The Williamsburg Winery

Williamsburg Winery Welcomes Renowned Chef Shane Henderson as New Events Chef

wine@wmbgwine.com — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 20:56:02 GMT

Williamsburg Winery Welcomes Renowned Chef Shane Henderson as New Events Chef

Williamsburg, VA – September 3, 2024 – Williamsburg Winery is proud to announce the appointment of Shane Henderson as the new Events Chef, bringing over two decades of diverse and distinguished culinary experience to the winery’s team. Henderson’s career has been marked by his leadership in some of the nation’s most esteemed kitchens, where he has consistently demonstrated a passion for innovation, quality, and guest satisfaction.

Most recently, Henderson served as Executive Chef at the historic Morrison-Clark Inn in Washington, DC, where he was responsible for all aspects of kitchen management, including menu development, staff training, and the sourcing of premium local ingredients. His ability to balance operational efficiency with creative excellence earned the restaurant widespread acclaim.

Before his tenure at Morrison-Clark, Henderson held key culinary positions at renowned establishments such as the Kimpton Hotel, where he was the Executive Sous Chef, and the Meadowood Resort Hotel in Napa Valley, CA, where he developed a la carte and prix fixe tasting menus that highlighted his skill in food and wine pairings. His experience also includes roles at Evening Star Café in Alexandria, VA, and Lowe’s Annapolis Hotel in Annapolis, MD, where he was instrumental in shaping the culinary direction and enhancing the guest dining experience.

At Williamsburg Winery, Henderson will be at the helm of the culinary team for events and special occasions, creating innovative and seasonally inspired menus that perfectly complement the winery’s award-winning wines. His deep understanding of flavor profiles, combined with his commitment to using the freshest local ingredients, will elevate the culinary offerings at Williamsburg Winery, ensuring that every event is a memorable experience.

"Chef Shane Henderson is a unique talent and we are thrilled to welcome him to The Williamsburg Winery," said Michael Kokolis, Chief Operating Officer of The Williamsburg Winery. "His impressive background, creative vision, and dedication to culinary excellence align perfectly with our mission to provide exceptional dining experiences and unparalleled events. We look forward to the innovative and delicious contributions he will bring to our guests.”

About Williamsburg Winery

Williamsburg Winery, located in Virginia’s historic triangle, is known for its award-winning wines, picturesque vineyards, and exceptional hospitality. With a commitment to quality and community, the winery offers a variety of experiences, including wine tastings, tours, events, and dining. For more information, visit williamsburgwinery.com

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Williamsburg Winery Showcases Virginia Excellence at Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 16:48:01 GMT

Williamsburg Winery Showcases Virginia Excellence at Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris

WILLIAMSBURG, VA. - Feb. 29, 2024 - Williamsburg Winery proudly represented Virginia among six esteemed wineries at the exclusive Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris trade show this month.

Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris is renowned for its celebration of the diverse array of French and international wine and spirits regions. This major annual business gathering, held in the heart of the French capital city, provides a platform for wine and spirits professionals to connect, collaborate, and showcase their products on a global scale.

Williamsburg Winery, alongside its fellow Virginia wineries, participated in the event under the pavilion hosted by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and Virginia Wine. The pavilion featured exhibition booths highlighting the unique offerings of each participating winery.

It was truly an honor to represent Williamsburg Winery and Virginia at the Vin Expo in Paris,” Michael Weatherly, CEO of the Williamsburg Winery. “We were encouraged by the amount of foot traffic stopping by to take in not only the award winning wines from Williamsburg, but all of our partner wineries in the Virginia Pavilion. Our team is truly grateful for the opportunity and excited to watch Virginia agriculture and viticulture continue to grow on the world stage.”

The Virginia wineries were honored to attend a special "celebration of Virginia wine and cuisine" alongside esteemed guests, including U.S. Ambassador to the French Republic and the Principality of Monaco, Denise Campbell Bauer.

For more information about Williamsburg Winery and its award-winning wines, visit williamsburgwinery.com

For media inquiries, please contact:

Haley Goins
Director of Marketing
hgoins@wmbgwine.com

Williamsburg Winery Announces Key Appointments in Winemaking Team

wine@wmbgwine.com — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 15:40:11 GMT

Williamsburg Winery Announces Key Appointments in Winemaking Team

WILLIAMSBURG, VA — Feb. 7, 2024 — Williamsburg Winery, a prominent name in the world of fine wines, unveils strategic updates to its operation and winemaking team. These changes represent an exciting chapter for the winery, embodying a commitment to quality, excellence, and innovation.

In a move that underscores dedication to nurturing talent within the organization, Williamsburg Winery proudly announces the promotion of Stacey Lightfoot to the position of Winemaker. Stacey, an alumna of Stockton College with a BS in environmental studies and a minor in Chemistry, embarked on her career in water testing labs before joining Williamsburg Winery just before the 2006 harvest season.

“You never know where life will take you, so always be open and flexible to change and opportunities. When you find something you are passionate about, work hard but always remember to have fun,” said Stacey Lightfoot.

With an impressive 17-year tenure as Williamsburg Wineries Assistant Winemaker, Stacey extends her gratitude for the invaluable partnership, friendship, and mentorship she has received. Guided by experience and expertise, she will continue to artfully craft the winery’s flagship brands and fan favorites in tandem with creating innovative wines that showcase the best of Virginia’s terroir.

In another exciting development, two leaders in Virginia wine come together as the Williamsburg Winery announces a consultative partnership with Michael Shaps. With an undeniable track record of both quality and excellence in winemaking, Michael brings a wealth of expertise, keen palate, and a fresh perspective to The Williamsburg Winery. His insights and contributions are expected to elevate the quality and experience, spanning from vineyard operations to the finished product.

“We are excited about this opportunity to work with one of the storied brands of Virginia wine. Our winemaking and vineyard consulting team looks forward to getting to know the hard working, dedicated staff that have welcomed us to their operations,” stated Michael Shaps.

These changes mark a dynamic phase for Williamsburg Winery, aligning with its vision for crafting unparalleled wines and delivering extraordinary experiences to its patrons. The entire Williamsburg Winery family extends warm wishes for a successful and fruitful collaboration with the new team members.

"Stacey has demonstrated that she can become a super-winemaker. I am always internally reminded that women have a better olfactory sense than men. Michael Shaps projects both his experience as a winemaker in Europe as well as in the US. He has an incredible and intimate understanding of the business dimension of our trade,” said Patrick Duffeler, Founder & Chairman of the Williamsburg Winery.

About Williamsburg Winery:

Nestled in the heart of Virginia, the Williamsburg Winery stands as a beacon of excellence in the world of fine wines. With a rich history dating back to its establishment, the winery embodies a perfect blend of tradition and innovation. Renowned for crafting exceptional wines that capture the essence of the region, Williamsburg Winery is a destination where passion meets expertise. Whether exploring its scenic vineyards, enjoying a guided tasting experience, or attending one of its signature events, guests are invited to indulge in the artistry of winemaking and the timeless beauty of the Virginia countryside. For more information visit williamsburgwinery.com/ .

For media inquiries, please contact:

Haley Goins

Director of Marketing

hgoins@wmbgwine.com

The Williamsburg Winery’s Special Place in Virginia Wine History

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 19:43:00 GMT

Patrick Duffeler’s purchase of a farm in 1983 started the Williamsburg Winery story, though the history of Virginia wine extends back centuries from that on the very same land.

Making wine in the New World started with the first colony in Jamestown in 1609 when the earliest settlers, hopeful of producing a cash crop, planted vines on the land that today occupies the Wessex Hundred farm. That early attempt wasn’t successful.

The next British attempt to foster a wine industry in the colonies stems from an edict made in 1619. The House of Burgesses required every landowner to plant at least 10 vines in the name of King James, known as the Twelfth Acte of 1619 . Four hundred years ago, abiding by the Twelfth Acte, settler John Johnson planted the first grapevines in an area named for the German who owned the land at the time, Jochen. Surrounded by water on three sides, the land — where today grapes thrive as part of Wessex Hundred — received the name “Jochen’s Neck” or Jockey’s Neck. Johnson’s was another unsuccessful effort, though certainly worth noting. Duffeler commemorated it with the naming of the 1619 Pavilion, which opened in 2019.

The names of the various buildings that comprise the winery all have historical significance. The Gabriel Archer Tavern is named for British explorer Gabriel Archer, who wanted what was called Archer’s Hope to be where the first settlement would be (he was overruled by Capt. John Smith, who favored Jamestown). Part of Wessex Hundred is on Archer’s Hope, and as homage to that the winery’s signature Bordeaux-style blend is the Gabriel Archer Reserve.

The names of many of the winery’s’ wines also reflect history. The Acte 12 Chardonnay, made from 100% Virginia grapes, is among the winery’s signature releases. Two Shilling Red also refers to the 1600s, the amount of rent paid to the crown for the land, which now occupies the Williamsburg Winery.

The Norton celebrates America’s oldest wine grape, first cultivated in Richmond in the 1820s.

Cattle, grain and beans became the primary crops over the next two centuries until Patrick and Peggy Duffeler’s exhaustive search for a farm narrowed down a field of 52 to one — Wessex Hundred. The use of “Hundred” to name a property dates back to the Colonial era and describes parcels of land sufficient to support 100 families regardless of actual acreage.

The Williamsburg Winery planted its first trial vineyard, a Chardonnay varietal, on a gentle South facing slope in 1985 but few predicted Virginia would emerge as a significant grape growing region.

There were only a handful of wineries in the Commonwealth, but Duffeler dismissed the doubters, passionate about continuing the legacy that began several centuries prior. Forty years ago, he was neither a viticulturist nor a winemaker but as a businessman who had achieved success in motor racing and the fragrance industry, he had the acumen to do his homework and find experts in viticulture. Pioneers persevere. Duffeler persevered.

In 1988, the Williamsburg Winery released the Governor’s White, still its most popular wine.

The next year, the Williamsburg Winery won the Governor’s Cup, the most stringent award for the best wine in the Commonwealth. Four gold medals were awarded that year. The Williamsburg Winery earned two: for its 1988 Williamsburg Reserve Chardonnay and its 1989 Acte 12 Chardonnay.

Treville Lawrence’s book released in 1989 titled “Jefferson and Wine,” included this reference to the Williamsburg Winery in the chapter “Jefferson’s Dream Come True.” The nation’s third president also had attempted to grow vines at Monticello, but it was another futile attempt.

Outstanding from another point of view was the establishment in coastal Jamestown -site of the first settler’s landing- of Williamsburg Vineyard and Winery by the Patrick G. Duffeler family. This was the spot where Captain John Smith exclaimed about the abundance of grapes growing in the trees and incorrectly predicted there would be unlimited winegrowing on the coast of the new continent. The Duffelers were the first after some 375 years to successfully plant the vinifera and make a quality wine in this heretofore inhospitable climate .

Virginia’s wine industry took root in the 1990s, and today the Commonwealth houses more than 300 wineries. The Williamsburg Winery remains at the forefront of that storied history that continues to thicken. The winery was instrumental in spearheading the Commonwealth’s eighth American Viticultural Area (AVA) in 2021. The eighth AVA, named for the Virginia Peninsula validates the unique terroir and growing conditions found there. The Williamsburg Winery is the largest winery in the Virginia Peninsula AVA, which contains seven others.

With over 4,000 acres of grapes that span the state, Virginia ranks among the 10 largest wine producers in the nation but as far as historical perspective, the Commonwealth is No. 1 as the birthplace of wine.

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Williamsburg Winery’s 2019 Petit Verdot Reserve Achieves a Coveted Spot in 2023 Virginia Governor’s Cup® Case

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 21:35:00 GMT

Williamsburg, Virginia — Cheers to the Williamsburg’s Winery’s 2019 Petit Verdot Reserve!

This full-bodied red wine with dark fruit flavors and layers of dark chocolate and vanilla earned a coveted spot in the 2023 Virginia Governor’s Cup® Case, announced Thursday at a gala in Richmond.

The Virginia Governor’s Cup® is among the most stringent competitions in the United States, hosted by the Virginia Wineries Association in partnership with the Virginia Wine Board and the Virginia Vineyards Association. In 2023, world-class judges sampled 614 of the best Virginia wines, awarding 142 Gold Medals, with the top 12 meriting selection to the Virginia Governor’s Cup® Case.

“We’re doing very well in Virginia with Petit Verdot,” said Williamsburg Winery Founder Patrick Duffeler. “As Petit Verdot is a signature varietal in Virginia, this honor is very gratifying to our operation.”

Judging was led by Director Jay Youmans, one of 51 Masters of Wine in the United States, who has overseen the competition for 10 years. All wines submitted must be made from 100% Virginia fruit.

Petit Verdot, a late-ripening Bordeaux varietal, is one of the most competitive categories in the competition that showcases Virginia’s terroir. Virginia Wine notes, “traditionally used as a blending grape in Bordeaux, Petit Verdot has come into its own as a star varietal in Virginia.”

As of 2019, there were nearly 300 acres dedicated to Petit Verdot throughout the Commonwealth, making it the third most planted varietal in Virginia behind Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc. In 2008, only 80 acres of Petit Verdot were planted in the state.

The 2019 Petit Verdot Reserve includes 65% of Petit Verdot grown at Wessex Hundred, the 400-acre farm that houses the Williamsburg Winery. Petit Verdot thrives at Wessex Hundred that is part of the Virginia Peninsula American Viticultural Area (AVA), distinguished by its subtropical climate, extended growing season and maritime features.

The remaining 35% of the grapes for the Petit Verdot come from growing partner Mount Juliet Farm in Crozet, Virginia.

The 2019 vintage stems from a near-perfect growing season that started with a mild winter that rolled into an early spring, leading to excellent fruit set and ultimately, a bountiful crop. A relatively mild summer that year followed by a warm autumn with cool nights and minimal rainfall the month before harvest were invaluable for maturing grapes.

“I believe the 2019 vintage to be the best I have experienced in Virginia for my tenure here,” said Matthew Meyer, winemaker at the Williamsburg Winery since 2002.

In his tasting notes, Meyer writes, “initially there are dates, figs and plums that give way to blueberry, dark cherry and blackberry. Next to the dark chocolate covered fruits is a lovely floral and fresh herb nuance. The oak comes through just enough to balance out the bold fruits. The tannins are firm yet approachable. Together, these attributes create a finish that is expressive, bold and well-integrated.”

The Williamsburg Winery’s decorated history in the annual competition includes winning the Governor’s Cup in 1989 and 2014. In 2022, the Williamsburg Winery earned a trifecta, awarded three Gold Medals for its 2019 Petit Manseng, 2017 Virginia Trianon and 2019 Wessex Hundred Petit Verdot — all signature varietals.

The Williamsburg Winery planted its first grapes and sold its first bottle of wine in 1987, back when only a few wineries existed in Virginia. It planted its first cluster of Petit Verdot in 2005. Today, wine is a burgeoning industry in the Commonwealth that is home to more than 300 wineries.

Petit Verdot pairs well with lamb, steak, rich sauces, barbecue and strong cheeses.

The 2019 Petit Verdot Reserve can be purchased for $49 at the Williamsburg Winery’s retail shop.

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5 Musts to Add to Your Williamsburg Winery To-Do List

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 21:24:00 GMT

Whether you spend a few hours or stay overnight, the Williamsburg Winery located among more than 400 acres of green space on the Wessex Hundred Farm offers a wonderful respite from the stresses of everyday life.

Here are 5 must to-dos to help you enjoy life:

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A Wine Worthy of Reflection: The 2017 Malbec

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 16:18:00 GMT

What’s called the Reflective Project showcases the Williamsburg Winery’s ability to embrace an entirely different style of winemaking a hemisphere away. On several levels, this distinctive vintage along with the 2018 Malbec celebrate collaboration, starting literally with two varying grapes an ocean apart.

These newly released reds blend the Malbec varietal from Argentina with Virginia’s most prominent grape, Petit Verdot.

Per the label, “Like the tango, this wine is sensual and intimate offering soft, yet full bodied aromatics and texture. Like the two dancers, there must be balance and finesse just as there is with the Reflective Malbec.”

The new-look packaging reflects the vibrant nature of the wine and incorporates Argentinean culture while alluding to the literal and figurative dance required to craft this limited production Malbec.

The story behind this wine dates back more than a decade when Williamsburg Winery winemaker Matthew Meyer was at the London International Wine Fair. The two were in conversation about the Williamsburg Winery experimenting with a new block of Malbec in its vineyards. Matthew grew intrigued after hearing writer Steven Spurrier of Decanter Magazine praise the new Argentine wine made with Malbec named Apogeo as the most elegant he had tasted. The wine was made at Gerardo Cartellone’s A16 Bodega, a boutique winery near Mendoza, the wine capital of Argentina.

What started as an investigation to not only taste but learn more about Apogeo blossomed into a friendship among Meyer and his wife, Elena Barber, and Williamsburg Winery Founder Patrick Duffeler and his wife, Francoise.

The Duffelers hosted Cartellone at Wedmore Place, sharing a bottle of Apogeo. A visit to the Argentine winery followed for all four where it was decided that a limited edition of Malbec wines would be shipped to the Williamsburg Winery for retail sale.

During that visit, Cartellone surprised his guests following a traditional “asado” or authentic Argentinian barbecue. Per Patrick’s blog entry: “For dessert, Mr. Cartellone took us for a short walk and surprised us with the fact that he had named a couple rows of his Malbec vineyard in the name of Matthew and Elena as well as in Francoise’s and mine.”

Meyer dreamed of making a wine in Mendoza, the start of the “Reflective Project” between the Williamsburg Winery and A16. Every spring in Virginia, which is fall in Argentina, Meyer flies to Mendoza to taste and blend that year’s harvest and help with bottling previous vintages.

The 2015 and 2016 vintages are straight Malbec, but the 2017 and 2018 Reflective Malbec are unique thanks to the addition of Petit Verdot, which, in Meyer’s words, “makes this Malbec more unique and individual than the others.”

The 2017 Malbec is available to ship in Virginia only. Approximately 350 cases are available; order today . A 3-pack special is also available .

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A Message From the Founder: Cheers to 2022!

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 15:48:00 GMT

My warmest holiday greetings to you and your family as we bring 2022 to a close.

It has been a special year at the Williamsburg Winery in that it was 40 years ago that my late wife, Peggy, and I first laid eyes on this farm that we later named Wessex Hundred. Back in 1982, we met with plenty of strange looks when we shared our vision of growing grapes and making quality wine in the Commonwealth. Yet the following year, we purchased the farm, planted the first grapes in 1985 and celebrated our first harvest in 1987. We released our first wine, Governor’s White, in 1988 and won our first major award in 1989, the Virginia Governor’s Cup.

Those pioneer days gave way to growth in every aspect of our business. We added a restaurant in 1996, the Gabriel Archer Tavern, and later event space in Wessex Hall, built in 2000 and renovated Westbury Hall in 2016. Wedmore Place, our European-style inn, was completed by 2007. Earlier this summer, the Tavern earned recognition from USA Today as the third best restaurant associated with a winery in the nation.

Our wines have gone from achieving statewide recognition to national distinction. For the first time this year, three of our signature varietals, the 2019 Petit Manseng, the 2017 Virginia Trianon and the 2019 Wessex Hundred Petit Verdot, achieved a trifecta of three Gold Medals in the 2022 Virginia Governor’s Cup. Additionally, this past year, our 2019 Petit Verdot Reserve, the 2021 Petite Fleur and the 2019 Merlot Reserve each was rated at 90 points or above.

Today more than 80,000 people visit the Williamsburg Winery annually. My wife, Francoise, and I enjoy greeting as many guests as we can, though, admittedly, it gives me great joy to observe our patrons experiencing time together. It’s a treat to sit near the Duck Pond or inside the 1619 Pavilion. We’ve also enhanced the Susan B. Constant Tasting Room. Earlier this year, we established the Art at Wessex Hundred series in collaboration with a local artists group, folks I call The Art People. A rotating series of paintings from local artists reflecting some aspect of the winery has transformed our tasting room into a mini gallery.

It’s heartening to be able to provide such a healthy retreat for so many visitors and repeat visitors.

We will continue doing things “the right way,” or better said “the good way,” in 2023. We’ll open more walking trails, including a mile and a half nature trek around Pate’s Creek and invite you to the Black Forest, my favorite spot on the farm. We’re researching new ways to improve our soil, which in turn will benefit the grapes that go into our wine. We will grow our wine club with new programs and offerings.

Speaking of new, you might have already noticed several unfamiliar faces at the winery. They all bring a new energy, enthusiasm and appreciation of Wessex Hundred. Make sure to introduce yourself if you haven’t already.

Many of you know that in addition to the farm, I celebrated my own milestone this year, turning 80 years young earlier this month. Whenever you reach a round number, you’re asked a lot of questions about superlatives in your life. When prodded about what makes me happiest, I couldn’t help but return to a photo Francoise snapped in the Black Forest. I refer to myself as “the dwarf” in it, and that’s how I appear, standing beneath a canopy of towering 100 foot tall loblolly pine. That picture is symbolic of one of the lessons that keeps me humble. We’re a small part of this universe, a speck in nature and at her mercy. I remain in awe of what we can learn from the trees that I cherish at Wessex Hundred or in the real Black Forest in Germany.

Hold all that is dear to you close this holiday season. We look forward to welcoming you here anytime. Linger over lunch or dinner or stay overnight at Wedmore Place. Remember this no matter what you do: Enjoy life!

Williamsburg Winery Founder,

Patrick G. Duffeler

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Visit the Williamsburg Winery Year-round to Celebrate the Uniqueness of the Seasons

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 21:51:00 GMT

As the weather changes, so does the Williamsburg Winery. Visit year-round to experience the seasons at the lovely Wessex Hundred Farm.

Start this month by booking the Romantic Winter Escape Package at Wedmore Place. The package includes a one-night stay in a Tradition Room, where an enticing wood-burning fireplace invites you to relax with a glass of wine before turning in for the night on a king-sized bed with luxury linens. You’ll be greeted with an artisanal cheese and charcuterie board upon arrival followed by a wine flight for two. Wake up to a European-style continental breakfast and head for Colonial Williamsburg, where the holidays lights are brilliant. The package includes ice skating tickets for two at the Liberty Ice Pavilion and Warm Settlers’ Spiced Wine for Two at the Merchants Square Tasting Room and Wine Bar.

