opposite end of that spectrum, but it's a tool used around the world.  

Nelson So here we go.  We've just been drinking 2021 RDV Rendezvous with Joshua Greina.  And the three questions today were about the history  of Virginia's winemaking. environmental challenges faced by wine producers and  potassium and IPH  in wine. Joshua, thank you so much for being with us today. 

Joshua - It's been my pleasure, guys. Thank you.