If you’re planning for Valentine’s Day, the Romance of Wessex Hundred Package offers a perfect couple’s retreat. His and her massages with aromatherapy, a bottle of bubbly paired with chocolate covered strawberries and a wine flight are part of the trimmings for a two-night stay in one of the Tradition Rooms.

Spring is a beautiful time to visit Wessex Hundred, with blooms on the vines signaling the start of a new season. Temperatures are typically so pleasant this time of year that it’s inviting to linger over wine along the Duck Pond or relax with a flight in the 1619 Pavilion that overlooks the budding vineyards. The Historical Series Package at Wedmore Place offers a two-night stay in a Tradition Room, a picnic basket from the Gabriel Archer Tavern to enjoy anywhere on the property, a wine flight for two, a bottle of Governor’s White and two tickets to both the Jamestown Settlement Museum and Colonial Williamsburg.

The warm weather that extends into summer reminds visitors to the Williamsburg Winery that Wessex Hundred is a working farm. Vinifera grapes like Petit Verdot, Merlot and Albariño have thrived here along with newcomers like Tannat and Muscat. Visitors can spy more than 50 acres of vineyard that is coupled with hundreds of acres of green space. All of it makes for a magnificent walk when the temperatures cooperate.

Though summer days can be humid in southeastern Virginia, nights are typically cool enough to enjoy live music at the 1619 Pavilion with an upper deck that overlooks the Albariño and Petit Verdot vineyards. Longer days mean longer hours at the winery. Air conditioning inside the Gabriel Archer Tavern and the wisteria terrace outdoors help you to remain cool on the warmest days.

The winery’s Rosé that is so refreshing in spring and summer can also be enjoyed outdoors at the Merchant Square Wine Bar. Rechange from a day of shopping with a glass or flight.

The fall weather is a welcome respite from the warm temperatures, with the farm preparing for the harvest season, the busiest time at the winery, when ripening grapes are pulled from the vines and prepared for fermentation. Check the winery’s Special Events page to reserve your space for dinners in the vineyards offered during fall. October is Virginia Wine Month. Mark the occasion with a trip to the Williamsburg Winery where you can experience a tasting in Susan B. Constant Hall, which also showcases art for sale from local artists. Just like the winery, the art changes with the seasons.

No matter the time of year, remember to stop by the retail shop before you leave for home for a souvenir to help you “enjoy life” there just as you did while visiting the winery.

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Find Your Way to Wessex Hundred

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 16:16:00 GMT

How to find us wherever you are . . .

We can’t wait to welcome you to the Williamsburg Winery located at 5800 Wessex Hundred in Williamsburg, Virginia. We’re just 3 minutes from Colonial Williamsburg, though once you turn into our working farm we call Wessex Hundred, you’ll feel as if you’ve been whisked away to a European village.

Once you’re on the grounds, everything is a short walk or ask us about renting bikes for the duration of your stay.

Come for lunch, dinner, a tour and tasting or reserve accommodations overnight at our lovely inn, Wedmore Place.

It’s easy to find us. We’re just . . .

3 miles from Colonial Williamsburg

23 miles from Newport News

48 miles from Norfolk

54 miles from Richmond

60 miles from Virginia Beach

82 miles from Cape Charles

107 miles from Fredericksburg

124 miles from Charlottesville

156 miles from Washington, D.C.

200 miles from Baltimore

240 miles from Roanoke

300 miles from Philadelphia

387 miles from New York City

446 miles from Charleston, South Carolina

If you’re driving . . .

From Norfolk/Virginia Beach and all points east

Follow I-264 W to I-64 W. Take exit 242A and merge onto VA-199 W. Drive 4.8 miles and turn left onto Brookwood Drive. In 492 feet, turn left onto Lake Powell Road. Follow for 0.7 miles and turn left onto Wessex Hundred.

From Richmond

Follow I-64 East to exit 234 for VA-199 E/State Road 646 toward Lightfoot. Continue on VA-199/

Humelsine Parkway E for 10 miles. Turn right onto Brookwood Drive, and in 446 feet, turn left onto Lake Powell Road. Follow for 0.7 miles and turn left onto Wessex Hundred.

From Charlottesville

Get on I-64 E and follow directions from Richmond.

From Roanoke

Get on I-81 N/US 220 N toward Lexington. Travel approximately 77 miles to exit 221 toward Richmond for I-64 E. Follow directions from Richmond.

From Fredericksburg

Get on I-95 S toward Richmond. Drive approximately 44 miles to exit 84A on the left to merge onto I-295 S toward Rocky Mount/Richmond. Follow for 14.8 miles and use the right two lanes to take exit 28A to merge onto I-64 E toward Norfolk. Follow directions from Richmond.

From Washington, D.C. and all points north

Get on I-95 South and continue approximately 96 miles exit 84A on the left to merge onto I-295 S toward Rocky Mount/Richmond. Follow directions from Richmond.

If you’re flying, we’re . . .

21 miles from the Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport

48 miles from the Richmond International Airport

56 miles from the Norfolk International Airport

If you’re traveling by train . . .

Amtrak has a Williamsburg stop located at 468 N. Boundary St. The winery is 4.4 miles away. Head west toward Armistead Avenue, and turn left onto Armistead Avenue. Follow 0.3 miles and turn left onto Richmond Road. Make an immediate right onto Jamestown Road and follow 1.8 miles. Turn left onto VA-199 E. Turn right at the 1 ^st cross street onto Brookwood Drive and in 446 feet, turn left onto Lake Powell Road. After 0.7 miles, turn into Wessex Hundred.

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Holiday Bundles Perfect for the Wine Lover on Your List

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 17:38:00 GMT

Dreaming of a wine Christmas? Wine makes a wonderful holiday gift, and the Williamsburg Winery offers several special holiday bundles to match the taste of the recipients on your list. Or buy a bundle for yourself to serve during holiday gatherings.

Find your favorite among our holiday collection:

2017 & 2019 6-Pack : Six bottles of our finest reserve reds, from both the 2017 and 2019 vintages. They are:

1 bottle 2017 Gabriel Archer Reserve

1 bottle 2019 Gabriel Archer Reserve

1 bottle 2017 Trianon

1 bottle 2019 Trianon

1 bottle 2017 Adagio

1 bottle 2019 Adagio

I’m Dreaming of a White Wine Christmas : Three distinct white wines expressing a wide-range of styles. Perfect for the white wine lover on your list. In the 3-pack:

1 bottle 2019 Virginia Petit Manseng

1 bottle 2021 Stainless Steel Chardonnay

1 bottle 2019 Wessex Hundred Viognier

90+ Points 3-Pack : The highly rated collection features three wines with ratings of 90+ points from the world’s most prestigious wine critics. They are:

1 bottle 2019 Virginia Petit Manseng (94 points, Platinum Award)

1 bottle 2019 Petit Verdot Reserve (90 points)

1 bottle 2017 Adagio (91 points)

Collectors 3-Pack : These age-worthy, award-winning wines will delight the wine enthusiast in your life. In the 3-pack:

1 bottle 2019 Adagio

1 bottle 2019 Gabriel Archer Reserve

1 bottle 2019 Merlot Reserve

Explore Virginia 6-Pack : Popular varietals every Virginia Wine enthusiast needs to have in their wine rack. In the 6-pack:

1 bottle 2020 Virginia Petit Verdot

1 bottle 2020 Virginia Cabernet Franc

1 bottle 2020 Virginia Merlot

1 bottle 2019 Virginia Petit Manseng

1 bottle 2021 Stainless Steel Fermented Chardonnay

1 bottle 2019 Wessex Hundred Viognier

Estate-Grown AVA 3-Pack : A collection of wines grown 100% here on our Wessex Hundred estate vineyard in the Virginia Peninsula AVA, the newest AVA in the Commonwealth. In the 3-pack:

1 bottle 2019 Wessex Hundred Chardonnay

1 bottle 2019 Wessex Hundred Viognier

1 bottle 2020 Wessex Hundred Petit Verdot

A Touch of Sweetness Bundle : A set of wines perfect for those who prefer their wines with a little bit of sweetness. The 3-pack is:

1 bottle 2021 Governor’s White

1 bottle 2021 Semi-Dry Rosé

1 bottle 2021 Petite Fleur

All of the bundles can be shipped or picked up at the retail shop. If you’re not sure what to pick, a Williamsburg Winery gift card makes a wonderful stocking stuffer. Order online or call our retail shop at 757-229-0999, option 8.

Cheers to the holidays!

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App Suggestions to Enhance Your Outdoor Experience at Wessex Hundred

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 22:18:00 GMT

When you visit the Williamsburg Winery at Wessex Hundred, you will be immersed in more than good wine.

You’ll be surrounded by nature, a working farm both picturesque and serene where the air is fresh. It’s easy to relax when you take time to inhale and experience the tranquility of so much lush green space.

Many will choose to put their smartphone away and simply enjoy without the interruption of technology.

Others might be tempted to learn more about the landscape around them. If that’s the case, we offer a list of helpful apps to enrich your experience.

Audubon Bird Guide helps identify the birds around you. Enter data you observe, and Bird ID will narrow down a list of possible matches for your location in real time. You can also submit images of birds you spot to Ebird mobile . Identify butterflies, bugs or anything else intriguing by using Fieldguide .

Plantsnap can identify plants, flowers, succulents and mushrooms in seconds with a click of a button on your mobile device. Search by leaf or needle at MyNature Tree Guide .

Trees nourish the soul, and Williamsburg Winery founder Patrick Duffeler is as passionate about caring for the thousands of trees at Wessex Hundred as he is about growing quality grapes. He planted 62,000 trees on the property over the years, which includes 40 acres of woods and 250 acres put into conservation. Identitree asks a series of questions to get you started in your tree identity quest. Many are oaks and loblollies.

You can log the hours you spend outdoors using NatureDose , as ideally your time at Wessex Hundred will encourage you to spend more hours in outside away from urban stresses.

Find meditations, soundscapes and audio-guided experiences based on the natural world at Roots app . During dusk, iPhone users can point their iPhone toward the sky to find stars and constellations using SkyVew Lite .

You’ll find “The Art and Science of Forest Bathing” in Duffeler’s personal library. He’s drawn to how trees communicate with us with their root systems and how the immune system strengthens by spending time among trees. The app Shinrin-yoku – Forest Bathing is one to download upon leaving the winery to recreate all the good things that happen when you become one with your natural surroundings.

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Williamsburg Winery Donates to Riverside Foundation to Support Breast Cancer Patients

Sat, 03 Sep 2022 16:30:00 GMT

The Williamsburg Winery donated $2,088 to the Riverside Foundation late last month to help support preventative screenings and support services for breast cancer patients and their families.

The winery teamed with the Riverside Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Riverside Health System, to create a special label for a limited release of its 2020 Rose. All 348 bottles sold with a portion of the proceeds amounting to $2,088. This is the second consecutive year for the fundraiser, which raised $2,016 last year.

“We are delighted to again support the Riverside Foundation for a cause that touches the lives of so many people who are important to us,” said Patrick Duffeler, founder of the Williamsburg Winery. “We share Riverside’s commitment to the overall health and wellness of our community members.”

Duffeler presented the check to Kristen Witt, Chief Philanthropy Officer with the Riverside Foundation , at the Gabriel Archer Tavern. “We appreciate the Williamsburg Winery helping us fulfill our mission of caring for others as we would care for those we love,” Witt said. “We are grateful for the continued support that makes a difference to those who turn to us for hope and healing.”

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Susan B. Constant Tasting Room Celebrates a Bountiful Harvest in New Art Exhibition

Sat, 03 Sep 2022 13:02:00 GMT

The walls of the Susan B. Constant Tasting Room at the Williamsburg Winery reflect the approach of fall and the harvesting season with a new art exhibit that is part of the ongoing Art at Wessex Hundred series.

“Bountiful Harvest” opened Sept. 1 with art on view and for sale until Nov. 30. Visitors are encouraged to browse and purchase the art while enjoying a flight of wine and snacks at the tasting room adjacent to the retail shop.

A “Meet the Artists” after-hours wine and music social is scheduled for Sept. 22 from 6 until 8 p.m.

The Susan Constant Hall Tasting Room is open for wine flights Sunday-Thursday from noon-5:30 p.m., Fridays from noon-6:30 p.m., and Saturdays from 11:00 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Five tasting flight options are available with four different wines apiece. Everyone in the party will receive a souvenir wine glass with the Williamsburg Winery logo as a memento.

The art exhibition showcases the work of 30 local artists working in various media and celebrating a facet of the fall and busy harvest season at the Williamsburg Winery. Art at Wessex Hundred began last spring after Williamsburg Winery founder and art enthusiast Patrick Duffeler coordinated with local artist Mary McCormick and three other volunteers to organize the concept of a rotating exhibit every quarter based on themes of the season as they relate to wine.

Bountiful Harvest replaces the inaugural exhibit in the series titled “New Beginnings.”

The featured artists toured and snapped reference photos of the idyllic surroundings that make up the 400-acre Wessex Hundred farm that is home to the winery, event venues Wessex and Westbury halls, the 1619 Pavilion, the Gabriel Archer Tavern and onsite hotel Wedmore Place.

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A Reflection on Forty Years at Wessex Hundred

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 17:02:00 GMT

When Patrick Duffeler drives past the crepe myrtles that line the Wessex Hundred entrance, parks his car and walks any part of the scenic property, he is simply at home. He and his wife, Francoise, live on the farm, where he can walk to the winery and the Gabriel Archer Tavern, greeting customers, many of whom he has known for years. Patrick regularly joins Francoise tending to the details at Wedmore Place, the winery’s onsite hotel, and he is in and out of Wessex and Westbury Halls multiple times a day. His own Black Forest calls him most every weekend.

Forty years ago, none of this was here. Back in the early 1980s, these grounds contained an abandoned farm with two dilapidated houses and a number of downed trees from a recent hurricanes. Vines as thick as a muscular man’s forearm, cypresses with roots sticking out in the brackish water and heaps of trash from junked cars to leftover farming chemicals would have daunted the most ambitious of entrepreneurs.

None of it fazed Patrick, who shared a vision with his then wife, Peggy, whom he lost in 2004. While close friends and family questioned their enthusiasm for opening a winery in southeastern Virginia, Patrick and Peggy went to work creating a European village smack in the middle of Williamsburg.

In reflection, Patrick says, “It turned out better than I imagined.”

Patrick documented the early years of the farm in the winery’s “ Inside the Winery ” blog and early drawings and photos from that period chronicle its progression.

His memory remains sharp for names and dates, and he likes to draw with pencil to complement the winery’s oral history he knows backward and forward.

Standing just outside the Gabriel Archer Tavern, Patrick returns for a moment to 1982. “I can see the tractors driving through there,” he says, pointing to two oversized Tavern windows and its entrance. The tractor shed with quarters for the winery’s first viticulturist was transformed into a restaurant.

Patrick’s familiarity with every aspect of the winery is unique. Every inch of ground has his footprint. The cover of the most recent annual report shows him beneath a towering tree in the Black Forest, a seemingly endless amount of green space reminiscent of something from Grimm’s fairytales. To anyone else, it would be hard to find the exact tree in that image amid the thousands that are planted close to one another, a seemingly endless canopy. Patrick pulls his golf cart right up to it as if a sign marked its presence.

In the last 40 years, Patrick has been far more than the average founder of a business. He’s an environmentalist committed to conservation and has dedicated more than 200 acres toward that end. He calls himself “a reasonable mason and wood craftsman,” who built the doors to Wessex Hall and Wedmore Place. He is a historian with curiosity, purposeful in his naming of everything related to the winery, starting with the farm. Wessex Hundred is named in part for Peggy’s Angle-Saxon heritage as she was American, and pays homage to Patrick of Saxon, as he was born in Belgium of a family mostly Germanic in heritage. The use of “Hundred” dates back to the Colonial era to describe parcels of land sufficient to support 100 families.

Patrick has been a grounds man, taming many of the vines himself while donned in military fatigues, a helmet and tool belt. He’s been a curator, collecting the antiques, tapestries, art work and period pieces displayed throughout the winery’s buildings. He enjoys the marketing and financial side of the business in addition to every aspect that leads to growing grapes, nurturing them and harvesting them to produce a quality wine.

It’s been four decades of milestones. Patrick and Peggy first laid eyes on this farm in January 1982, one of the 52 estates they evaluated for their ambitious venture. They purchased it in 1983 and opened the winery in 1985. The first harvest was celebrated in 1987 and the first wine, Governor’s White, launched in February 1988. The winery’s Chardonnay achieved the Governor’s Cup in 1989. Westbury Hall was built in 2001 and was renovated in 2016. Larger Wessex Hall dates back to 2000. Wedmore Place was completed by 2007.

Credit Wessex Hundred for putting Virginia wine on the map. Patrick appreciates the recognition, the awards and distinctions the winery has earned. But seeing people enjoy the grounds, whether for a once-in-a-lifetime event, such as a wedding on the lawn or connecting for casual conversation at the 1619 Pavilion, brings that smile. It’s one that lights up his entire face, an unmistakable twinkle in his eyes, when he extends a warm, welcoming hand.

But make no mistake. While Patrick savors what is, he very much has an eye on what could be, what should be, and if you know him, what will be.

“Lots of improvements to make,” he says, preparing for an afternoon meeting that will address many of them.

Indeed, 40 years of Wessex Hundred inspire him for 40 more.

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Unspoiled Nature Trail a Respite to Enjoy Nature’s Bounty

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 14:13:00 GMT

Patrick Duffeler’s passion for green space makes it only natural that among the 420 acres that is home to the Williamsburg Winery, visitors will find a nature trail far from the madding crowd.

The only unnatural part? The name. A sign on Jockey’s Neck Road welcomes all to the “Patrick G. Duffeler Nature Trail,” and no, the founder of Williamsburg’s most storied winery did not stake it there.

“I only call it the nature trail,” he said.

An aside — nothing at the winery bears Duffeler’s name. He’s preferred to honor English and American history in the purposeful naming of the buildings and rooms that make up what resembles a European village — for example, the Gabriel Archer Tavern , Wedmore Place , Wessex Hall , Westbury Hall and 1619 Pavilion to list a few.

The picturesque nature trail lies deep into the southside of the property, nestled into Duffeler’s own Black Forest, which contains many of the 62,000 trees he planted on the Wessex Hundred farm. That includes 37 acres of loblolly pines from a 1989 planting. All have grown to immense stature and an upward gaze at the canopy is breathtaking.

Duffeler likes to share a photo of himself “the drawf” underneath a massive oak tree that towers over him. His respect for nature and conservation ranks just as high as his dedication to the business of planting vineyards and making wine.

Back in the ’80s when the farm was purchased, Duffeler recalls debris and old cars piled up in many of the ravines that you’ll pass when walking along the nature trail.

“I used a back hoe to remove a ’57 Ford, which I gave away,” he said. “The last thing I had time to focus on was old cars.”

The nature trail follows the contour of three ravines, the middle one shorter than the others. The ravines merge and follow the path into an even stronger ravine. A walk along the unspoiled path of roughly a mile and a half offers a retreat from the noise that surrounds daily life. You might see a turtle, but you’ll definitely hear the birds and the sounds that stem from a gentle breeze and your own footsteps making their way forward.

Nearby Jockey’s Ridge leases the nature trail for its visitors to enjoy. The intent for the future is to keep the nature trail maintained as it should be. “In other words, green space,” Duffeler stressed. “There are many portions of it that are phenomenally beautiful.”

In his commitment to do things the right way, Duffeler designed the nature trail to prevent erosion. Vibrant fern grown along the nature trail represent another point of pride. These unique land plants only grow in outstanding soil. “You can’t find fern on eroded or damaged soil,” Duffeler said.

Healthy soil is essential for producing high-quality grapes, the kind that bear the best fruit that go into the wines that ultimately bear the name of the Williamsburg Winery.

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Williamsburg Winery’s Gabriel Archer Tavern Earns National Distinction from USA TODAY

Sat, 13 Aug 2022 12:59:00 GMT

The Gabriel Archer Tavern at the Williamsburg Winery has been recognized as one of the best winery restaurants in the nation, according to USA TODAY.

The Tavern was selected as part of the 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards for 2022 . A panel of travel experts and 10Best editors originally came up with a list of 20 restaurants that was pared down to 10 finalists based on popular vote.

Williamsburg Winery founder Patrick Duffeler appreciates the recognition, noting, “It speaks to the quality of the service. It speaks to the quality of the food, and it speaks to the ambiance at the Gabriel Archer Tavern.”

The winery’s French-inspired eatery serves lunch on weekdays and Saturdays, dinner on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday brunch. The farm-to-table creations on the menu include Big Island Aquaculture Oysters, a Wessex Hundred Spinach Salad and the popular Turkey & Brie Sandwich, distinctive thanks to the Lingonberry preserves and house-roasted turkey brined for a week. Dinner main courses range from a Summer Seafood Pasta to Herb Marinated Hanger Steak to Summer Street Corn Gnocchi. Virginia Peanut Pie is among several dessert options.

Guests can enjoy their meals indoors or outside underneath the canopy of wisteria that allows sun rays to peek through during the day. The Tavern also hosts several special wine dinners during the year.

The Tavern opened in 1996 with a small menu of tapas and a selection of wine. It expanded in 2004 with additional kitchen space and a vineyard room that brings the outdoors in. Originally the Tavern was a tractor shed that Duffeler had a hand in constructing in 1987. It housed equipment and an upstairs apartment was home to the winery’s first viticultural manager. It later became a bonding area before modifications were made to transform it into a restaurant.

The Tavern is named for Archer, one of Jamestown’s most significant early leaders and co-captain of the Godspeed, the lead ship among three vessels that brought the men who founded the first permanent settlement in the New World. Archer envisioned calling the early settlement Archer’s Hope with a location at the mouth of College Creek on land that the winery occupies today. He was overruled by Capt. John Smith who chose Jamestown Island. Inspired by Archer, Duffeler named the restaurant in his honor and called the winery’s inaugural reserve wine the Gabriel Archer Reserve. Make reservations at the Gabriel Archer Tavern by calling 757-564-8869 or online at opentable.com/gabriel-archer-tavern .

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Mom and Daughter Both Call the Williamsburg Winery Home

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 15:12:00 GMT

Deby Kidney waits for those “aha” moments. As the Williamsburg Winery’s Retail and Tasting Room Manager , she finds it fun to introduce new wine to guests.

“I love to see their faces light up,” she said. “I try to give them some kind of interesting fact about the wine and make it relatable to them without talking over their heads.”

For most of her life, Kidney connected with people in another novel way. She traveled the world as a flute player and vocalist with the United States Army military bands. Her audience included heads of state and U.S. presidents, as well as occasions such as the 2002 Winter Olympics, the 50 ^th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and a multitude of military ceremonies. She performed in Korea, Myanmar, Thailand, Hawaii, the Maldives, and numerous other countries. Kidney retired from the Army as a Sergeant First Class after 22 years of military service.

“I had the best job in the military,” Kidney said. “You can’t beat being able to work as a professional musician, with a regular paycheck and work daily in such a creative field.”

A pianist at age 7, Kidney is the daughter of two musicians. She knew from watching her band director father at band camp that she wanted to play flute. She earned a bachelor’s in Music Performance from Winthrop University.

After military retirement in 2002, Kidney transitioned into retail management and finally in wine. She’s a former Busch Gardens wine ambassador, who started her wine career as part of an in-home wine tasting business. Kidney has worked at the Williamsburg Winery for the last five years, pinching herself when she passes the picturesque crepe myrtles that line the property entrance.

“My drive in to the winery is beautiful; I feel lucky to work here,” Kidney said. “I always recommend that our visitors enjoy their tastings on our 1619 Wine Pavilion because the view is so pretty.”

The 1619 Pavilion is among the prettiest spots on the Wessex Hundred farm as its upper deck offers a stunning view of the Albariño and Petit Verdot vineyards. It’s named for the edict from the House of Burgesses that required colonists to grow grapes and make wine under The Acte 12 of 1619.

Seven months into her job at the winery, her daughter, Erin Sullins, joined her. Sullins started first at the Merchants Square Wine Bar and has worked in virtually every department at the winery. Currently the Wine Club Manager, she handles one of the largest clubs in Virginia with more than 1500 members.

“I absolutely love working with my mom,” Sullins said.

Mother and daughter collaborate on decisions for wine club tastings, direct shipping and promotions for members and customers.

Sullins also played flute and cherishes the memory of performing a duet of “Shepherds, Awake” with her mother at her grandparents’ church. She and her mom often pair up for a weekend of wine tasting. “Mom says I have a good nose and palate for wine,” she said. “I’ve learned that food pairings affect wine flavor so much.”

Sullins favors the winery’s Petit Verdot. If Kidney had to pick one favorite, it would be the Merlot Reserve.

Both bring the wine shop talk home — dinner together can typically lead to more discussion about wine.

“We both love what we do,” Kidney said. “It’s great to work with customers and my team here, and to teach people about wine and what happens at the winery. To be able to share it with my daughter is a very special treat.”

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Celebrating the Roots of Virginia Wine with a Toast to Acte 12

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 16:00:00 GMT

The decision to plant vineyards and start a winery at Wessex Hundred was met with plenty of skepticism back in the ’80s when Patrick and Peggy Duffeler started their new life in Virginia.

Yet growing grapes in the Commonwealth dates back more than 400 years with the passage of Acte 12 by the House of Burgesses in 1619, which required every landowner to plant 10 grapevines in the name of King James. As a steward of Virginia wine history, Patrick Duffeler is passionate about preserving and promoting that pioneering spirit that is often forgotten with so much emphasis reserved for Thomas Jefferson’s early attempts to grow grapes at Monticello.

While Jefferson is the most beloved oenophile, the roots of Virginia wine date back well before his time when the first legislative assembly of the New World passed Acte 12. England’s cold and wet climate made grape growing impractical there. But the emergence of the first English settlement in the New World coupled with Brits’ ongoing war with traditional wine sources France and Spain, prompted the new law.

Of course, those attempts at creating a new avenue for wine were futile as were Jefferson’s efforts nearly 200 years later.

While the first grapes were planted in 1609 on the land that makes up Wessex Hundred today, it took until 1985, the year the Williamsburg Winery planted its first trial vineyard, for Virginia to be recognized for its potential to become a significant grape growing region.

That brings us to the Williamsburg Winery’s Acte 12 Chardonnay.

This wine, aged in both stainless steel and oak, is packed with layers of plum, red apples, strawberry, cherry, rhubarb, a layer of creamy vanilla and a touch of lemon curd.

Each nuanced flavor beautifully balances on the palate with a bright and yet creamy finish that lingers for a while.

Order today online from the retail shop or on a seasonable day, enjoy a bottle sitting in the 1619 Pavilion, which opened in 2019 to mark the 400 ^th anniversary of Acte 12.

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Mona Lisa’s Toast to the Williamsburg Winery

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 23:22:00 GMT

Whether the real Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre remains a subject of debate 500 years after Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of one of the most recognizable faces in the world.

Williamsburg Winery founder Patrick Duffeler is ready to settle the matter once and for all. The Mona Lisa hangs inside the Williamsburg Winery, and you’ll never believe it. She’s sipping a glass of wine from a Williamsburg Winery goblet.

A spotlight shines on the intriguing painting that hangs in Wessex Hall.

Duffeler won’t disclose any details about the artist, except for her infectious sense of humor. Like a lot about the painting, that remains secret.

More than 500 years after it was painted, the Mona Lisa remains among the most iconic pieces of Western art, and many aren’t convinced it was actually Leonardo da Vinci who painted it. One theory suggests it was the work of one of his master apprentices, Francesco Melzi, while others believe da Vinci’s rumored lover, Andrea Salaì, is the artist behind the Mona Lisa. While initially Salaì’s Mona Lisa was thought to be a pure copy, by using chemical analysis and infrared imaging, experts discovered a background landscape similar to the original Mona Lisa.

History suggests the master worked alongside his pupils painting the Mona Lisa, believed to be Lisa Gherardini, wife of the Florentine cloth merchant Francesco del Giocondo.

Yet the larger debate centers around her bewitching smile.

“What’s special about the Mona Lisa is the lack of assurance people have about what her thoughts are,” Duffeler says. “They don’t really know what’s she’s thinking.”

Or in this case why she’s drinking the winery’s Raspberry Merlot, the popular dessert wine that showcases the brightness of raspberries with the subtle nuances of Merlot. Did she just enjoy dinner at the Gabriel Archer Tavern? Or did a springtime stroll among the peaceful trees that surround the Wessex Hundred farm put her in the mood for the sweet red wine?

“I would be guessing like everybody else who interprets paintings,” Duffeler says with a playful shrug before adding, “We might not be as popular as the Louvre. But we have a real Mona Lisa.” Come enjoy the painting along with fresh air and the best of Virginia wine at the Williamsburg Winery.

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Leave the Magic to Leah Robertson at Your Next Celebration

Sun, 10 Jul 2022 16:11:00 GMT

Engagements. Weddings. Birthday parties. Anniversaries. Galas.

Leah Robertson makes sure those milestones are magical when celebrated at the Williamsburg Winery. The transplanted Floridian joined the winery four years ago as its Wedding Sales & Contract Manager.

“I get to witness those fun moments on a weekly basis,” says Robertson, whose “office” is often elegant Wessex Hall, understated Westbury Hall or the lovely lawn at Wessex Hundred. “It’s nice to be part of a small, family-owned business that’s not part of a large corporation. It’s a beautiful property.”

Robertson followed a far different path in college as a criminology major. She initially coordinated events for an inpatient/outpatient substance abuse program in Florida before relocating to Virginia. What appealed to her most was the logistical planning side of that job.

“I like juggling a lot of balls,” Robertson says. “You have to be one step ahead and problem solve in a pinch.”

Like the time everything was perfect about the wedding corsages, only one of the women in the party had a dress with material that wouldn’t allow for a pin.

“I found a spare rubber band and turned it into a wrist corsage,” Robertson says. “Things that no one else often thinks about come naturally to me. Weddings can be 15-hour days and at the end you’re exhausted but you’re so busy moving, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s fun.”

She strives to make brides feel relaxed throughout and reassures them that it’s OK to make the day their own in every sense. “I tell them, ‘It’s your wedding. It’s your day. If you want to serve mac and cheese on your day, go for it!’” Robertson says.

In her free time, Roberson and her husband are typically at swim meets as both of their daughters excel at competition.

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Don’t Forget the Wine When Planning Your Picnic

Sun, 22 May 2022 14:27:00 GMT

With spring in the air, it’s time to plan for a picnic.

Whatever’s in your basket, don’t forget to pack a bottle of wine from the Williamsburg Winery. Kenny Bumbaco, Vice President of Direct Wine Sales at the winery, offers some pairings suggestions for your afternoon outdoors.

If it’s sandwiches for lunch with a side of pasta or potato salad, include the Wessex Hundred Dry Rosé, a light and crisp selection with some freshness to it. “The Rosé works well with heavy creamy things like pasta salad and goes well with ham and turkey, too,” Bumbaco says.

If fried chicken is on your menu, you can’t forget the bubbly. Brut Rosé’s bouquet of strawberry, cherry and vanilla notes with a bright finish balances out the heartiness of the meal. “Having the carbonation in the Rosé really helps to cut through some of the richness of the fried chicken,” Bumbaco says.

The increasingly popular charcuterie board makes for a lighter picnic best accompanied by the Act 12 of 1619 Chardonnay. “It has these nice creamy notes that really complement the cheese well,” Bumbaco says. “Along with its old world charm, this wine has a fresh fruit aroma that will combine well with the charcuterie.”

Deviled eggs are another popular picnic option. With those, Bumbaco suggest Governor’s White, adding, “It’s a Riesling with a little bit of sweetness to it that brings out the tanginess of the eggs.”

We love our barbecue in southeastern Virginia. No matter how you cook it, you can’t go wrong pairing it with the Virginia Cabernet Franc. “Our Cab Franc is really light. You don’t want to have a really heavy wine enjoying a nice day outdoors,” Bumbaco says. “Our Cabernet Franc is a nice and light body wine, so it’s really a good answer for a picnic-style Red.”

If your picnic is simply to satisfy your sweet tooth, the rule in general is to pair it with a wine that is as equally sweet as the confection. Fruit salad is tasty with Governor’s White. If cookies or brownies are your choice, the Petit Fleur is an excellent accompaniment.

Rule of thumb: “If all else fails, stick to the Wessex Hundred Rosé,” Bumbaco suggests. Rosé is the classic outdoor wine. It’s fun. It’s also pink, and who doesn’t like pink at a picnic?

Remember to keep your wine chilled, particularly if your picnic blanket or table is in the sun.

Shop for your picnic wine at the Williamsburg Winery’s retail shop or online . Snap a picture during your outing and tag us on Instagram @williamsburgwinery.

Enjoy the good wine and the good weather, too!

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Rediscover the World’s Most Ancient Fermented Beverage at Silver Hand

Sun, 15 May 2022 14:56:00 GMT

This is another in a series of posts highlighting The Williamsburg Taste the Trail Package that offers guests at Wedmore Place an opportunity to explore multiple award-winning wine, craft beers and even mead.

Most guests who spend the night or the weekend at Wedmore Place prefer a certain style of wine, though many leave after finding a new favorite. Our guests can choose from among several spots at Wessex Hundred to enjoy a flight or a bottle of wine. On a seasonal day, the Duck Pond and the 1619 Wine Pavilion are perfect spots to relax or converse with friends over wine.

We invite anyone interested in trying mead to sign up for our Taste the Trail Package, which includes several Williamsburg Winery amenities along with tasting passes to three nearby craft breweries and Silver Hand Meadery .

Williamsburg’s only meadery opened in November 2015 after its founder and owner Glenn Lavender opted to turn a hobby into a career. His passion is for mead, which dates back to Ancient China in 7000 BC. Just as wine is characterized by unique grape varietals, mead is defined by the fermentable sugars found in honey. Mead is typically three ingredients — honey, water and yeast.

A tasting at Silver Hand Meadery starts with sampling several different honeys. This isn’t the honey found in most retail stores. It’s Bourbon Barrel-Aged Honey, Cinnamon Whipped Honey, Mesquite Honey, Raspberry Blossom Honey and so forth. Lavender is also a beekeeper; the meadery makes its own honey.

“For most of the folks who come in, it’s an educational experience, and we start by walking them through the various styles of honey,” Lavender said. “We find that we’re introducing mead to most guests. Those who come here from The Williamsburg Winery are perfect for this because we find they’re usually eager to experience what’s cool and unique, and they like the learning part, too.”

Patrons can choose from a variety of honeys in Silver Hand’s retail shop to take home.

From there, the tasting transitions to mead. Guests taste at least six and often 12 different kinds of mead. As the meads at Silver Hand are produced in extremely limited quantities, the flights come from reserve stock, test batches and specialty produced batches generally reserved for Insider Club members.

Guests usually choose to also experience what’s on tap. Silver Hand has plenty of indoor and outdoor seating with fire pits. While the meadery doesn’t sell food, pretzels and peanuts are available to snack on during mead tastings.

While guests can buy a Silver Hand Meadery glass, none of the mead is offered on a to-go basis unless they decide to become club members. Enjoy your mead on site and return to The Williamsburg Winery for dinner at the Gabriel Archer Tavern followed by a nightcap at Wedmore Place.

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Plan Your Day Visiting Williamsburg After a Good Night’s Rest at Wedmore Place

Thu, 05 May 2022 15:43:00 GMT

Spending the night at Wedmore Place is a marvelous retreat in itself, and often guests of the Williamsburg Winery hotel find the green space at Wessex Hundred so restorative, they rarely leave the grounds.

Sipping wine by the Duck Pond or enjoying a flight at the 1619 Pavilion are both respites on a seasonable day. Or linger inside the Gabriel Archer Tavern , where the Roasted Turkey Sandwich with Lingonberry Preserves is a classic.

Good food, great wine and healthy living on a farm that spans 400 acres with nearly 200 of those forested benefit the soul. Pick up a map of walking trails and forested areas at the front desk.

For guests who want to see more of Williamsburg, there’s plenty to do close by in addition to Merchants Square. Here are a list of excursions off the beaten path:

Once you return from your day of travels, it will be good to have you back at Wedmore Place, where dinner can be served at the Tavern and the king-sized bed in your room will be waiting for you.

Book your stay at Wedmore Place online or call 757-941-0310.

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Taste the Trail: Experience What’s on Tap Along with the Best-Ever Soft Pretzel at Alewerks

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 11:19:00 GMT

This is the first in a series of posts highlighting The Williamsburg Taste the Trail Package that offers guests at Wedmore Place an opportunity to explore multiple award-winning wine, brews and even a mead unique to the Greater Williamsburg area.

Enjoying a glass of wine inside your room at Wedmore Place, at the Gabriel Archer Tavern or anywhere on the grounds of Wessex Hundred is a given at The Williamsburg Winery.

We invite anyone also interested in experiencing craft beer to sign up for our Taste the Trail Package, which includes several Williamsburg Winery amenities along with tasting passes to a local meadery and three nearby craft breweries, including Alewerks.

Alewerks Brewing Company is a trailblazer in these parts, brewing beer since 2006, long before it became en vogue. In 2020, the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association named Alewerks its Brewery of the Year.

“One of our strengths is we’re not just known for one beer,” said Michael Claar, Operations Director at Alewerks. “We have a broad portfolio that has some really strong brands that represent the entire spectrum of flavor.”

The sampler flight starts with the familiar, the Weekend Lager, moves to malty beers, the Tavern Brown Ale and Protocol Porter, transitions into more hop-forward beers, the Chesapeake Pale Ale and Superb IPA, and ends with a seasonal selection. These playful favorites are Shortcake through April followed by Tangerine until August when Pumpkin is revealed.

Passes are good for either Alewerks location, whether it’s the Brewery Taproom or the L.A.B. Taproom , where visitors can get an up-close look at a working brewery. The L.A.B., which stands for Little Auxiliary Brewery, specializes in small-batch beers you won’t find at the main taproom – experimental flavors that are eclectic and versatile.

As refreshing as the beer is, don’t leave without ordering the homemade half pound soft pretzel with beer cheese (also homemade), a treat so delicious you’ll wonder how you lived without it for so long.

Alewerks has 16 beers on tap, and they vary by location, so there’s no doubt patrons will find at least one favorite. Merchandise is for sale, too, including a genuine Alewerks Taphandle.

Ample outdoor seating is available at the Brewery Taproom, and an outdoor tent with heaters makes it toasty on chillier days. The L.A.B. offers indoor seating only.

Awesome beer, a yummy pretzel, and a six pack and souvenir to take home await you at Alewerks.

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Combine Your Visit to Wedmore Place with a Trip to Williamsburg Art Museums

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 11:23:00 GMT

Colonial Williamsburg is truly one big museum, but if you’re looking for art specifically during your stay at Wedmore Place, head to the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum , essentially two museums under one roof.

Before you begin your trek, make sure you enjoy all there is to see at Wedmore Place, which is full of the “finer things,” including period tapestries and furniture themed to various European countries. Reminiscent of a European inn, Wedmore Place contains an inviting library with period antiques scattered throughout the common rooms and hallways.

Your room is a mini art museum in itself.

Guests who enjoy “the finer things” will favor the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum. It includes vast collections of southern furniture and British ceramics. Current exhibitions are:

· “A Gift to the Nation: The Joseph and June Hennage Collection,” which features furniture and silver from Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Charleston and other significant Colonial centers. It’s easy to fall in love with many of the pieces the Hennages bequeathed to Colonial Williamsburg. The prominent couple also left a Georgian-style residence at the corner of South England Street and Williamsburg Avenue.

· “Promoting America: Maps of the Colonies and the New Republic” chronicles mapmakers’ impressions of the New World, romanticized as a Garden of Eden of sorts. The exhibit is amusing propaganda and a unique history lesson, too.

· “Keeping Time” explores how people in the mid-18th century kept time with minimal access to traditional clocks. Telling time was a new innovation centuries ago; this exhibit features the intricacies of the early clocks.

The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum houses more than 7,000 folk art objects made over the last three centuries. Current exhibitions through 2022 are:

· “Art of the Quilter,” a selection of American quilts made from materials that range from denim blue jeans to colorful cottons. Many of the quilts are community works, created while friends and neighbors socialized. Anglo-American, African-American, German, Amish and Mennonite communities are each represented.

· “Navajo Weavings: Adapting Tradition,” which shows off passed-down designed weavings created by Navajo women on hand looms. Their woven motifs of these textiles reflect the world around them. Noted folk art enthusiasts Rex and Pat Lucke donated several special pieces, including a rare Navajo Chief’s Blanket from 1865-1870.

· “American Folk Pottery: Art and Tradition,” made possible by Sen. John D. Rockefeller and his wife Sharon, celebrates 19th and 20th century folk potters, whose vessels were both functional and whimsical.

For anyone seeking a fresh perspective on art, each of the museums offers an audio tour written and narrated by local teens.

Always check the schedule before your visit to see what’s on the calendar as far as staged performances and expert talks. For tickets to the Art Museums of Williamsburg, visit colonialwilliamsburg.org/tickets/. You can combine your tickets with other attractions or only get tickets to the art museums.

The other art treasure in town is the Muscarelle Museum of Art , which is affiliated with William and Mary.

The Muscarelle’s permanent collection is robust, with Colonial America and English 17th and 18th century portraits, a selection of Japanese prints, unique German Expressionist works by Hans Grohs, and the Jean Outland Chrysler collection of American abstract impressionists.

The museum is currently hosting works by Edgar Degas in an exhibit titled “The Private Impressionist” That exhibition, with drawings, prints, photographs, monotypes, a sculpture and one letter, will be on view until May 29, 2022.

In the Sheridan Gallery, visitors will find “Spark of Imagination: The Spectrum of Creativity,” which captures the ingenuity of American self-trained artists. The exhibit on view through April 10 features works by Grandma Moses, Clementine Hunter, Helen LaFrance and Sister Gertrude Morgan.

For hours and admission, visit muscarelle.wm.edu/visit.

Hungry after an art-filled afternoon? We welcome you back to the Gabriel Archer Tavern for dinner and wine. Choices on the newly revamped dinner menu include fresh oysters on the half shell, a Cajun seafood pasta or a lovely filet mignon. Save room for Warm Banana Bread, Virginia Peanut pie or Sea Salt Caramel Cheesecake for dessert.

Afterward, retreat to your room for a glass of wine and a peaceful night’s slumber in your king-sized bed at Wedmore Place.

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Every Day is Earth Day at the Williamsburg Winery

Fri, 15 Apr 2022 11:27:00 GMT

Williamsburg Winery founder Patrick Duffeler has long touted the importance of reflecting in the woods of the Wessex Hundred Farm, home to thousands of majestic trees that he planted himself.

His love of nature that dates back to childhood visits to the forest with his mother inspired his conservation efforts that began when he purchased the farm in 1983. Earth Day offers a time to celebrate that commitment that began long before the sustainability movement became en vogue.

“I’ve put 250 acres of our farm into conservation,” Duffeler said. “All the parts that are covered with trees are in conservation.”

That includes 40 acres of woods of stunning copper beech trees well over a century old.

An initial 37 acres of planting in 1989 helped with erosion control near the part of the winery that is close to the ravines not far from the James River. Duffeler called it his Black Forest. Over the years, he has planted some 62,000 trees.

Hearty loblolly pines and mature oaks are also in the mix along with the magical Tree of Life , more than 300 years old.

An additional two acres of land on the farm contains a sustainable garden, which grows much of the seasonal produce that highlights the dishes at the Gabriel Archer Tavern.

While Duffeler enjoys the solitude that comes from walking underneath the canopy of the towering trees on the 420-acre farm, he also appreciates the impact they make toward a healthy environment. Trees store carbon pollution; one deciduous tree can capture as much as 750 gallons of stormwater annually. Trees are nature’s carbon removal engine as they absorb carbon dioxide emissions that pollute the area.

While Duffeler encourages visitors to the winery to enjoy the casual enjoyment of wine among friends, he is equally passionate about the hundreds of acres of green space as integral to Wessex Hundred as the vineyards themselves.

Breathing the fresh air invigorates him every morning.

It’s as if every day is Earth Day at the Williamsburg Winery, where sustainability has always come first.

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Introducing “Art at Wessex Hundred” at the Susan Constant Hall Tasting Room

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 14:52:00 GMT

It’s no surprise that wine and art pair well together.

After all, winemaking is an art in itself.

Guests at the Williamsburg Winery can now savor both inside the Susan Constant Hall tasting room that will house an ongoing exhibit titled “Art at Wessex Hundred.”

The 400-acre farm and its picturesque green space are the inspiration for 31 local artists, whose works will change with the seasons. The opening exhibit, “New Beginnings,” is essentially “an ode to spring,” says Mary McCormick, one of the volunteer organizers behind the exhibition that will run from April 1 until Aug. 29.

The paintings on the walls of the tasting room where visitors can enjoy a flight of wine with snacks capture settings and subjects indoors and outside of the winery, which is reminiscent of a European village removed from the hubbub of everyday living.

Each of the paintings is for sale.

Williamsburg Winery founder Patrick Duffeler is something of an artist himself. He’s an avid drawer who regularly picks up a pencil to sketch out something he is describing. Duffeler also espouses his appreciation for life’s finer things — healthy air to breathe, excellent food and wine accompanied by casual conversation, and culture that includes music and art. Visitors will find all of those components at the winery that has been Duffeler’s life and passion for the last 40 years.

Historical art, including etchings and maps, is scattered throughout the winery and Wedmore Place. “It’s part of our mission to exhibit art,” Duffeler says. “We are always happy to host events for local artists.”

“Art at Wessex Hundred” is an extension of that philosophy.

Duffeler met with McCormick and three other volunteers about transforming the Susan Constant Hall into something of a mini gallery of all that is lovely about Wessex Hundred.

“The exhibit will feature local artists who work in a variety of styles and media,” McCormick says. “Most have exhibited extensively and are well known.”

The featured artists spent time touring Wessex Hundred, snapping reference photos and learning about the complex process of making wine. They visited many of the must-see spaces at the winery, including Wedmore Place, the cellars that store the barrels and the Duck Pond. The artwork reflects the many different facets of the winery, including the land itself, the winery’s conservancy efforts, the buildings that exude old world charm and the people who flock to one of the most storied spots in Williamsburg.

The images will change with the season. Subsequent rotations will be “Bountiful Harvest” from Sept. 1 to Nov. 30 and “Winter Romance” from Dec. 1 through March 30, 2023.

“We are hopeful that people who come to the winery will want to take a piece of it home with them,” McCormick says. “We have an incredible price range.”

McCormick notes how ideal wineries are for painters. “They’re captivating,” she says. “There’s something about watching the growth of the vines and the grapes blooming and suddenly it becomes something else — a wonderful bottle of wine. That whole process sparks everyone’s imagination.”

Enjoy life, good food and wine, and art at the Williamsburg Winery.

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The Williamsburg Winery Takes Gold Three Times at Governor’s Cup

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 17:30:00 GMT

Williamsburg, Virginia — The Williamsburg Winery earned a trifecta— three Gold medals in the 2022 Virginia Governor’s Cup Wine Competition — and a first on Tuesday.

While the Williamsburg Winery has a history of excellence in the Governor’s Cup, achieving three golds in a singular year is a first.

The three award-winning wines are the 2019 Petit Manseng, the 2017 Virginia Trianon, and the 2019 Wessex Hundred Petit Verdot — all signature varietals at the Williamsburg Winery.

“We’re appreciative of the Governor’s Cup continuing to recognize the role the Williamsburg Winery has played in elevating the state’s reputation for producing high quality wine,” said Patrick Duffeler, founder of the Williamsburg Winery.

The Williamsburg Winery planted its first grapes and sold its first bottle of wine in 1987, back when only a few wineries existed in Virginia. Today, wine is a burgeoning industry in the Commonwealth that is home to more than 200 wineries.

The Governor’s Cup, in its 40th year, is among the most stringent wine competitions in the nation. All wines submitted in the Governor’s Cup must be made from 100% Virginia fruit. Each of the 100-plus gold medal-winning wines from the competition will undergo further tasting with the 12 highest ranking red and white wines culminating in the Governor’s Cup Case, with one bottle taking home the coveted Governor’s Cup. For the first time ever, the Governor’s Cup Celebration, a ticketed event on March 24 in Richmond, will be open to the public.

The Williamsburg Winery won the Governor’s Cup in 1989 and again in 2014.

“The 2022 medals represent all three of our tiers of wine,” said Kenny Bumbaco, Vice President of Direct Wine Sales at the Williamsburg Winery. “Our Virginia tier, more of our large-production tier sourced from all over Virginia, is where our Petit Manseng falls. Our Petit Verdot is from the Wessex Hundred tier, which features only grapes grown here on our farm. The Trianon, which is our reserve Cabernet Franc, represents our reserve tier, wines produced in small quantities made only in select years with high quality grapes.”

The distinction for the Petit Manseng is one of several for the white wine varietal that delivers a tropical fruit vibe and finishes with a floral impression. Last month, it earned a rating of 91 points from James Suckling , among the world’s most renowned wine critics, and received a Platinum Medal and 94 points from the 2021 Winemaker Challenge International Wine Competition.

The Governor’s Cup competition is sponsored by the Virginia Wineries Association, in partnership with the gubernatorial-appointed Virginia Wine Board and the Virginia Vineyards Association.

The Williamsburg Winery will be offering a special 3-pack of its 2022 Governor’s Cup Gold Medal winning wines starting today and while supplies last. The 3-pack, priced at $120, is comprised of one bottle each of 2019 Petit Manseng, 2017 Virginia Trianon, and 2019 Wessex Hundred Petit Verdot. The 2017 Trianon and the 2019 Wessex Hundred Petit Verdot will only be available in this special pack due to very limited quantities remaining. No additional Wine Club Member or volume discounts will apply. The winery will offer $10 Flat Rate shipping on orders $120+ with coupon code CELEBRATE. This coupon code will be valid through Sunday, March 13.

The 3-pack will also be available at the retail shop at the Williamsburg Winery.

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Williamsburg Winery Introduces Small Batch Field Blend Series

Sun, 20 Feb 2022 18:54:00 GMT

Williamsburg Winery Wine Club members are in for an exclusive treat.

As part of their February wine shipment, they’ll receive the first of the Winery’s Small Batch Field Blend Series.

What distinguishes a field blend is the togetherness of the grape varietals.

“These grapes essentially spend their whole lives together, starting with in the field,” said Winemaker Matthew Meyer.

After harvest, they’re co-fermented in the winery. Typically in winemaking, each grape varietal is fermented separately and blended together after aging.

That makes a field blend more challenging than traditional winemaking because proportions of varietals aren’t as exact. “You’re essentially seeing what happens,” Meyer said. “You can really finetune when you’re blending. Field blends involve more of the unknown, which makes them more exciting.”

“It creates more of a melded blend,” added Kenny Bumbaco, Vice President, Direct Wine Sales at the winery.

Field Blend No. 1 is 57% Merlot and 43% Cabernet Sauvignon from Mount Juliet Farm in Crozet. Each of the wines made in the Small Batch Series is from the 2020 vintage, when smaller quantities of grapes were harvested because of a spring frost.

Merlot contributes the plush bright fruit character and Cabernet Sauvignon adds body and tannins. Bumbaco recommends pairing Field Blend No. 1 with anything that goes well with Merlot, such as poultry, pork and lighter red meats.

The first two field blends are from Mount Juliet; the third is from a Winchester vineyard. Field Blend No. 2 is Petit Verdot and Tannat and No. 3 is Cabernet Franc and Tannat. Nos. 2 and 3 will be released later in 2022.

“They’re fun,” Meyer said. “Honestly that’s what they are. Hopefully people will see that and like the blends.”

If you need another good reason to join the Wine Club , it’s that these three Small Batch Series wines will only be available to Wine Club members.

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Seasonal Ingredients, Four Wines Highlight new Chef’s Notebook Dinner Series at Gabriel Archer Tavern

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 13:52:00 GMT

Savor Virginia’s bounty on your plate as part of the Williamsburg Winery’s new Chef’s Notebook dinner series.

The first of these monthly epicurean journeys will be offered on Thursday, Feb. 24 at 6 p.m. It promises to be a special evening capped at no more than 36 guests. Unlike the larger banquet-style dinners hosted by the winery, the Chef’s Notebook series will be restaurant-style inside the Gabriel Archer Tavern, so you will sit only with the company you bring.

Every chef has a notebook and Williamsburg Winery Chef de Cuisine Jake Wechsler uses his moleskin ledger held together with a rubber band to sketch out ideas and doodle how best to plate dishes.

“I definitely enjoy being able to write things down as opposed to having it on a computer,” he said. “I sit there and plan a menu with four or five different versions until I settle on one I like.”

The Chef’s Notebook series was born from that idea with the added inspiration of featuring seasonal ingredients from Virginia when possible.

In this first dinner, Wechsler starts with oysters prepared three different ways. Trio of Oysters Raw, Fried and Rockefeller, will feature the fresh “Pearls” of Big Island Aquaculture in nearby Hayes. These oysters, the ideal balance of sweet and salty, come from Munday’s Creek, the York River and Mobjack Bay and are the only ones used at the winery. The raw oyster will be served with the Winery’s Rose Mignonette. The fried one will be seasoned with Old Bay and aioli and the classic baked oyster Rockefeller leaves a sweet finish.

A Wessex Hundred Salad will follow, filled with homegrown vegetables from Francoise Duffeler’s greenhouse on the property and seasonal selections from local farmers’ markets. Francoise is the wife of Williamsburg Winery founder Patrick Duffeler.

Buying local produce is an option Wechsler prefers when preparing food for an intimate occasion like this one.

“That’s something I am able to do when cooking on a smaller scale,” he said. “These dinners give me the opportunity to be a little more creative in the kitchen.”

This particular salad comes literally from the pages in his notebook, accented by the blood oranges and roasted beets — flavors from the season that work well together.

Wechsler regularly thumbs through food magazines and cookbooks from his favorite chefs, such as Thomas Keller and Eric Ripert. He’s a particular fan of Southern Cast Iron magazine, which inspired the idea for the pork entrée. He will stuff a pork loin with apple, bacon and sage, which will be served alongside roasted Brussels sprouts with a creamy Boursin Polenta Cider Jus.

“It melts in your mouth,” he said. “The cider fits in with the apple, bacon and sage; it all comes together.”

Wechsler consulted with Winery Sous Chef Chad Bergeron, whose expertise includes pastries, and the two devised dessert, a Tiramisu Bombe. When diners bite into it, they will experience a combination of flavors from the coffee cheesecake center wrapped around the mousse with a hint of chocolate glaze atop a pistachio cookie.

“When you cut into it, you see the different layers of flavor and then when you eat it altogether, you get that Tiramisu experience,” Wechsler said.

Four different Williamsburg Winery selections will be paired with each course.

Here’s the full menu for the Feb. 24 dinner:

Appetizer Trio of Oysters Raw | Fried | Rockefeller Rose Mignonette | Old Bay Aioli | Lemon Williamsburg Winery, Wessex Hundred Albariño 2020

Salad Blood Orange & Roasted Beet Salad Arugula | Toasted Almonds | Whipped Goat Cheese | Champagne Orange Vinaigrette Williamsburg Winery, Wessex Hundred Viognier 2019

Entrée Apple, Bacon & Sage Stuffed Pork Loin Roasted Brussels Sprouts | Creamy Boursin Polenta| Cider Jus Williamsburg Winery, Virginia Cabernet Sauvignon 2019

Dessert Tiramisu Bombe Pistachio Cookie Williamsburg Winery, Virginia Semi-Dry Rose 2020

Cost is $80 per person plus tax and gratuity and $75 per person plus tax and gratuity for Wine Club members. Reservations are a must. Contact the Tavern at 757-564-8869.

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The 2019 Adagio in a Class All Its Own

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:35:00 GMT

After a near-perfect growing season three years ago, is it any wonder that the Williamsburg Winery’s 2019 Adagio is worth touting 10 months before its release?

Structure. Depth. Layers. Complexity. Yes, to all of that for the 2019 Adagio, which will be released in October 2022.

Adagio represents the biggest, boldest expression of a vintage for the Williamsburg Winery. The winery only makes Adagio after outstanding vintages; conditions weren’t quite conducive to doing so in 2018 and 2020.

But the weather cooperated in the vineyard in 2019, a year with a decent amount of rain in the spring followed by minimal precipitation from August through October. The summer wasn’t overwhelmingly warm, so the grapes developed on the vine longer to develop their fruit to its potential.

The 2019 Adagio has been aging in the best new French oak barrels in the cellar and “will have a whole extra year of barrel aging to let it really meld and develop further before we bottle it,” said Kenny Bumbaco, Vice President, Direct Wine Sales at the Winery. “That extra time will result in the wine being that much more complex and smoother ultimately. Adagio is what we hang our hat on as our best wine of the vintage, and one that we think can compete as among the best wines in the world.”

Typically, when blending Adagio, Williamsburg Winery Winemaker Matthew Meyer starts with Tannat, Cabernet Franc, and Merlot. The 2019 is a blend that is 69% Tannat, 23% Petit Verdot and 8% Cabernet Sauvignon — no Cab Franc and no Merlot.

“This is the first time we’ve done that,” Meyer said. “The 2019 Adagio has one of the highest amounts of Tannat, a good grape for Virginia that has a lot of depth and a lot of character.”

The Tannat and the Cabernet Sauvignon come from a vineyard in Crozet, while the Petit Verdot is estate-grown.

Guests at the Adagio Vertical Dinner hosted by the Winery at Wessex Hall on Jan. 28 got a preview of the 2019 Adagio that was served along with the 2015 and 2017 Adagios at a four-course meal.

The rest of us can take solace in the fact that fall is on its way, and the 2019 Adagio makes it worth the wait!

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Williamsburg Winery’s 2020 Virginia Viognier Brings Home Gold in San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 14:41:00 GMT

Williamsburg, Virginia — The Williamsburg Winery’s 2020 Virginia Viognier earned a Gold Medal at the largest competition for North American wines in the country.

More than 5,700 wines from approximately 1,100 wineries throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico entered the 2022 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition with aspirations of bringing home an award.

The Williamsburg Winery received nine medals overall.

“It’s an honor for our wines to be recognized as among the best in North America,” said Williamsburg Winery founder Patrick Duffeler. “These accolades also serve as a reminder that Virginia continues to thrive as a state where some of the nation’s best wine is produced.”

The 2020 Viognier exhibits upfront tropical notes of fresh pineapple, kiwi and mangoes with a hint of creamy vanilla reminiscent of cake batter along with fresh lemons and a touch of honey. A nice minerality lends balance. The finish is long and bright with the lemon and tropical notes shining the brightest.

The Williamsburg Winery only produced a small amount of 2020 Virginia Viognier, but in recognition of the distinction, a limited number of the award-winning wine will be made available online and in the retail Wine Shop at Wessex Hundred while supplies last.

“This is a very big competition and is regarded as one of the better ones,” said Matthew Meyer, Winemaker at the Williamsburg Winery. “The fact it was the Virginia Viognier that received a Gold Medal shows that Viognier expresses itself well in Virginia. There were others from Virginia that also received golds for their Viogniers. More people will start paying attention to what we are doing in Virginia, especially if we continue taking home so many top honors.”

Four additional Williamsburg Winery wines earned Silver Medals. They are:

Four more Williamsburg Winery wines received Bronze Medals. They are:

Submissions to the San Francisco Wine Competitions were tasted and evaluated by 55 wine professionals representing media, trade, winemaking, education and restaurant/hospitality.

The Williamsburg Winery has received multiple honors over the years at the competition that celebrated its 22nd year in 2022.

Learn more about the Williamsburg Winery at williamsburgwinery.com.

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Discovering the World of “Bastides”

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 16:34:02 GMT

Discovering the World of “Bastides”

During our fall trip to France late last year, we discovered the world of Bastides. The French word is derived from the classic bastions meaning a fortification protecting its occupants and constructed to allow for defense.

Traveling in Périgord, we were looking at various places hoping to find the right property that we could acquire given the fact that the one that we had come to terms with had been removed from the market.

We stayed over in a B&B near the town of Villereal (an old French description translated meaning “Royal Town”).

I was interested in the design concept of the town, having seen a very similar design three or four years before meaning a town layout where all the streets are crisscrossing at a ninety-degree angle surrounding a central square where almost all the sides are covered walkways.

Looking into history, we learned that these towns were built in the 13th century (yes, seven hundred years ago)!

The Dordogne is a river that flows westward from the central mountains in France to Bordeaux. Also, it gives its name to the area and is known for being the land of one thousand and one castles.

Going back in history, to the 12th century, the famous Eleanor of Aquitaine was married to Henry the II King of England after her marriage to the King of France. It resulted in the crown of England to claim a right to the Aquitaine area in Southwest France. Hence the British learned to savor Bordeaux wines.

The arcades with the arrow indicating the flow of incoming pedestrian traffic to the central square.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, during the 100-year war, the area was the scene of endless battles between the French on the North Side of the Dordogne and the British forces on the South Side.

The Bastides built in the 13th century provided havens of peace for the inhabitants. The central square of the town was the place for the weekly market and often featured also a well to provide water when the town was closed during threats of attacks.

What was striking about those Bastides is the thickness of the stone construction, walls are regularly 2-feet thick. Given that pretty much all the houses even if they were well lined up continually, there seems to always be a very specific identity to each house creating a unique design.

Somehow or another no modern structures have been built up in those Bastides, so they have retained the uniqueness of their medieval charm.

Cheers,
Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & Chairman

And, Another Long Trip to Europe, Part Three

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 16:10:39 GMT

And, Another Long Trip to Europe, Part Three

Our next stop was Athens where we were to visit the Acropolis and the Parthenon. It was a huge disappointment. The lines to enter the Parthenon were over two and a half hours long. It reportedly is visited by over fifteen million visitors a year. We were just happy to look at the famous century old Greek constructions from a distance while walking in the park surrounding the Acropolis. Sadly, with such a high level of visitation, the park was despicably filthy, covered in broken beer bottle glass and endless plastics and cigarette butts. It reminds me of our long-term effort to enhance the cleanliness of Wessex Hundred, our farm where the winery sits.

Fortunately, we were able to find a genuine Greek terrace restaurant and enjoyed souvlaki kebab with local traditional food on which George and I were happy to indulge with large mugs of German beer.

Bougainvilier on the island of Santorini.

Our next excursions took us to the mythical island of Santorini and the port of Katakolon on the Peloponese. Olympia is located near the vestiges of the site where the first Olympics took place in 776 BC and continued for some twelve centuries until they were banned by the Christian Emperor of Rome.

The harbor of Valetta in Malta viewed from the port-hole of our state-room on board the ship.

Finally, we had brief visit of the island of Malta and then returned to the shores of Italy with first a visit of Taormina, a jewel of a town on the island of Sicily.

Taormina was founded by the Greeks and then fell under the control of the Romans who expanded the Greek amphitheater to bring it to a capacity of 50,000 spectators. The town is located way up on mountain overlooking the sea and faces Mount Etna, the volcano that dominates the landscape. The medieval days brought a significant evolution of the town with the construction of many churches, gates to enter the city, and narrow pedestrian-only streets.

Our last stop-over was in the bay of Naples. We had a choice of options to visit Sorrento and the Amalfi coast, the islands of Capri and Ischia or the ruins of Pompeii, the Roman city that was destroyed by an eruption of the Vesuvius volcano in the middle of the first century AD. The entire city and many of its inhabitants were buried for some eighteen centuries under a humongous pile of ash spewn by the volcano. Given that I had seen Capri many years ago, we opted to visit the excavations of Pompeii which verges on the incredible.

The next day, we were back in Rome and toured the city. Francoise picked up a nice leather bag at an open air market, and we had a delightful lunch in a street side casual establishment. The owner was grateful for our presence and I happily talked him into helping us celebrate our closing luncheon in the eternal city by offering us glasses of Prosecco.

Early the next morning, George and Marianna took a flight back to the West Coast. Later that day, we flew to Marseille and proceeded to return to Norfolk

In all, it was a long trip. We accomplished most of what we had on our agenda. We lamented the obvious governmental dysfunction in both Italy and Greece and cannot escape our growing concern over the increasing air and water pollution in the Mediterranean and over the large cities. It feels really good to be back at Wessex Hundred.

Cheers,
Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & Chairman

And, Another Long Trip to Europe, Part Two

Wed, 15 Nov 2017 15:58:54 GMT

And, Another Long Trip to Europe, Part Two

The next morning, we boarded the “Norwegian Spirit,” a cruise liner that can provide comfort and fine cuisine for some two thousand guests. Their crew of nearly nine hundred with numerous incredibly talented persons from Eastern Europe is well trained. They show a culture of service and attention to the passengers which is exemplary.

For twelve days, we cruised the Mediterranean and made numerous stops where we could have various options of shore excursions.

We docked in the port of Livorno and went to visit Florence and then Castello del Trebbio. The Castello is a fine winery housed in a facility built between the twelfth and the fifteenth century. We had the pleasure of meeting the owner, a charming lady of Austrian extraction, and sampled the wines. Difficult for me to stay away from wineries.

The entrance to the old castle which happens to be a winery. It dates back to the early medieval days.

Another stop-over brought us to Cagliari, on the coast of Sardinia, where the uphill climb was long and very steep to the old fortress and its elephant tower.

Sardignia, The port of Cagliari with its elaborate balconies. The entrance to the “Elephant Tower”.

After a stormy day at sea with endless lightning bolts, we reached Crete. Our goal was to visit the excavation of Knossos, a city built initially six thousand years ago and that was forgotten until the late nineteenth century. Our guide was very knowledgeable and explained numerous details about that fascinating site.

To be continued…

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & Chairman

And, Another Long Trip to Europe, Part One

Wed, 08 Nov 2017 15:48:49 GMT

And, Another Long Trip to Europe, Part One

Francoise, my lovely wife, left for France during the closing days of August.

By then, she had received all documents subsequent to her interview and her test on American citizenship which she passed with flying colors and became a naturalized US citizen on August 14. She quickly got her blue passport and went visiting with friends and family in Paris and in the Loire Valley.

In mid-September, I flew off and met her at the airport. We took the high speed train to Marseille, picked up a rental car and proceeded to Forcalquier, the small medieval town in Provence where she has an apartment in a nineteenth century stone building.

Michel Voarick, owner of the prestigious vineyard in Aloxe-Corton, with Christine Gallet and Francoise.

On our docket was attending to multiple chores for the care and maintenance of her apartment including the installation of a new water heater as well as an upgrade of the electrical circuit-breaker box to meet the latest code.

We were also in contact with our friend Christine Gallet who is part of the team of Michel Voarick who runs an extraordinary winery in Aloxe Corton, one of the finest appellations of the top flight Burgundian wines. We purchased bottles of the famed white Corton-Charlemagne as well as bottles of the red Aloxe Corton. (We brought them back with us and these bottles are sleeping in Matthew Meyer’s area until all appropriate approvals have been received. The special French wine dinner is to be announced shortly.)

We also travelled to meet a friendly lavender producer who provided us with three forty-five pound bags of dried, high quality lavender. The lavender is destined for the pleasure of the guests of Wedmore Place as we have small pouches of lavender in every room. We shipped the lavender along with some fifteen antique copper pots and pans to the care of Bossuet, our fine artisan barrel making company located north of Bordeaux. This large parcel will be included in one of our forthcoming containers for shipment to the Williamsburg Winery.

During our stay in Forcalquier, we had the good fortune of visiting a property in the town that is open only once a year on the day to celebrate the rich architectural patrimony of France.

On the last day of September we were in Rome meeting George and Marianna Share, our good friends from Santa Monica. From ’81 until ’86, George was Executive VP of Fragrances Selective in the days when I was that company’s International CEO. We have remained close friends all these years. George and Marianna, both now 82, are inspiring people staying vitally active and energetic.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & Chairman

A Siberian Snow Blizzard in Williamsburg

Tue, 30 May 2017 13:51:45 GMT

A Siberian Snow Blizzard in Williamsburg

Williamsburg enjoys a very peculiar climate. In 1981, Peggy, my wife, had found this out when we were doing our research before purchasing the Wessex Hundred farm.

The area is very much impacted by the maritime climate, even though we are some 50 miles from the ocean. The dominant winds are from the Southwest, coming from the Caribbean, following the Gulf Stream that flows up the East Coast.

The weather pattern tends to change midway between Williamsburg and Richmond, resulting in more snow in Richmond in Winter and more heat in the city in the Summer. Meanwhile, Williamsburg, which is on the Peninsula between the massive and wide York and James Rivers, has a more balanced weather pattern but also more precipitation.

Whereas the last frost in the foothills of the Piedmont can be in late May, or even early June, usually Williamsburg may experience an early Spring in the first quarter of the year with its last frost hovering somewhere around April 10th.

We just experienced the coldest spell on the farm since 1983, when we moved to Williamsburg and spent our first Winter in the little house dated 1736, which had not been fully renovated and was uncomfortably cold when the mercury dropped down to the teens.

This last week, we were surprised by a snow accumulation of some 24″+ in 24 hours. The snow was dry and powdery; and the temperature was way below freezing – at night, it dropped down to the very low teens.

The next two days, January 8th and 9th, we had very bright sunshine on what felt like a Siberian Winter. I worked in the snow and cold wind using the backhoe to plow much of the top layer of snow and finally got back home. It was brutally cold.

Top Left: Our garden shed. The garden is well covered in snow. Top Right: The flats south of the winery. Bottom: The entrance to Wessex Hundred after I plowed it some with the backhoe. (I thought I was virtually freezing.)

The next day, January 10, it was bright and sunny. Still, the temperature was in the mid-20’s.

This recent cold, with wind blowing from the Canadian Northwest, made Williamsburg look almost Alpine, without the mountains.

Personally, having lived for close to 10 years on the shore of Lake Ontario, I got well used to serious snow falls and long, cold Winters. However, I prefer a shorter Winter.

Today, January 12th, it is sunny, the temperature is 72, and the snow is gone.

Enjoy Life,
Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & Chairman

Photo credits: Francoise and Patrick II

Once upon a time, there was a farm in Williamsburg, Virginia

Tue, 02 May 2017 14:36:44 GMT

Once upon a time, there was a farm in Williamsburg, Virginia

For a number of years, I have shared with friends and guests the story of how we acquired this farm.

At the time, I was International President of Fragrances Selective. Peggy felt that we were ready for a new life, for a project that we considered our own and that would provide a home for our two boys who were then 10 and 8.

We looked at 52 farms in Virginia and decided to purchase the one we could not afford.

Wessex Hundred, as we decided to name it, was a 300-acre farm overlooking College Creek and the James River. It was bought in ’83. Peggy, the boys, the au pair, the dogs and I all moved in during the Summer of that year. That portion of the story was detailed in earlier blogs.

Another part of the loblollies looking on the east side of the meadow overlooking the deep ravine.

To help finance the project, I kept my job as a business mercenary for another four years, flying back to Williamsburg late on Friday nights and leaving at 5:00 AM on Monday mornings, that is if I were not travelling overseas.

Before taking the first steps of planting the vineyards, we contacted Virginia Tech and Lucy Morton, a special viticultural consultant who had completed her studies in France and translated a book on ampelography.

From my early days, our mother had passed on the wisdom of environmental protection. She loved nature and would relish our annual outing to look at cherry trees blooming in the Spring. Somehow, her respect for nature stayed with me.

While working in Burgundy in the late 70’s, I had developed a lot of interest in grapevine growing. The first planting on Wessex Hundred took place in ’85 which Peggy coordinated all by herself while I was pursuing trying to expand the savings we needed for the project.

In ’87, we leased a couple of other vineyards and had our first grape harvest. The first Governor’s White wine was bottled in January ’88 and sold in February. It received the Best of Virginia Gold Award at the Norfolk Yacht Club. As we were building the winery, we also concentrated on the creation of our own “Black Forest”. Phase I was the planting of 37 acres with the assistance of the Virginia Dept. of Forestry.

Our total surface of woods was expanded to the current 75 acres including the deep ravines that feature some beautiful cypresses which, I was told, are probably several hundred years old.

Plantings took place between ’89 and ’95; I cannot help myself, we are still planting trees every year. Over 50,000 trees have been planted on this farm since we purchased it. Peggy had communicated to me an understanding of the life of the soil.

We determined our policy that we would never exceed more than 20% of the farm in grapes which leaves over 150 acres (that we refer to as “the flats”) for a produce garden and, eventually, animals.

Deep in the ravine, the color is brilliant and water flows to College Creek.

Over these last 25 years, it has been one of my missions to take care of the woods, select the healthier trees, cut the various parasite plants (of which there are many in Virginia: poison ivy, poison oak, VA creeper, wild grapevines, honeysuckle, etc.) The planting of loblollies on the 37 acres now provides a canopy some 45’ tall. It is absolutely quiet and it brings me to peace with myself.

When I work in the woods, I am still removing the legacy of the time when the farm was rented out. Over the years, we have removed three automobiles from the ravines, pulling them out with a long chain and the backhoe. We are still finding old beer bottles, barbed wire, and rusted metal posts. However, in the flats, the soil has benefitted from 25 years of being fallow, mowed down each year to rebuild the top soil.

Another close-up of the canopy. Those trees that were planted over 25 years ago, are now nearing 40 foot tall.

Water percolates and riverlets are now active in the deep ravines which had been dry when we purchased the farm.

There is so much to do. It is a passion. It is lovely to breathe fresh air in the woods.

To all, “Enjoy Life”.

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & Chairman

P.S.: For those interested in trees, I recommend reading the book of Peter Wohlleben, “The Hidden Life of Trees”. Mr. Wohlleben is a Waldmeister in the Eiffel region of Germany which has some fabulous forests.

One of the lesser-known aspects of the Wessex Hundred Farm

Mon, 03 Apr 2017 14:19:59 GMT

One of the lesser-known aspects of the Wessex Hundred Farm

When we think of the Williamsburg Winery in the center of the farm, we think automatically of vines, grape harvest, wine, tasting, and pleasure also.

There is, however, another aspect that we know less of, not the least dear to Patrick Duffeler’s heart and spirit. It is his “Black Forest”. He wanted it to reflect the image of the forest situated in the Southwest of Germany. A forest of pines and oaks, which has been expanded with more than 50,000 trees over the years, on a surface of approximately 75 acres.

His devotion to the respect of the project has lasted since he and his family settled on this piece of land in Virginia at the beginning of ’80.

From the beginning of Winter, and up to the first heat of Summer, the ritual begins. Patrick dresses in his military fatigues, a pair of boots, a military helmet, and a pair of thick gloves. All of this is in order to better melt into the universe of his woods. At the same time, he carries a small pair of clippers in a holster attached to his belt, an ax and heavy-duty clippers.

As we know, there are allegedly some 100,000 species of trees in the world. A tree grows, lives and populates the forests with its brothers. It contributes to the functioning terrestrial ecology, with its capacity to store the carbon dioxide; it takes an active part in the cycle of the water; and, it reduces the presence of pollutant gases in the air, etc. Its importance is crucial to all human beings when it renders oxygen and responds to one of our vital needs: the oxygenation of our entire body by respiration.

As the pines have now lost their needles, there is light on the trail for green grass to grow.

To own a forest, to watch it grow, is not enough. It must be accompanied and maintained because trees are subject to invasion of parasites which slow their growth or even, sometimes, kill them. In response to that threat and to ensure their proper development, we need to eliminate these parasites (honeysuckle, wild grapevines, etc.) with appropriate tools in order to give trees the capacity to live and to defend themselves when facing many potential enemies.

The work needed is to go from tree to tree, cut the parasites which take root at the base of trees and make their path to the light by borrowing the tree trunk, by generally climbing around it and strangling it. Some trees, forgotten of human attention during a number of years, once free, show the stigma of a devastating strangulation.

It is needless to expand on the fact that it represents a lot of work. It is also a passion without flaws, and the enormous satisfaction of having contributed to help trees in their large role for the environment and the well-being for all human beings.

In the next blog, Patrick will speak more broadly of his passion for trees which led one of his relatives to say: “Patrick probably calls each of his trees by name.”

If you like beautiful stories about men, nature and trees, please visit “The Man Who Planted Trees” , a novel written by Jean Giono in 1953. Jean Giono is a French writer born in Manosque, Provence, who died in 1970. Most of his works deal with the Provençal peasant world.

Françoise C. Duffeler

Of Barrels, Antiques and a Container

Mon, 13 Jul 2015 18:10:14 GMT

Of Barrels, Antiques and a Container

Early in April ’15, Françoise and I were in Provence and drove up to Paris to pick up Matthew, the Winery’s talented Winemaker, and his wonderful wife Elena, who is also the On-Premise Sales Manager (sales to restaurants and specialty shops). We picked them up on the side of the barge on the Seine River and drove straight down to the Chateau de Salles, north of Bordeaux. (See previous blog.)

The next morning, we had a meeting with our friends from Bossuet (barrel maker). We visited the operation and learned a great deal more about the difference between industrial barrel making and artisan barrel making.

Jean-Louis Bossuet is a hands-on manager. He knows all the details of how to make barrels. He started his own business, and his operation now produces some 7,000 barrels, each made from the beginning to the end by one of the artisan barrel makers who applies his signature number on each barrel upon completion.

Jean -Guillaume Kerrinckx is the manager who roams the world talking to winery managers who want quality barrels. The specifications are defined based on the goals of the winemaker as to how the barrels should impact the wine that it will hold, selecting the tightness of the grain of the wood, the level of toast, etc. In the meantime, I had reserved a number of antiques from three different areas: two sources in Provence and one in Perigord which were destined for Williamsburg.

Not forgetting the 50 lbs bag of dried lavender from Provence that we bring to place in small bags for the delight of the guests at Wedmore Place.

So, in May, after having rejected proposals from truckers and wanting to ensure that the antiques would be well cared for, I found myself renting a big truck, picked up the antiques in the three places, with the last stop being at Issigeac where Christian Lapeyronnie closed off the narrow street in that medieval town where his shop is located. We loaded the truck with the final items on a 95º warm day. The truck was full to the double door, and we badly needed refreshments to recover from the heat.

After some 1200 miles in the truck on the autoroute and also on narrow, French country roads, Francoise decided that she would not want to be the companion of a truck driver as her favorite pastime.

The next day, we were back at Bossuet and first loaded the 30 new barrels destined for the Williamsburg Winery 2015 vintage and transferred the antiques from the truck to the container. Everything was well protected. Within the allocated two hours, the container was loaded and sealed by 3:30 on June 3. All the paperwork had been well prepared, and the container arrived in Norfolk late in the week of June 22.

The barrels are first to be loaded in the container. Jean Louis Bossuet checks the tight placements of the barrels. Next comes the turn of the antiques well covered in blankets to protect them. Finally, the pieces were stacked to the top of the container. The container was sealed by the truck driver and we kept a shot of it. It all arrived in Williamsburg and we broke the seal, opened the doors of the container and things were quickly unloaded.

Custom clearance was expeditious. On Friday, July 3, we got a crew to off-load the container. It was a company holiday and we got the message that the truck would arrive at 1:00pm. Traffic on the interstate was a nightmare and the truck finally showed up at 4:30pm. Sonny, Patrick and Stacey moved quickly and in one hour, everything is now safely at the Williamsburg Winery. Our thanks to all who helped that process.

ENJOY LIFE.

Patrick Duffeler
Founder & Chairman

Adding a Famous New Wine Country to Our Roster of Visits: Moldova

Fri, 29 May 2015 18:42:19 GMT

Bubbles From the Loire Valley

As we departed, our friends were puzzled where we were going. When we told them that we were going to Kischinau, the capital of Moldova, that small republic squeezed between Romania and Ukraine, which has the Guinness Book of Records of the largest wine caves and has numerous wineries, some producing exceptionally good varietals and vintages, it raised a few eyebrows with the comment, “Where is that Kischinau?”

Whenever I have a new destination, I feel the urge to do my homework and learn about the history of the country.

The fountain at the entrance to Milestii Mici.

Moldova became an independent country in the early nineteenth century in the area then known as Bessarabia. The principality of Moldova was founded in 1359. Earlier in Antiquity, it was the home of the Dacian tribe. It became part of the Roman civilization and, subsequently, of the Byzantine Empire which collapsed at the time of the discovery of the New World and came under Ottoman rule.

Between the two world Wars, Moldova was integrated as part of Greater Romania and was annexed by the USSR in 1944 until the fall of the Soviet empire.

It is an interesting country of 3 million people that blends different ethnicities: Romanians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, and Germans.

Our promise was that we would report upon our return.

We were fortunate to be accompanied by Matthew Meyer, our fabulous winemaker, and his wife Elena Barber who was born in Moldova.

One of the tasting rooms with sixty seats. To the right, Russian guests who are treated to traditional Bohemian music while enjoying the wines.

Early this month, we flew from Dulles to Munich and the next day found ourselves in Kischinau where Matthew and Elena picked us up at the airport. The next day, the visit of the caves of Milestii Mici had been organized. It is located about twenty minutes from the center of Kichinau.

The next day, we went to Cricova, another winery, which has equally impressive caves.

In both caves, we were shown around by accomplished English speaking guides.

While in Moldova, we were invited to spend an evening and overnight in Elena’s family’s home village. Following tradition in the “old country”, they prepared an absolutely sumptuous dinner of lamb, polenta, stuffed peppers, a variety of sausages, home-made wine, and numerous small glasses of ten-year old brandy. “Salut”, as it is said in the Romanian language, or “Na Zdrovia” in Russian also commonly spoken in Moldova.

As we left the country for meetings in the Perigord, we felt very pleased at our discovery of Moldovan wines and may try to arrange to bring a few of those bottles to share with our friends.

Cheers to all,

Patrick Duffeler
Founder and Chairman

Gabriel Archer of 1607 Jamestowne Celebrated by a Virginia Reserve Wine

Fri, 29 May 2015 18:28:00 GMT

Gabriel Archer of 1607 Jamestowne Celebrated by a Virginia Reserve Wine

Gabriel Archer was a key figure of the founding of English America. A Cambridge educated lawyer, Gabriel Archer was the Co-Captain of the Godspeed, the lead ship of the three vessels that brought the men that founded the first permanent settlement in the English New World. They were establishing a colony for the Virginia Company, a private venture under a Royal Charter.

Archaeologists from the Jamestown Rediscovery Project work at a site where the bodies of four of the founders of English America were discovered. Photo courtesy of Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation (Preservation Virginia)

The reliquary found on the grave of Gabriel Archer as it appears following cleanup. Photo courtesy of Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation (Preservation Virginia)

Archer wanted to locate the settlement at the mouth of a creek, on a piece of land that was to be named as Archer’s Hope. This was not meant to suggest his aspiration. Rather, reportedly in the words of the period, “hope” referred to an “opening or hollow amongst hills”. However, Archer was overruled by Captain John Smith who placed the settlement instead on “Jamestowne” Island. The creek became known as Archer’s Hope Creek and, subsequently, as College Creek as it finds its source behind the College of William & Mary that was chartered in 1693.

The bodies were found at the site of the first church to be established on Jamestown Island.

When, in January 1982, Peggy and I first walked on that acreage where Captain Gabriel Archer had recommended the colonists settle, it was bitterly cold. But, the farm grounds were beautiful and inspiring. After many visits to other farms, we decided to acquire what we later, after considerable historical research, would find was not just Jockey’s Neck Farm, as it was then called, but Archer’s Hope. In the meantime, we had named our project, our farm, Wessex Hundred.

Peggy’s and my heritage stem from the lands of the Saxons. Wessex means “Saxons of the West”. Wessex, in the western part of England, was the kingdom of Alfred the Great who reigned in the ninth century. We were Saxons of much farther West.

“Hundred” was a descriptive of early settlements in the Virginia colony to refer to a parcel where one hundred families could produce enough food to feed themselves.

Our goal was to have an agricultural operation that would be our home for our children. We had determined, after my experience in Burgundy, that a winery was to be the centerpiece of the operation.

Wessex Hundred became home to the Williamsburg Winery in 1987 and later to its diverse operations: Wedmore Place, a 28 room country hotel, the Café Provencal, a fine dining restaurant; and, right across from the winery itself, the Gabriel Archer Tavern, a farm-to-fork, informal, dining establishment opened in ’87 with the focus on “Delicious Simplicity”.

The marker identifying the location of Archer’s Hope on the Colonial Parkway. Photograph by Geoff Wade.

The historical research had led us to talk to many historians and archeologists, and we discovered the treasures of the land and its chronicle from 1607 to the twentieth century.

I was raised with an appreciation for history. By the time I came to the U.S. as a seventeen year old lad, I had experienced a lot of travel with my parents, from Norway in Scandinavia to Italy and Spain on the Mediterranean and every country in between.

My mother always had done research to prepare our family trips, and we were taken to visit what felt to be every castle, cathedral and palace on the way. That experience had left an impact on me and gave me a deep appreciation of history.

Therefore, it was just logical that Peggy and I would seriously learn all we could on the rather substantial material that we found on the history of the farm.

Gabriel Archer and his preference to place the first settlement on our farm loomed large and was, in many respects, inspiring. So much so, in fact, that Peggy and I deeded the land that would have been “Archer’s Hope” (and can now be seen from the Colonial Parkway, a roadway between Williamsburg and Yorktown) into Conservation Easement. We chose not to build on that land in order to protect the historical vista. This site is now identified by a state historic highway marker.

Captain Gabriel Archer was born in 1575 and grew up in Mountnessing, Essex, about 25 miles from London. He attended Cambridge University and then Grays Inn, where he studied law.

William Young, the interpretor who has studied the life of Gabriel Archer and regales his audience with stories of the First Settlement.

Archer had been part of an expedition in 1602 on the coast of “Northern Virginia”, what would later be called New England. He had written a then widely read account of that trip. He had been an enthusiastic proponent of the Virginia Colony and had been named co-captain of the Godspeed that arrived in the New World in 1607. Subsequently, Archer was named as the first secretary of the colony but initially was not appointed to the governing council. He was a fierce critic of Captain John Smith and other leaders and was one of the principals involved in deposing the first president of the colony, Edward Maria Wingfield.

After Smith was sent home a few months later, Archer was one of the most important of the leaders remaining. He returned to England in 1608 and sailed back again to Virginia a year later with the fleet that was damaged and scattered by a major hurricane in the Atlantic. He was on one of the ships that survived the crossing and arrived at Jamestown in August 1609. He died in 1609 or 1610 during the terrible Winter known as “The Starving Time”. His burial within the church’s chancel demonstrates that his status was recognized among the settlers even during a time of great stress. He was only 35.

One of the archeologists that we had met told us about a specialist in seventeenth century history and construction. This is different from the general understanding of American Colonial period style which is essentially derived from or inspired by the American eighteenth century architectural style.

Personally, I had always felt an interest in medieval construction, and the seventeenth century styling is much more rustic and representative of the late medieval era. This interest propelled us to meet William Kelso, an extraordinary archaeologist who communicates enthusiasm. At the time, he was Director of Archaeology at Poplar Forest as well as Commissioner of Archaeology for the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission.

Among all his projects, Dr. Kelso had actually directed archaeological studies conducted on our farm during which he found the site of the footing of the Bland Plantation identified on one of the many French military maps of 1781. For lack of funding, he had simply reburied the site and left its precise location on the historical records which we had received.

We discussed the idea of finding an original seventeen century house and transporting it to the farm. Dr. Kelso liked the idea. After much discussion on many topics related to his expertise, we decided to sponsor one of his projects. He then asked us to sit on the Board of the Virginia Company Foundation which he had created in order to protect as many of the few remaining constructions of that century. We offered the office of the winery as a good meeting place for his board.

It was during one of these meetings, sometime around 1989-90, that the topic of the Jamestown settlement came up. Most members who were from the APVA, the Federal Park Service or other institutions were conclusively certain that the site of the original fort had been totally eroded by the current of the James River.

Bill, on the other hand, was intrigued. Peggy and I strongly supported a motion for Bill to request access to the island area where he thought he could find artifacts and possibly evidence of the original settlement of 1607. The rest is history. As a result of his ground-breaking work on Jamestown Island, Bill has since been recognized by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II who awarded him the title of Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2012.

At a forthcoming meeting with Dr. Kelso, I plan to resurrect the idea of bringing an old seventeenth century house right here next to the winery and discuss the potential of a serious study of the grounds of the Bland Plantation.

The most recent news was that, after two years of scientific evaluations, one of the four bodies that Dr. Kelso had unearthed in the site of the original Jamestown Church was identified as that of Gabriel Archer. Two intriguing artifacts were found in Archer’s grave: part of a captain’s leading staff and a silver box. The leading staff is indicative of his military rank and was placed on top of his coffin in his honor. The stature and importance of the man became front page news.

We were delighted. Already in 1991, we had decided to name our first “reserve” wine, a red blend of different Vinifera varietals, the “Gabriel Archer Reserve”. Descendants of Gabriel Archer living in Richmond, VA contacted us and expressed an interest in our activities both in the sense of their interest in wines, but more importantly about our research on the history of our farm.

The wine became the flagship of our product range. Friends of the winery have written to us about how well the ’93 vintage has aged and bested some top Bordeaux first growth wines in tastings. The most recent news was that the Gabriel Archer Reserve received wonderful ratings by none other than Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. Both the 2009 and 2010 received a 90 point rating.

Almost 25 years after the first vintage of the Gabriel Archer Reserve, the history of the man has come to life in a bright light.

Cheers to Gabriel Archer.

Enjoy Life,
Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & Chairman

As the World Gets Smaller

Tue, 05 May 2015 17:36:07 GMT

As the World Gets Smaller

Here we are, a Virginia Winery present at the London Wine Fair for many years. Two years ago, Matthew Meyer, our Winemaker, chatted with numerous winemakers from Argentina to discuss new “assemblages” trends and to taste wines.

While in conversation over tasting the Williamsburg Winery wines, Steven Spurrier (one of the foremost British Wine Experts) recommended that Matthew should taste the Apogeo Malbec as being an exceptional wine. Matthew did and met Geraldo Cartellone, the Founder of the A-16 Winery (see earlier blogs).

Patrick, Marcelo Pelleriti, Elena and Matthew in Argentina in ’14. Marcelo is seen as probably the foremost

Over the last 20+ years, it was under the impulse of Nicola Zapata, a major Argentine winery operator who understood that a singular focus on a special varietal to typify the Argentinian terroir would bring great attention to their wines. Malbec was selected and has proved now to become their signature wine.

In the Fall of ’13, we all met with Geraldo in Williamsburg and planned our trip to Argentina. Last year, Matthew and I traveled to Argentina.

In the meantime, he was invited to present Williamsburg Winery wines to the passengers of a cruise line which went from Paris, France to the North Sea and sailed back to the French Capital.

Françoise and I met him and Elena, his wife. We travelled together down to Bordeaux, visited our barrel-maker (more about that in a future blog), a number of beautiful properties making memorable wines. That included something we could not fail, stopping in Monbazillac and also meeting a leading winemaker working at improving the wines of the Cotes de Bergerac.

Matthew joining us to present the Williamsburg wines to French consumers in Sabine Brochard’s restaurant.

The cases of the ’12 Apogeo are now on their way to Norfolk at the same time as Matthew was already back in Argentina participating in the ’15 Crush. In the Southern Hemisphere, seasons are reversed, and they experience their harvest in April.) He is planning a special Matthew Meyer Malbec under a new label uniting A-16 and the Williamsburg Winery. It will take a few months before that very special release will be available.

Meanwhile, Matthew is back in Virginia to oversee the planting of our new 5-acre Chardonnay vineyard.

More steps towards expanding our horizons.

Enjoy,
Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder and Chairman

Part 15: Construction of the Winery & First On-Site Crush

Fri, 30 May 2014 17:09:26 GMT

Part 15: Construction of the Winery & First On-Site Crush

The big project for 1988 was the construction of the winery and securing the required financing. The first winery building that had been licensed was really a tractor shed with a storage room for the chemicals which had been temporarily defined as the barrel room and wine storage. When the federal agent came for his inspection, he did inquire as to where our bottling equipment was. We had taken the precaution of buying a hand corker at a cost of $10, and we had met equipment requirements to be granted our permit.

The design for the winery had been a joint project between Peggy and myself with plenty of input from Rob and Steve. We needed a barrel cellar, storage space for components, the area for fermentation in the stainless steel tanks, the finished goods inventory (which in a winery quickly becomes very large), the wine shop, the space for tours and tastings and ultimately an office area.

We wanted to build it on the footprint of the barns which had been taken down. We also wanted it to have a typical Virginia look but without getting into the ultra colonial design that has been so overdone. Peggy suggested that a real cupola offering a three hundred and sixty degree view on the farm would be the element to define it. The architect had finished his plans and the cost projection had exceeded our budget.

Rodgers Huff, the banker, suggested we discuss the idea of applying for an Industrial Revenue Bond which required approval from the Industrial Development Authority of the County. A thorough forecast was prepared and submitted via the offices of our lawyer friends at McGuire Woods in Richmond. The inducement was approved and ultimately completed with the issuance of the bonds for a total of $815, 000.

To ensure that the bank had all the necessary documents, we were required to have our personal financial statement prepared by independent accountants. Additional unforecasted soft costs. It all accumulated quickly.

Peter Coe, the owner of Taste Unlimited, commenting on the rising quality of Virginia wines on television.

At about the same time, we were invited to participate in the annual barrel tasting of new Virginia releases at the Trellis. The master of ceremony was Peter Coe, the owner of Taste Unlimited, a fine food and wine store in Virginia Beach. Our James River White was introduced to acclaim. It felt good. Rob kept on opening new accounts and sales were showing the beginning of an encouraging curve but money was flowing much faster by a very long shot than it was coming in.

At the office of the local entrepreneur who had given us a hand with the structuring of the company, we met Cameron Cosby, a young law-school student who also had a financial background from the business school. He was interning with the entrepreneur and proved a very valuable help in the creation of new projections created for the first time with the then revolutionary Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets. A set of ten year projections was developed segregating the three different levels of wines (in terms of quality & pricing). A major barrier became evident: the lack of grapes to meet the production levels and the inventories required to achieve the sales goals.

Construction was moving ahead and our order for equipment had been placed with Scharfenberger, a German company, specialized in winemaking equipment. They had opened a small office in VA, which they called Europress, subsequent to their providing the bulk of the equipment for the Prince Michel operation under the guidance of Jochem Hollerith. In very Germanic fashion every little detail was nailed down including the plan for the construction of an elevated platform to position special tanks to allow for gravity emptying and cleaning of the tanks.

The building was taking shape. Our neighbor, Mr. Farmer, a World War II Veteran and a master welder, came and worked on the roof structure of the barrel cellar and the installation of the vertical piers which were designed by the architect who had adapted our ideas to working plans. Ken Crook directed the operation of the framing of the building, and planned the plumbing and electrical circuitry. What amperage were we going to need? Total up all the three phase equipment and one realized that a special line would be required to be installed by the local utility company.

A meeting was set with the delegates of Virginia Power. By that time, it was June and we were expecting the harvest to begin by late August or early September at the latest. The engineers told us that there was no chance that we would have the power in time. The approval process for the engineering alone would require two months. Concerned, I took it up the line to the regional customer service manager and explained our situation. He came over to visit the construction site and told us that we would have power by late August.

In late June, we attended our first wine festival. Jeannette, Eric and Patrick II were presenting our wines to the large crowds gathering outside our table. This was my first introduction to Gordon Murchie who, after years of overseas assignments for the Foreign Service, had acquired a passion for wine and created his own association to promote the world of wine on the East Coast. I had felt naked as we had no literature, no photos, no descriptive material. It seemed that just tasting the wines made clients out of people who were in front of us. A very encouraging fact. Still, I promised myself that at the next festival, we would be better prepared.

All the equipment purchased from Germany arrived in containers, and the team of the son in law of the owner and his technician installed everything with German precision in two days. They asked us about power such that they could test everything. The answer was “not yet”. They left it to us to do the testing. Harvest was still several weeks off.

In the meantime, the Reeder family from Burnley had advised us that there was an established vineyard for sale in Somerset. The owner was prepared to sell it at a reasonable cost. They proposed that we form a joint venture and that they would be willing to manage the vineyard which was located only a few miles from their winery.

We had met with the owner and, after a few sessions, had come to a preliminary agreement. Our sourcing of grapes was now seemingly assured. Everything was falling into place. We organized the financing and acquired another Hungarian tractor and included in the purchase some of the viticultural equipment that had been used on site. Burnley had begun the on-site presence required.

On the docket was to schedule the completion of the federally bonded area of the winery which needed a special on-site inspection and approval by an ATF agent. On the 9th of August, the agent verified the quality of all the locks to the bonded area where work in process is kept prior to removal and application of the federal excise tax. The next day, we had the visit of Carl Jensen, the ABC agent who was always full of constructive recommendations. The building was still being erected above the cellar level where the production areas were located. He also gave us his blessing for the “tax paid area” and the concept of the retail shop that was to be opened sometime later.

During that year, about once a week, meetings had been scheduled with designers and architects to flesh out the concept of the hotel we had planned to build on the same three hundred acre parcel. Considerations included market evaluation and numerous other factors. To test the basic consumer response to our European-style hotel vision, we had a great deal of assistance from Dr. Messmer who initiated intercept studies in the center of Williamsburg as well as other market research evaluations.

County approval would be required. In a world of standardized, uncreative hotel designs, the approach to uniqueness was introducing fresh challenges. On the other hand, financing did not seem to be a barrier. Banks were advising us that they would fund one hundred percent of cost. That was hard to believe though, apparently, there were several hotels built in the area with that capital structure. At any rate, any such financing structure ran against my more conservative comfort level.

Another project was taking place concurrently. The lawyer who had sold us the farm had decided to move ahead with a real estate project. He was fair and offered us to participate. He was impressed with what we were accomplishing and he was planning to put a group together involving the Lewis Waltrip construction company and a number of other persons.

The projections on that project were impressive and called for a strong relatively short term return. We felt that we had our hands full and all our financial commitments were to the winery and, ultimately, in what we thought to be the near future, to the hotel. We agreed to assist and participate as principal and guarantor but without financial disbursement. (More about that project in another section.)

On Monday, August 22, we were advised that grapes would be ready for harvest and brought in at the crush pad by the end of the week. We scheduled crush to begin Friday afternoon and notified the press and the local TV stations.

The utility company was finishing the installation of the upgraded power lines. A quick discussion took place about keeping the last pole in sight of the winery but to bring the line underground to the panel that needed to be County approved for the power be turned on. Trenching, installation of underground cables to the panel, reburying the line. Ready for inspection.

On Wednesday, the inspector arrived and approved the panel but advised us that the power was only two phase. What had gone wrong? We needed three phase power for all our major equipment. I contacted the local head of VA Power, and when I told him of our situation, within minutes, it was acknowledged that three phase was at the final pole but the underground line at been incorrectly installed.

Given that there was no power in that line I offered that our crew would open up the trench during the night such that they could install the proper cable on Thursday morning which they did. Another inspection and the panel was given the clearance. On Friday morning, we had power. Time to test the operation of all the equipment. By noon, we were ready to dump the grapes harvested on site and process them in front of the TV cameras.

Bob West, the anchorman, was thrilled, and the nearly half hour special covered our first crush in our new winery.

The next day, Peggy and I travelled to a festival in Northern VA. We thought we would take it easy after all the excitement of the week, walk around, sip a few wines offered by other wineries and sit down. Surprise, that was not to be. Our tent was mobbed, and Peggy and I alternated with Rob for a solid seven hours sampling and selling our three wines. No rest that day.

But, we drove home happy and convinced that things were taking shape in the right direction.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Bubbles From the Loire Valley

Thu, 29 May 2014 17:41:43 GMT

Bubbles From the Loire Valley

The Loire Valley in France is a place of endless castles; Chambord, Chenonceau and another one hundred castles.

It has been said for centuries that the Loire Valley was a place of what was defined as “la Douceur Angevine” or “the most pleasant climate of Anjou”. And, that is why the French kings built their castles on the banks and surrounds of that long and wide river that is the Loire.

As well, for the same time, the Loire has been a wine growing region famous for its Sancerre, its Muscadet and numerous other wines. In the nineties, we were in contact with a wonderful producer and imported their wines to include in our portfolio when we felt that a broad selection of wines added to our budding operation.

As we focused on rethinking the business of the Williamsburg Winery, we felt that all our attention would be dedicated to improving everything in our wine-making process from viticulture to barrels to the ultimate selection of the range of our wines. We set aside the importation of wines but maintained our multiple contacts with producers in Italy, Spain and of course the many regions of France.

Wedmore Place, the country hotel on the grounds of the farm, opened in late ’07. We wanted our own bubbly for our guests and contacted our friends at Chateau de la Presle which is located very near the Loire. For these last years, we have had quantities of their beautiful Cremant, Methode Champenoise, shipped to us with its Wedmore Place label.

Last Fall, while in France, we were delighted to make a short stop and get better acquainted with the younger generation which is now responsible for the management of the Chateau’s vineyards and its wine production.

Upon our arrival in late November, we were surprised by a gift from Albane, seven years old, the daughter of Frederick and Anne Sophie Meurgey. She presented us with a near perfect picture of an American flag and pointed out that she was excited to meet persons living in the US. Said she: “Note there are fifty stars on the flag. I would love to go to New York.” She also had a drawing of a yellow taxi cab, the Statue of Liberty and the new World Trade Center.

Albane is also the name of the new vintage rose Cremant which will be part of our next inbound shipment from France.

One of our objectives was to finalize all the details on the shipment of the cases that had been readied for departure. The wines arrived with a bit of delay in the Trans-Atlantic travel and reached Williamsburg in January.

The Cremant is available in our Retail Store as well as at the Café Provençal, the fine dining restaurant of Wedmore Place.

See also the Chateau on www.domaine-penet.com .

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & Chairman

Williamsburg Winery Wines Now Sold in France

Thu, 29 May 2014 15:35:29 GMT

Williamsburg Winery Wines Now Sold in France

About a year ago, Françoise and I met Sabine Brochard, an absolutely charming friend. One of our French friends who lives in Washington, D.C. had made the introduction. Sabine was awarded the prize of being the top sommelier in France a few years ago when she was working for one of the iconic restaurants in Paris, La Tour D’Argent.

We had a wonderful conversation discussing the history of our project and the focus on improving soils. I had brought wine samples with us, and after a careful tasting with her friends, she gave us a cheerful nod of approval. She was also enthused about the conceptual approach that brought the Williamsburg winery to where it is today be it viticulture, winemaking, our human approach to our organization, or our focus on customer satisfaction.

On the 21st of October, Francoise and I were on our way back to France (for the third time this year) and, upon landing, drove straight to Orleans for a “degustation” in the vaulted cellar of Sabine’s wine tasting and fabulous food restaurant. That night, we received many questions and … compliments, and many wines were pre-purchased from the shipment that was to leave Williamsburg a few days thereafter.

The shipment is now safely being transferred to our guests of that first evening, with the balance in Sabine’s wine cellar at her retail shop.

We are formulating lots of projects to come resulting from this warm relationship.

In the meantime, we are expecting a shipment of 300 cases of specialty products from France and 200 cases from our Argentine contact as described in previous blogs. Products to bring cheers to the Holiday Season on both sides of the Atlantic.

Patrick G. Duffeler

Don't Cry for Argentina

Thu, 29 May 2014 15:21:06 GMT

Don't Cry for Argentina

Latest news is that Argentina, as a sovereign country, has decided to devalue its currency while for the Nth time defaulting on its foreign debt and arguing for relief with the international community.

In fact, virtually all Argentines mock the instability of their governmental incapacity when dealing with economic matters. Sad as it may sound when we realize that about one hundred years ago, Argentina was considered one of the most advanced societies on the planet.

Still, it is a beautiful country with extraordinarily kind and pleasant people, where food is excellent and the wines glorious.

The family that owns Casa Glebinias. Next to me, Gabriel who organized the wine tasting.

In the previous blog, I talked of our visit in Mendoza. Matthew, our incomparable winemaker, and his wife Elena, Francoise and I enjoyed a touch of the Argentine way of life.

We had the good fortune to stay in the private estate of Casa Glebinias, a wonderful B&B just South of Mendoza with a warm welcome from the family where we were treated to a very good wine-tasting by Gabriel, the son, who is an accomplished wine-maker.

Our trip was centered on our relationship with Don Gerardo Cartellone of A16 Winery and the superb Apogeo Malbec that he has produced and that will be brought in small quantity for our Club Members and friends.

Veronica Cangemi with Francoise and myself in the vineyards at A16.

Just before our departure, we enjoyed another “asado” at the A16. The special guest that day was Veronica Cangemi, a Mendoza born international star of the opera scene since her very young years. She regaled us all with impromptu arias in every corner of the winery and was honored as its “godmother “. Veronica promised to come and visit Williamsburg on one of her next trips to the US.

If you appreciate beautiful sounds, let me guide you to: (control and click) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk2Olu19DOg

It needs no further superlatives. Meeting Veronica and listening to her singing was a rare and precious moment.

Before we returned, Don Gerardo gave us a copy of the book he wrote entitled “Del Camino…?”. Interestingly, it was published as a single volume each chapter first in Spanish and then in English. The English title is “From the Path…?” It describes Don Gerardo’s 700 kilometer pilgrimage walk from the French border to Santiago de Compostela carrying out , in his own words, “a spiritual and personal inner journey”.

It is both a very interesting book from a cultural point of view and a deeply emotional reflection on his quest for solitude following an intense life change that had devastated him.

There is a neat video that describes his ordeal: (control and click)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ji1xfOTQhU

We strongly wish to see Don Gerardo achieve his goal of reuniting with his sons.

Though with little time remaining, we managed to visit a half dozen other wineries where we tasted excellent wines and enjoyed the collegial welcome of winemakers and winery proprietors, all striving to compete with products that are attaining high recognition. One of these worthy of particular mention is Huarpe located right in the midst of vineyards of large international companies. Once again, a pleasure to the palate.

The goal for the future will be for Matthew to fly down to Argentina next year and guide the making of wines based on fruit that will be acquired and will come to us under his signature.

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & Chairman

A Footprint in Argentina

Thu, 29 May 2014 14:53:50 GMT

A Footprint in Argentina

Argentine wines have made a name for their country with the ever increasing quality of their Malbec varietal.

When I was involved in Formula 1 Racing in the seventies and then as the Intl CEO of a fragrance company in the early eighties, I flew regularly to Buenos Aires. I had found the country to be very European in culture (over half of the Argentinians are of Italian descent), with beautiful landscape and extreme hospitality. A few years back, Matthew, our winemaker, flew down to Argentina and was captivated by the vitality of their wine industry.

Just last year, when presenting our wines at the London International Wine Fair, Matthew was in conversation with Steven Spurrier of Decanter Magazine, over the Williamsburg Winery wines and the fact that we were experimenting with a new block of Malbec on our vineyards. Matthew became intrigued by the praise of Steven Spurrier for a new Argentine wine that was in the latter’s opinion a rather extraordinary Malbec. An opinion of Steven Spurrier warrants immediate follow up.

Matthew trekked over to the small booth and met Gerardo Cartellone, the owner of A16, a new boutique winery near Mendoza, the wine capital of Argentina. The Malbec that had generated that comment was called “Apogeo”. A conversation followed a tasting of the nectar, and Sr. Cartellone agreed to stop in at the Williamsburg Winery when next in the US.

In October of last year, we had the pleasure of hosting Mr Cartellone at Wedmore Place and he visited the winery and tasted our wines with Matthew. Over dinner, with a bottle of that fabulous “Apogeo” we got to know each other well while sharing views of the direction of the wine world and our respective goals for the long term future. We agreed to meet at his winery around the time of harvest in the Southern hemisphere (March-April). Our interest became focused on an opportunity for Matthew to participate in the creation of a limited edition Malbec wine from Argentina.

Matthew and Elena, his wife who has been very involved in the trade sales of the Williamsburg Winery, Francoise and I arrived in Mendoza on Thursday, April 3, after long flights. (Patrick II and Kristen stayed in Williamsburg after the very recent birth of Robert Henry, their son and my sixth granchild.) On Friday, we drove to the A16 winery and visited the marvelously engineered “garage operation” where that unique Malbec was created. We drove around the vineyards noticing that the orientation of the rows were different from how the other wineries in the area had been set.

Argentine hospitality entails a traditional “asado” (see picture) for lunch to be enjoyed with wine, of course. For dessert, Mr. Cartellone took us for a short walk and surprised us with the fact that he had named a couple rows of his Malbec vineyard in the name of Matthew and Elena as well as in Francoise’s and mine. By the end of the day we had agreed on purchasing a small amount of the cases of “Apogeo” for our Wine Club Members as well as presentation to friends of the winery as a very special project.

The balance of our stay was spent visiting numerous wineries to evaluate and understand the region in terms of its soil as well as its climate. As it was, the weather was less than what is meant to be normal. During January through April, they had experienced a very unusual level of precipitation. The area is known for its dry climate and its water source derived from the glaciers of the Andes. The soil is clay mixed with a high proportion of rocks and drains very well.

The cases of “Apogeo” wines will be shipped to Norfolk prior to the summer months and will need to quietly settle here at the winery in temperature-controlled space before the release of this beautiful wine. We are all excited about our Footprint in Argentina, adding a new international dimension to the activities of the Williamsburg Winery.

In the meantime, our vineyard crew was busy spreading Dolomitic stone powder, gypsum and other minerals to improve the quality and micro-biological life of our vineyards. Healthier soils result in healthier vines and better grapes. We are also expanding our vineyards on site with the planting of Albariño and researching the possibility of other vineyard sites in Virginia. This will allow us to secure the highest quality of grapes to make more good wines. We remain always mindful that in the wine world, in Argentine, in Virginia or anywhere else, everything begins with the grapes.

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & Chairman

Part 20: The Strength of Peggy

Wed, 28 May 2014 20:05:39 GMT

Part 20: The Strength of Peggy

It is often said that behind or right next to every man who develops a project, there is a woman. Well, next to me for thirty seven years was Peggy. We were married in ’67. As I had been offered a position in Europe by Philip Morris, we moved to Switzerland in ’70 where both of our boys were born, in ’71 and ’74 respectively.

Peggy, in the light of the restrictive regulations in Switzerland, was not authorized to engage in any professional activity. Previously, both of us had worked at Eastman Kodak. There were a reasonably substantial number of international executives living in the Lausanne/Geneva area, and the contacts with the British contingent were actually quite fun. Britons have very nice sense of humor.

On the other hand, Peggy did not like or appreciate the classic approach that was so prevalent: that someone’s wife was pegged according to the husband’s position. I was the youngest of the Philip Morris executive group, and, accordingly, her status was that of the “wife of the junior guy”. Neither did she approve of the way the company thought (or perhaps, acted without thinking), such as taking things for granted, that I was at their beck and call, etc.

I still remember how upset she was one day when we were on home leave in upstate NY. On a Wednesday, I received a call from the senior VP requesting (or rather, instructing me) that instead of completing my vacation, I should take the plane the next day in order to be at a meeting in Lausanne with the regional president. This was to prepare the presentation to the corporate Board of Directors which was scheduled for the following week.

As requested, I did take the plane and left Peggy with the two boys. On that Friday morning, I was at the office, worked a good part of the weekend and flew back to NY later the following week for the presentation while Peggy and our sons were returning to Switzerland.

There were numerous other little events of a similar style. For example, one evening when I got back home around 7:30 PM, and she had a beautiful dinner ready. As we began to eat, there was a call requesting that I drive back to the office for a special meeting with VIP’s. As I left, I do remember Peggy quietly biting her lower lip and letting a couple of tears roll down her cheeks. It was heart-breaking.

Not a good way to keep a wife happy. And without any doubt, the conversation that we had in Guadeloupe as described in Part 1 of this story had a great deal to do with finding a life that could give a better balance in our relationship. Furthermore, we had been exposed to some of the less glamorous sides of business. We also did want a place for our sons to grow up away from some of the peer pressure usually found in the social network of corporate life.

Peggy had a strong-willed character. She was fiercely independent. We met in ’66 on the campus of the University of Rochester. She was California born. I was born on the other side of the pond. Both of us were studying at night and working full time at the main office of Eastman Kodak. I had seen her in the hallways of the corporate headquarters. Recognizing her, I invited her for a late nightcap. After a couple of Brandy Alexanders, our lips and our souls met. A few weeks later, we were engaged and married in August ’67 as mentioned previously.

Peggy had already travelled by herself to Europe staying with a family in Germany, then touring Switzerland and Italy alone. She was delighted at my assignment to move to Lausanne, and she adapted quickly to the European environment. Within a year, she spoke French to the point where native French people could not identify the origin of her slight accent.

We travelled extensively, particularly during my years as the manager of the Marlboro World Championship Team. Our travels took us all over Europe but also to Latin America and the Far East. With business travel obligations every weekend, the company covered her expenses to accompany me on numerous trips appreciating that it was imperative as a kind of compensation for my seven-day-a-week business schedule.

In ’73, I was asked to join a multi-country trip to Africa to evaluate potential marketing opportunities with a group of senior executives. Peggy was not asked to join us on that trip. The small corporate jet was detained in Zambia by the local military authorities, and we were all held without passports, under police guard in a hotel in Lusaka.

The word quickly got around that a small plane had “disappeared” over Africa and that the people expecting our arrival in South Africa had not received any news for three days on the whereabouts of the plane. Peggy had been advised and had received alarmed telephone calls from Louis Stanley, the owner manager of British Racing Motors who had been expecting us in Cape Town. It was Peggy who reassured him and confidently told him that we would all resurface in good health and that organizing search planes over such a huge continent was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

After four days of anxiety, we managed to quietly depart for Kenya. The details of that adventure will be for another story. Louis Stanley, a rather self important gentleman, admitted to me subsequently that he had never met somebody of such paused temperament as Peggy. Indeed, she was.

She loved the winery project and made it her own. As the Williamsburg operation was moving forward, she dedicated her focus away from our two boys, now well in their teen age years and becoming independent, to concentrate on the financial software and accounting-cash flow aspects of the winery, as well as on the viticultural aspects. She had a deep interest in nature and an affinity for how plants grow, develop and produce fruit.

Regardless of her fierce temperament, she always added precision and a detail oriented approach as well as an element of grace, femininity, and a touch of sensuous softness to whatever she did.

She became a relentless worker, participating on all the many projects of the farm. She learned to operate a backhoe, purchased our transit to survey the elevations of the areas where construction was planned and worked with the architect and me on the actual detailed plans of the original buildings of the winery.

In 1986, with Jeanette Smith as our Viticulture Manager on board, we went and studied the vineyards of numerous wineries in Virginia. Later, as the winery was developed, Peggy also participated in all the barrel cellar work. She had experienced a warm relationship with the elderly cellar master in Beaune during my time in Burgundy and put her knowledge to good use as described in the previous Part.

’88, The Duffeler family in front of the new house.

Ultimately, as we expanded the equity base of the operation, we structured a formal Board of Directors, and she became a member of that Board. A Board Member of few words, she was an attentive listener, who captured the attention of all whenever she expressed her opinion.

She was extraordinarily supportive and accepted with enthusiasm the reality of our changed lives which was far from the glamour of the Formula 1 Grand Prix or the Saint Tropez vacations that we had enjoyed in the seventies and early eighties.

She has been the spiritual mother of the winery project.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 19: The (true) Art and Science of Viticulture and Winemaking at the Williamsburg Winery

Wed, 28 May 2014 19:49:27 GMT

Part 19: The (true) Art and Science of Viticulture and Winemaking at the Williamsburg Winery

By the Fall of 1989, we had garnered a few awards. The regional press had been covering the start of our operation and sales were brisk. Looking at the depth of our inventory, we knew that soon we would face a dilemma. In the world of wine, you cannot sell what you do not have in the cellar, and it takes time and effort.

In a similar vein, we had been so absorbed in moving things forward that, though I had had a fair number of years of experience in consumer product marketing, I had failed to focus on the ability to transform concepts into a well structured and developed communication plan with visuals.

Thinking back about the previous three years, it was amazing the amount of information absorbed, the lessons learned. My years in Burgundy might have given me a reasonable perspective on financial issues and on sales and distribution challenges. However, viticulture and winemaking in Virginia was one hundred percent new and proved to be “learn as you go”.

As mentioned in previous Parts, I have always enjoyed drawing. It seemed that one of the ways to convey the coherence of our marketing was to use the Diderot Encyclopedia style of presentation of craftmanship.

When asked what inspired us in the design of the winery, my answer was that it would be the by-product of the mind of a mad European had he arrived on these shores in the Eighteenth Century. Importantly, it would retain human dimensions by the size of the various buildings to keep it quaint and comfortable.

Already by 1990, the winery consisted of several buildings projecting both that evolutionary step-by-step approach and retaining a village-like charm. It had the character of what the generations of settlers had brought with them from their European cultural background and yet we wanted it all to be very Virginian.

I set pencil to paper and started drawing what viticulture and winemaking was for us. Below is the cover of a brochure which became a very popular hand-out to our visitors.

Front cover of what became a well-received hand-out.

Here follows a quick description of issues that needed to be confronted.

Determining the optimal characteristics for the set-up of a vineyard. Certainly analyzing the characteristics of the soil, its percolation, its nutrients, its micro-biological life. Planning the orientation of the vineyards to the sun, rows running East-West vs. rows running North-South. Plant density and, importantly, selection of a trellising system.

In France, varietal selection, plant density and trellising are determined by the area where you plant your vineyard. The local agricultural agent will ensure that you follow the strict rules.

At the annual symposium for the wine industry in CA, there are always multiple presentations from experts from Australia to Italy, and each advises newcomers to follow their methodology and be assured of great success.

I am prone to giggle about the trellising options. The Italian way could not be more different from the French way and they are both so certain that their system is best that it could almost give rise to cultural warfare.

The interior spread describing modern winemaking.

Initially, we had planted our original three acre vineyard with rows eight feet apart. A couple years after she joined us, Jeannette, our Vineyard Manager who had successfully organized the next twenty-five acres with rows ten to twelve feet apart, decided, to my surprise and without prior consultation, to pull every other row in that original vineyard and make it a vineyard with rows sixteen feet apart.

Yes, it gave that much more room for equipment and for air to circulate. Still, today, many new vineyards in Virginia are planted with eight foot spacing between the rows and the debate is inconclusive. It depends on a point of view and personal experience.

After over twenty-five years of vineyard operation during which I witnessed the purchase of pieces of equipment that were to be “critically important” to one vineyard operator only to see it unused by his successor, I have become more pragmatic.

Back cover showing the steps in a year of viticulture.

The same holds true in winemaking. In Burgundy, fundamentally as in all vineyards in the world, you do not necessarily induce fermentation by cultured yeasts. You do not have to. The high concentration of clusters of vineyard in a given area provides plenty of airborne native yeasts present on the grapes at harvest. Thus, fermentation begins naturally in the cellar. The use of cultured yeast is an option for the winemaker in what is available to him to direct the fermentation.

Peggy decided to assist Steven Warner in the barrel cellar. She had been impressed by the reality of the presence of airborne yeasts in our kitchen in France. She would make a whole range of different breads. She would prepare the dough, let it sit in a tray hanging from a beam in the ceiling in a temperature environment of some seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit, and it would rise without the addition of cultured yeasts.

Again, in Burgundy, malolactic fermentation (the secondary fermentation) occurred naturally as opposed to being induced. In this case, the evolution of science has led winemakers to closely monitor fermentation temperature as it deeply affects the extraction of aroma compounds among many factors. Further, it is not common in Virginia to have deep vaulted cellars to provide a constant temperature.

Equally, the new thinking of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s pioneered by Californian winemakers introduced the concept of controlling whether a secondary fermentation is or is not desirable for a given wine, or even whether a partial secondary fermentation is sought for a specific balance between malic acid and lactic acid.

Secondary fermentation control can be a challenge of its own. If the amount of stabilizer used is inadequate, the wine can begin to referment in the bottle and lead to what is called “pushed corks”. In ’88, a small batch of our first chardonnay exhibited corks lifting in the bottle and pushing the capsules up by almost one inch. We popped the corks and re-processed the wine to ensure that it was stable. This was another experience that could have been far more serious.

Steven was open to ideas stimulated by our background in Burgundy. One day, he decided to do the fining of our reds by using the froth of egg whites that had been beaten and gently inserting some in each barrel. I remember Peggy telling me that when they had left the market with some thirty-six dozen eggs, the cashier wondered how large the omelet was going to be. It did do a good job of fining.

About the only thing Peggy was not comfortable with was manipulating empty or full barrels. Talented as she was, her one hundred-five pounds did not measure up. What mattered was that she was elated at participating in every aspect of the business.

From the beginning, we knew that we required a good wine laboratory with the right equipment to help guide the art of the winemaker, but those are only tools. Ultimately, all winemakers agree that a good wine begins its life right in the vineyards. Sound viticultural practices are of paramount importance. Yet, the best vineyard person cannot control the weather. So, it will always be a matter of living with nature.

The extensive studies undertaken by the Geisenheim Institute of Germany with different soils in different climates have underscored that the course of the seasonal equilibrium between sunshine and precipitation and the temperatures will define the suitability of certain varietals to specific climates and the ultimate potential of wines that are harvested in desirable conditions.

Nature can be challenging, but that in itself gives rise to opportunities. For a number of years, the French grew wine grapes in Algeria in weather conditions that were easy and apparently ideal: dry weather avoiding damaging moisture from humidity and plenty of sunshine that brought grapes to rich sugar and tannins. The wines were always described as rough if not just coarse.

In Bordeaux, on the other hand, as in many other areas where the climate is far more challenging, with occasional late spring frost, summer humidity and heavy Atlantic winds, winemakers have pursued the elegance of the right balance between the flavors and aroma compounds to achieve wines of great distinction with color, a pleasant nose, a consistent palate and rich after-taste.

That approach has also been the style of the creation of viticulture and winemaking at the Williamsburg Winery. Today, as we continue to learn and experiment, we feel certain that, as we go further, “The Best is yet to Come.”

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 18: Wessex Hundred, the Farm and its Environment

Wed, 28 May 2014 19:34:54 GMT

Part 18: Wessex Hundred, the Farm and its Environment

The ‘88 Vintage had been pressed. We had harvested good quantities from our on-site vineyards and secured additional grapes from our leased vineyards in several areas of the state.

With fermentation over, the wines had been either filtered and bottled or the chardonnay had been placed in barrels. The barrels we had acquired were a blend of mostly French Oak and some American Oak. The ’88 chardonnay was released late in the Spring of ’89. It was the second release of a chardonnay. The ’87 had moved very fast, and we were increasing production now in our brand new facility.

Simultaneously, the Company’s Capital Base had been expanded by the issuance of additional Shares to certain of the existing Shareholders. Once again, new forecasts were being prepared given the growing interest in the operation which had received a considerable amount of coverage.

As a member of the Virginia Wine Association, we suggested that Williamsburg would be the perfect location for the organization of the professional tasting to determine the best wines from Virginia in the competition defined as the Governor’s Cup. I recommended that the Association reach out to top, well recognized wine experts.

Shep Rouse, a professional winemaker of high qualifications, was happy with the selection of Williamsburg, his hometown, as the venue and accepted the task of acting as organizer. Rob Bickford used his excellent network of contacts to assist him. A first class group was assembled at the Williamsburg Inn, including Dan Berger of the LA Times, Terry Robards of The Wine Spectator, Patrick Fegan of the Chicago Tribune, Dee Stone of the Atlanta Constitution and Atlanta Wine Review, Peter Sichel, wine merchant and author, and Marcel Desaulnier, executive chef and co-owner of the famous Williamsburg Trellis restaurant.

As an issue of principle, I personally stayed out of the various tastings that were conducted with the help of volunteers from the membership of the VA Wine Industry.

Then came the evening black tie Gala in late September. I received a call a few minutes before departing for the reception. The notification was that we had won the coveted Governor’s Cup.

After the dinner, the awards were announced by Archie Smith, the then president of the VA Wine Association. The last award was revealed and Governor Baliles presented us with the trophy and made specific comments about his wish to see the industry grow in the Commonwealth. We invited him to be the guest of honor at the official grand opening of the winery. The Governor graciously accepted and the date was set for the early days of October.

Driving home that evening, all of us had large smiles. The next day the telephone kept ringing. The press wanted to interview us on site and find out how we had come to that result so quickly.

After all, we were just “the new kid on the block”.

So a few days later, we prepared for the Grand Opening. There seemed to be a multiplicity of details that needed attending: the last finishing touches to the construction and its appearance, interior as well as exterior, the format of the event, the list of guests, the invitations, protocol, etc.

There are too many ribbon cutting ceremonies, as I saw it, so we needed a unique approach. I thought of the European traditions of the Middle Ages when the officials of free cities presented a key of the entrance gate to their regional prince and ruler.

I tasked Ken with sourcing a classic brass rimlock with long brass keys. One was found in Richmond and hurriedly installed on the entrance door to the winery. One of the two keys was hung on a long chain and presented to Governor Baliles at the ceremony on a velvet cushion. The local TV was there along with County and City officials, Board Members, Shareholders and numerous guests, After the brief speeches under a tent, the Governor hung the chain around his neck and walked to the winery and opened its door.

We were winner of the Governor’s Cup and now officially open.

Governor Baliles has come back and visited with us numerous times. He tells me that he still has the key.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 17: Vintage Victory

Wed, 28 May 2014 19:13:45 GMT

Part 17: Vintage Victory

The ‘88 Vintage had been pressed. We had harvested good quantities from our on-site vineyards and secured additional grapes from our leased vineyards in several areas of the state.

As an issue of principle, I personally stayed out of the various tastings that were conducted with the help of volunteers from the membership of the VA Wine Industry.

Then came the evening black tie Gala in late September. I received a call a few minutes before departing for the reception. The notification was that we had won the coveted Governor’s Cup.

Driving home that evening, all of us had large smiles. The next day the telephone kept ringing. The press wanted to interview us on site and find out how we had come to that result so quickly.

After all, we were just “the new kid on the block”.

We were winner of the Governor’s Cup and now officially open.

Governor Baliles has come back and visited with us numerous times. He tells me that he still has the key.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

From the Perigord with Love

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 18:18:39 GMT

From the Perigord with Love

Early last year, Francoise and I were looking at homes in the Perigord, one of the iconic regions of France, just Northeast of Bordeaux. The Perigord is known for its pleasant climate, the beauty of the countryside and its castles, its extraordinary food including truffles and foie gras, and wonderful wines.

Our friend Alain Castagnie and his wife introduced us to a beautiful property just a few km South of Bergerac, the home of Cyrano of the Three Musketeers’ fame. The Chateau la Borderie is an eighteenth century manor home built on foundations dated to medieval days. The owner, Mme Lisbeth Vidal showed us a portion of an old chain mail that was discovered during an archeological dig on her property.

The Chateau is surrounded by wide acres of vineyards and they produce a good appellation Bergerac sauvignon blanc and a classic Bordeaux style red. However, the interesting nectar that we tried was their Monbazillac. I had remembered it from a trip taken with my family in the fifties. Sweet memory.

Monbazillac is a cousin of the Sauterne, the world famous, rich and unctuous wine designed to be enjoyed as an aperitif, to complement foie gras in its many varied recipes, or as a dessert. We decided to bring cases of Monbazillac to Williamsburg and share it with our visitors, guests and Club Members. Two companion wines will be featured: the first one “a vin moelleux” (a mellow wine); and, the second the Monbazillac proper. Both are made 100% from Semillon grapes, and the difference resides in how long the grapes are allowed to mature. Both are typically identified as “late harvest” that give them their richness.

Lisbeth Vidal, Mme Castagne and Françoise in the viticultural area of Chateau la Borderie.

Of course, even in a supposedly globalized world, things still take time. We had several most pleasant meetings with Mme Vidal, secured approval of the labels and special back labels from the federal government, and the wines were on their way to us by the end of the year. Next was the ABC registration approval. We are finally delighted to offer samples of the two wines to those who will want to experience a taste of these lovely nectars of Aquitaine.

Enjoy life.

Patrick Duffeler
Founder & Chairman

Winter Blending and Bottling Notes Give Nod to 2019 Reserves Including a Merlot in Class of its Own

Wed, 01 Jan 2014 14:59:00 GMT

Even with the vineyards dormant, the Williamsburg Winery is bustling this winter with the typical buzz surrounding blending and bottling. It’s one of the busiest periods at the winery topped only by harvest time.

Currently Winemaker Matthew Meyer is at work filtering the Petit Verdot Reserve, the Merlot Reserve, the Gabriel Archer Reserve and the Trianon in preparation for bottling.

The 2019 Adagio was bottled on Jan. 14 and guests at the winery’s four-course Adagio vertical dinner on Jan. 28 will get to sample that special blend. The dinner will also feature the 2015 and 2017 reserves. The 2019 Adagio won’t be for sale until October 2022.

After the 2019 reserves are bottled, Meyer will begin blending and bottling the 2020 reds, including the Virginia Appellation and the Wine Club blends. The 2021 reds will be moved from tanks to barrels.

“Once we get everything bottled, it slows down and we can focus on other things,” Meyer said.

Meyer anticipates outstanding reserves given 2019 was such an optimum year for growing grapes in Virginia.

“These are beautiful wines, extraordinary,” he said. “They are going to be some of the best reserves we’ve had as 2019 was such a great year and they’re going to spend almost two years in the barrel.”

The ideal vintage depends on ample precipitation in the spring and minimal rain from early August until harvest in October. It helps if the summer isn’t oppressively hot, which allows the grapes to remain on the vines longer to mature. The lack of heat prevents the grapes from getting sugar ripe before they are physiologically ripe.

“That’s exactly what we got in 2019,” said Kenny Bumbaco, Retail and Tasting Room Sales Manager at the Williamsburg Winery. “Whereas in 2017, we had a wet spring, but it was very hot, and we had grapes that ended up becoming almost raisins on the vine.”

In addition to quality of grapes, the quantity of the grapes from 2019 was also impressive, and that combination is unusual, Meyer said.

“Usually if you have quality, you don’t have quantity,” he said. “We had both. I believe the 2019 vintage to be the best I have experienced in Virginia in my tenure here.”

Meyer believes the 2019 Merlot Reserve will create its own spectacle, noting, “it’s probably the best Merlot Reserve in the history of the company.”

While it’s too early to forecast what 2022 holds, Meyer said, he’s pleased with the recent cold spell.

“The temperatures now help with the controlling the bug population,” he said. “But right now, it’s too early to make any real predictions.”

The post Winter Blending and Bottling Notes Give Nod to 2019 Reserves Including a Merlot in Class of its Own appeared first on The Williamsburg Winery .

One More Trip to Europe, Spring ‘13

Wed, 29 May 2013 14:35:34 GMT

One More Trip to Europe, Spring ‘13

The first twenty parts covered the history of how the Williamsburg Winery began its life. I have been working on the next volume of parts on the excitement and challenges of the nineties and they will be released over the next months.

As a break in that process, here is the story of our latest trip. And, more of these will be interspersed with the continuing parts on the creation of Wessex Hundred as it is today.

Given the condition of the world today, international traveling is nothing like it was in the sixties or the seventies. From the downing of the PanAm 747 over Lockerbie to the plane crashes on the World Trade Center towers, terrorism has grown to the point of the necessity of adding layer upon layer of security at many aspects of daily living but more particularly to air travel. The resulting impact has been the deeply unpleasant time-consuming accommodation of the security measures, particularly when you miss a transfer flight as we did some months back. But, then again, life is what it is and the security is indeed needed.

The charming hotel Schoenbrunn just outside of Landshut. The perfect place to have a relaxing afternoon and goodnight sleep after the transatlantic flight.

In late April, we embarked for our destination to Munich, Germany. Coming from a family of Germanic roots, I have particularly enjoyed being in Bavaria, since my early days as a young boy in the Fifties. To top it all, Francoise, who is very French, lived for a couple of years in Munich and enjoyed it greatly. After collecting our gear and getting our wheels from one of the rental car agencies, we drove, as we usually do, to the small Baroque city of Landshut, twenty minutes from the airport and rested overnight in a charming hotel housed in an old building that was a rural castle, Hotel Schoenbrunn.

The next morning, we crossed Bavaria and Baden Wuertenberg and reached the Swiss border for a meeting with Marc Breitenmoser, the owner of ARCave, a fascinating company that specializes in creating kits for constructing vaulted wine cellars. The range of products for the high quality organization of an up-market wine cellar that his company offers wine enthusiasts is extraordinary.

Of course, I have to admit that adding a vaulted wine cellar to our operation has been one of the limited expansions that I have been dreaming about for years. See how they build vaulted cellars on their web site.

http://www.rundumwein.com/

Our next session was near Geneva, a meeting with Eric Petiot a plant pathologist who has written numerous books on organic ways to treat plants and trees. Our interest centered on his recommendations for the world of viticulture that had been described on a television show on French satellite TV.

We had exchanged emails and arranged for the meeting at his house that includes his lab site. Eric Petiot is genuinely a genial person who discusses plant pathology with passion, and he recommended that during our trip we visit a viticulturist in the Champagne area who acts as the head of a group of champagne producers who are focusing on the health of their soils and the adoption of management techniques that are ultimately friendlier to the environment.

It was not just idle curiosity. Patrick II, my son, Matthew, our winemaker and I have been focusing on how we could improve our viticultural practices from enhancement of the micro-biological life of the soil to minimizing the use of any chemicals.

We then drove down to Chambery and had the pleasure of an over-night stay in a wonderful old castle. I have had, since my early years, a love of old castles, and Francoise shares that feeling. The evening meal was light but superb including fresh asparagus with a surprisingly delicious passion fruit sauce.

Soon we were back in Forcalquier where Francoise has her apartment in an old nineteenth century stone house in that little city in the mountainous part of Provence, north of Aix.

The view from the back terrace with the snow-capped Alps in the background.

Last year while I had remained in Williamsburg, she had begun to remove old wall paper in the entry of her place. We decided that we would finish the project . The walls soon were bare to old plaster. The ceiling had also been covered in Fifties biddy flower wall paper, and I set myself on top of the ladder to check things out to determine how and on what surface it had been applied.

Surprise, the plaster boards were loose and quickly I took it down noticing that these boards had been carelessly nailed into a few wood pieces that were barely attached to the rafters. Over the years, I have always enjoyed manual labor from making furniture to planting trees as a way to relax and focus on completely different things.

The plan was then to install a cathedral ceiling made in tongue in groove heavy wood pine boards and create a beam like assembly at the peak of the ceiling.

Several days later the project was completed to Francoise’s approval and satisfaction, and we could use the next days to visit a few places in Provence that were on our to-do list.

With friends we travelled to the Chateau de Berne which is both a hotel and a winery. As such it is a destination very much like our Wessex Hundred farm, just larger and in Provence rather than in Virginia, two regions of the world that we consider to be very close to paradise. http://www.chateauberne.com/en/home.html

We enjoyed a delightful meal on the terrace and went to visit the winery and the winery shop. The staff at the shop was most interested to learn about our operation and a couple of them were not shy asking as to whether they could intern with us.

No question, the Chateau de Berne is a beautiful property of fifteen hundred acres in the hills of Provence with lavender fields and vineyards that produce a great rosé. A perfect place to relax for an afternoon.

Francoise took the picture of our friends from Provence (left) and the owner Chateau Thuerry (center) just before we went down to visit the cellars.

Later, we went to visit Chateau Thuerry which features a stunning avant-garde architectural winemaking cellar and enjoyed a tour of the facilities with the owner, M. Croquet. http://www.chateauthuerry.com/homepage

The new architectural avant-garde design of the cellars of Chateau Thuerry.

A few days later, we were on our way up north driving through the Massif Central.

Near Vichy, the small city famous for its medicinal thermal waters as well as mineral water, we had booked our overnight stay in a hotel, member of the Chateaux-Hotel collection headed by Alain Ducasse, probably one of the world’s top chefs if not the best.

The Chateau de Maulmont was managed by the Scottish-Dutch couple, also owners of the place. Francoise was impressed with its nineteenth century architecture as the structure was rebuilt over the ruins of a XIII century fortress. http://www.chateau-maulmont.com/fr,1,6474.html

The next day, we stopped at the home of friends in Sologne some hundred miles south of Paris. We have known the Lefebure family since 1972. Claude & Christiane have a few years on us, and we have had the pleasure of hosting their son and a number of the grandchildren and cousins for visits at the winery. It is always a pleasure to see them. Claude shares the same care and love of his woods as I do with ours.

After a quick breakfast we departed for the Loire valley known for its succession of the most famous royal palaces of the French royalty. A quick lunch with Francoise’ family and we were on our way towards Burgundy, deliberately selecting small country roads known as “departementales or communales”. Winding, well maintained roads with virtually no traffic.

Our meeting in the heart of Burgundy was with Alex Gambal a young American who some twenty years ago decided to take the plunge and become a vigneron and winery owner in and around Beaune. His wife Diana Williams is a former free-style skier who now organizes special , custom vacations in French wine country. Alex showed us his cellar. We tasted an exceptional white wine that we plan to bring in for our friends of Wessex Hundred. His production is limited. We are now talking about acquiring a special barrel of the famous Hospice de Beaune. http://www.alexgambal.com

A few hundred kilometers up North, we stayed overnight with my brother’s widow deep in the Ardennes, virtually at the border of France, Belgium and Luxemburg. It was a short stay as we had a 10 o’ clock meeting with the young Champagne producer. It was Pentecost Monday in France, and the traffic was light. We made the two hundred clicks and got there right on time.

Sebastien Mouzon is from a family well established in Champagne. We had a most interesting meeting and left pleased with what he had shared with us. What was really important, he is one of the vignerons who has all his enthusiastic soul in the product he produces and is greatly oriented towards organic farming.

We then took the slow lane driving back towards Germany stopping over in the Black Forest on the mountain road high in the Alps. The temperature had dropped down to about 40 degrees and we were in the clouds in these dark woods. We finished the trip on the last day with lunch in the Ratskeller of Munich, one of our traditions.

Goodbye Europe until our next visit. We gathered plenty of information and little details that we can use to adapt to our projects in Williamsburg to make Wessex Hundred, the farm that encompasses the Williamsburg Winery and Wedmore Place with our own Café Provencal, a touch more unique, a place for good food, good wines and a place to “Enjoy Life”.

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & Chairman

Part 16: Moving Toward

Tue, 28 May 2013 18:50:01 GMT

Part 16: Moving Forward

Watch the 25 year old Channel 3 News of the first crush and bottling.

This was the real thing. Harvesting grapes from our own vineyards; managing the crush from A to Z in our own winery; organizing the first barrel cellar. Soon, it was time to bottle the second vintage of Governor’s White on our own equipment which, according to Steve, would have a capacity of processing 600 to 800 cases per day.

It was late Fall 1988, and we had joined the Virginia Wineries Association. At a meeting near Charlottesville, we all went to discuss the general impressions of the volume and quality characteristics of the vintage. Archie Smith III was, at that time, president of the Association. Archie was the son of the man who caused the VA farm Winery Act to be passed by the State Legislature in ’71. By then, his father was in frail health, and Archie had taken over the family operation of Meredyth Vineyard. He had been a lecturer at Oxford in the UK and was intellectually brilliant. Unfortunately, his business acumen was not up to the demands of his vineyard enterprise. I am still saddened by his untimely passing. Archie did a lot to help the development of the Virginia Wine Industry. (See to the right, the ’87 brochure from Meredyth Vineyards.)

It was the first time that I remember fully appreciating the impact of both the different micro-climates of Virginia on grape-growing and the natural debates that ensue between those who were convinced that their micro-climates were the best and possibly the only ones where grape growing would yield the ultimate grapes.

Given that we had already the experience of working with four different areas where we were sourcing our grapes, we quietly chuckled at some of those controversial and not terribly constructive exchanges. In truth, after buying grapes from different growers in different areas of Virginia for twenty five years, we believe that there are varietals that are best suited for some of the different areas, that yes, there are varietals that will do exceptionally well in our Commonwealth, but that for a wide variety of reasons, the claim that one area is the best is simply a mistaken perception.

From a pure grape growing point of view, it is wise to source from different areas. A hurricane may hit a vineyard leaving other areas untouched. The same can apply to a late frost after bud-break or a spring hailstorm that can ravage a vineyard in less than thirty minutes. Furthermore, each of the different micro-climates in Virginia expresses different aroma compounds and flavors in their grapes. And, of course, it makes sense from a business point of view to spread risks and not to have all your eggs in one basket. (See also the VA wine growing map showing the various vineyards where we source grapes as shown on the web-site.)

During that same meeting of the association, I recall being asked what our production plan was for the coming vintage. My honest answer was that we were targeting to produce nine thousand cases. The colleague who had raised the question looked at me in mild disbelief but made no further comment except to wish us luck with our operation. Later that evening, I overheard that our production target had been widely circulated and been the object of unflattering comments about “another winery that will soon learn of the problem from excess inventory”.

Given that we were already backlogged on our orders and were pressing for the bottling of the ’88 vintage, I reflected on the unfortunate situation of wineries that assumed that because they made wine, customers would beat a path to their doors.

The wine industry is a forecasting industry, more so than most consumer goods businesses. It takes eight to ten years between ordering the varietals from the nurseries to releasing the bottled wine that will have been made from the grapes of those plants. One has to work hard at anticipating shifting consumer preferences and be certain to have a business plan that includes pricing based on costs and that will be competitive at the various levels of distribution.

Thanksgiving week-end became the day for testing our bottling line. Initially, Steve had thought that two or three persons could handle the line that had been ordered and installed in the early days of August. After the set-up, it turned out that it would take one person to be very fast and effective at placing the empty bottles on an accumulation table, one person to control the various equipment (including regularly refilling the hopper of the automatic corker or re-stacking the labels in the labeler), one person to position the capsule on the bottle before it penetrated in the enclosed capsule spinner, and a couple of persons to place the finished bottles, properly filled to the federally approved level, corked, capsuled, back and front labeled, into empty cases to be placed on pallets of 56 cases. Given that the line could move about two cases per minute, it needed at least five persons.

Dr. Messmer, our Board Member, offered his help and brought his wife and young daughter to assist. We did get many cases bottled that day and saw those cases move out the door within days. We were grateful for their help.

Bob West, the anchorman at TV Channel Three of Norfolk, had developed an interest in our project after filming the Harvest and Crush, and he came back for the bottling. We have kept the video of the evening news that presented clips from his more extensive special feature stories.

The emergence of the wine industry in Virginia was still a novelty and it was making news. Almost every week, there was call from the press inquiring about our project and giving us some coverage. Importantly our wines were well received by consumers and critics.

Treville Lawrence, one of the vineyard owners from the Northern Virginia area who had studied the history of Virginia’s considerable efforts at making wines, wrote a book titled “Jefferson and Wine” that came out in ’89. One of the exciting chapters was titled, “Jefferson’s Dream Come True”. It included a kind paragraph about the young Williamsburg Winery.

“Outstanding from another point of view was the establishment in coastal Jamestown -site of the first settler’s landing- of Williamsburg Vineyard and Winery by the Patrick G. Duffeler family. This was the spot where Captain John Smith exclaimed about the abundance of grapes growing in the trees and incorrectly predicted there would be unlimited winegrowing on the coast of the new continent. The Duffelers were the first after some 375 years to successfully plant the vinifera and make a quality wine in this heretofore inhospitable climate. They were awarded the Vinifera Association’s Grape/Wine Productivity Champagne tray.”

In the meantime, the balance of the farm that we had not purchased was the object of an archaeological study organized by Nick Lucchetti and Bill Kelso. That also generated considerable publicity as they found a skeleton of a settler who, it was subsequently found out, had probably been a victim of the Indian uprising of 1621 and had been hastily buried. His remains had been sent over to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. and, after study, were returned and reburied on the farm.

In early ’89, Peggy and I took another trip to California to visit wineries and study their retail shop operation. We were shocked at one of the older wineries established in the center of Healdsburg. We witnessed a young man touring wineries with his girlfriend requesting the opportunity to sample their best reserve, and the pleasant lady in charge of the shop obligingly disappeared in the cellar to fetch the corresponding wine. While the lady was searching for the reserve bottle, the girl asked her friend how many bottles he intended to purchase. His answer was, “I am over my limit on my credit card and have no intention of buying anything.” We could see that the young lady was mortified at the thought that her friend was requesting to have the opportunity to sample the best at no cost and had no plan to purchase products.

Right then we made the decision that we would charge a small but reasonable fee for tour and tasting at our winery. Rob, our sales star, was uncertain. His view was that sampling at no cost in the retail shop was a marketing function and that it was a major business error to even consider a small fee. I felt strongly about the matter, particularly given that experience in CA and prevailed.

Organizing limited sampling in stores within the regulatory framework is good marketing. Offering visitors at the winery a well structured guided tour and a tasting in a wine glass (as opposed to plastic cups which was the norm in many wineries where a tasting was free) gave consumers real value and deserved to be compensated by a small fee.

The details of the on-site retail shop design were completed. Next came the task of finding the person to manage it. Tarki, the wife of Ken Crook, who had brilliantly managed the construction of the winery, offered to handle it. It became “her shop”, and she gave that project her whole dedication and thoughtfulness. Soon, business was booming seven days a week. Within a few months, we would log over ten thousand visitors annually and, by the end of the nineties, well over twenty thousand visitors.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 14: 1988, Launching the First Wine

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:03:44 GMT

Part 14: 1988, Launching the First Wine

Early December ’87. It had been over seven years since that trip to Guadeloupe that sparked the thought of launching us in a new direction. We sat in the kitchen of the old house with samples of the Riesling and the Vidal as well as a modest amount of chardonnay.

Rob Bickford had come down from New York and was planning to leave his position with a NYC importer-wholesaler where he had demonstrated his talent as a great people person on the one hand but, importantly, as somebody who had studied his wine world. After all, when he stayed with us in France when I was involved in Burgundy, I had arranged for him to participate, ie work at the harvest of Corton Charlemagne.

Jeanette and Steve were also there. With Peggy and myself, we were five. I began by outlining the importance that I felt the first release needed to express to potential consumers about who we were and what we wanted to project. All five of us had also tasted some less than friendly wines from Virginia. We were aware that wine connoisseurs did not think much of the VA wine industry as a whole.

Jeannette talked about the VA consumers’ preference for sweeter wines. Steve acknowledged that from his experience at Rapidan, Montdomaine and Chateau Morrisette, although he preferred drier wines. Rob wanted our first product to be a very dry chardonnay.

We did not think that the chardonnay was quite as developed as we would have liked it to be, and we wanted to give the chardonnay more time in oak barrels. Also, there was not enough of it for the first release in our opinion. So, we then focused on my original concept of trying to formulate a wine that expresses itself as fruity, young, easy to drink. We blended the Vidal and the Riesling and kept on changing the percentages. I felt confident that we were on the right track. It was also very interesting to see how a one percent difference between the two varietals impacted the flavor.

A consensus was reached. We notified Steve Reeder at Burnley and worked out the details on the bottles we had selected: a burgundy style, dead leaf green, to be dressed with a matte black capsule. Corks were also ordered. We had agreed that with the product being a blend, it would have its own name. It seemed to me that in Virginia, the birthplace of America, a wine named “Governor’s White” would be memorable and well identified with our respect for the culture and history of the Commonwealth.

This was the signal that the wheels of business had really started turning. A few weeks before, I had asked Dr. Messmer, our marketing professor at the College of William & Mary who had accepted to join our board of directors, for recommendations on an administrative assistant. He mentioned a person who had done some part-time work for him. Her name was Barbara Travers. She agreed to work with us and within a few weeks, she proved to be an extraordinary asset to the company. She did admit a few years later that she had wondered about my sanity.

The order was placed for the labels which had been the object of federal approval and now needed to be registered with the VA Alcohol and Beverage Control Board. The telephone conversation with the federal specialist handling the label approval was memorable. She began by asking how we could have a wine that needed a label approval if we had only received our federal permit on November 24. Had we cheated in our operation by processing wines before the grant of the permit? I laughed and reassured her that we had leased a portion of a licensed winery and gave her the pertinent details. Her surprised and somewhat admiring comment was that we had been the first to use that method. Time is money.

In late January, we arranged for the transfer of nearly seven hundred cases of Governor’s White from Charlottesville to our winery. The small space allocated for warehousing in that new building was limited. We crammed it all in, and Rob was ready to hit the road and make the first sales. Steve was invited to open the first bottle on January 22 to refresh our senses and ensure that it was exactly what we had determined it should be in December. It was tasty, and I still hold that first empty bottle in my office.

I presented a bottle to Rodgers Huff, the area president of United VA Bank. He acknowledged it graciously but with almost a certain indifference when I stopped in at his office. Remarkably, the next morning which was a Saturday, he knocked at the door of our house. He was in his horse-riding gear and had sparkles in his eyes. His comment was simple, “That wine you gave me yesterday, we had it with dinner, it is just delicious. I am so impressed.”

During that Saturday and all of the next week, Rob hit all our targeted accounts in Williamsburg. The first person that Rob contacted was Tom Power, owner of the iconic Williamsburg Cheese Shop and at that time, partner in the famous Trellis restaurant. He suggested that we should enter the wine in the Norfolk Yacht Club wine competition that was being judged the coming week. We followed Mr. Power’s advice without any great expectations. In the meantime, we had secured plenty of orders from the local merchants.

Then, low and behold, the results of the Norfolk Yacht Club competition came in. Our Governor’s White had been awarded a Best in its Class medal. We were stunned and surprised; we were on to something. We could feel it.

On February 9th, we tasted the components for our second wine. A classic dry wine which we had decided to call the James River White. We were very conscious that the internationally known fine food and wine specialist of Gault & Millau of France had described the James River as the US equivalent of the Loire valley for its scenic beauty, the plantations that dot its shores and its expression of the traditions of Virginia.

Continuing the expansion of the vineyards required us to provide irrigation just in case of a major dry spell. While VA averages about 28” of precipitation annually, it can have both dry Springs and dry Falls. We like the latter, but vines do not like the former. Drip irrigation is an excellent insurance.

There were several wells on the farm. We decided to rehab one of the old wells and built a small shed with a large 1,000 gallon tank inside to maintain constant pressure. This provided us with the perfect opportunity to improve the water pressure to our home. Another project. The well house is about twelve hundred feet from the house. The issue became then how do we get power to that well house. An overhead line was out of the question.

A bit of study. For that kind of distance, get Number One electrical wire, rent a trencher and drop the line in the trench. Shovel in some soil and install the water line in the same trench, make sure everything works and fill the trench back. Our wonderful well man was surprised when there was no voltage drop for the 220 line over that distance.

Jeanette kept the trencher for the next days to plan for the various underground lines to the different vineyards as her crew was installing more posts preparing for the arrival of the vines from the nurseries.

In order to shape the ground surface for the vineyards and to ensure adequate drainage, we arranged for the rental of a big earth mover. Bruce Capps, Eric’s brother, a specialist in conservation and land management flagged the right grass-waterway and directed the equipment. The ground was so soft in one area that the machine sunk down in a spot of anaerobic clay. It took another giant machine to pull it out. That, we decided, was not a good spot to plant grapevines.

Another project was to create a passable access road. The original driveway was in the wrong location. We had cut a new driveway from the state-maintained road, to our house; a distance of close to one mile. Its clay surface was dusty when dry and slippery when wet.

A UPS truck found itself in the ditch one day. Nothing that more than a few truck-loads of gravel wouldn’t fix. Just watch the cash.

A marketing question came up at that time. What do we want the entrance to look like? The entrance is the first statement to the visitors. I sketched a half circle and designed a couple of guard houses. To emphasize the half circle that would provide an adequate area for vehicles to decelerate, we placed posts and chains on both sides and designed a relatively small sign on a wood and wrought iron post reminiscent of design common in the tradition of England. Add a stack of barrels in front of a 10 acre vineyard, and it could not be mistaken; that is the entrance to the winery.

A friend of Rodgers Huff suggested the crepe myrtles, and they have become almost symbolic of our entrance road.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 13: Jump in the Project with Both Feet

Wed, 22 May 2013 20:48:04 GMT

Part 13: Jump in the Project with Both Feet

It reminded me of the famous quote of Caesar crossing the Rubicon. “Alea Iacta Est”. (The die has been cast.)

Oh, yes, the time was January ’87. I was negotiating with the representative of the family that had the control of the international operations of Fragrances Selective. There had been a split in the family on their thought about expanding their international operation vs expanding through acquisition in the Latin world. The decision had been made to sell the US operation. My work in the restructuring of the Swiss and Dutch companies had been completed and therefore I finalized the terms of my departure and the sale of my small equity in the company which I could then apply to the winery project.

One of the many rather sad moments was to say goodbye to many of the very talented people I had engaged in the belief that the promises of the future focused on growth and professionalism dedicated to business success and which had now evaporated.

The pleasant other side of the coin is that I remained on very friendly terms with George Share, the Executive VP of Fragrances Selective, who had given his utmost to help double the sales of the US operation in less than 4 years. George is like an older brother to me, and we still see each other regularly.

Another person whom I had considerable concern about her new future was my executive assistant from Barcelona. Josefina Antem, a young Spanish lady who had spent time in the UK and was unbelievably efficient.

Thanks to Facebook, we were able to connect again via internet. Josefina found my whereabouts and wrote to me after no news from ’87 until earlier this year. It has been most gratifying to connect with friends and/or even acquaintances by being able to send and receive messages that bring warmth to the heart in this modern society of so many artificial connections.

Of course, Peggy and I had known for years that we had made the decision that the project was going to be our destiny. Still, leaving the position of international executive, travelling to many beautiful places and concentrating on getting things done with a group of wonderful people and receiving a substantial compensation demanded a bit of adaptation.

Yes, the die had been cast, as I tend to refer to it sarcastically today. I changed my life from being underworked (not totally true) and overpaid (again, not totally true either) to the reverse (that absolutely true), but I have loved it and that was what we wanted to do.

We had purchased an expensive farm, began a project that would virtually “eat me alive” seven days a week with a great many unknowns. A very good friend has told me that perseverance is the key. Indeed, it has been.

Peggy and I were then living on the farm and working on our projects one hundred percent. Our big goal was also to finish up the interior of the new house and move in it. This would allow us to use the old 1736 rehabbed building for a friend of Rob Bickford and his wife who could then move in and focus on all the serious winery construction that was ahead of us.

Patrick II, Terence and I began working, whenever time allowed, on installing the tongue-in-groove pine floors. We hired a crew to install the drywall and another crew to do the painting.

If we put things in perspective, that was the slowest construction of a house. Begun in ’84 as previously stated in Part 6, we had the garage wing completed by the end of that year. Masonry for the basement and the massive two-story structure allowing for nine open-hearth fireplaces were completed by Mr. Hardy and his crew in the spring of ‘85. Framing of the main portion was Mike’s project. Peggy and I dedicated our time to the first planting of grapes.

Construction moved along nicely, but things slowed down during a rather cold winter.

During ’86, the brick work and the expansive cedar roof were finished, and the grounds could be addressed by bringing the soil level up several feet to provide a good drainage on the North side. On the South side, the sloping ground would provide all the drainage that we might ever want and gave a view onto the acreage.

Focusing on the winery project, step number one in ’87, was to build the first winery center: a 60’ x 24’ building that was to house the tractors and equipment as well provide a comfortable apartment, on the upper level, for Jeanette Smith, our viticultural manager.

Designs were promptly done and submitted to the County for approval.

We got our craftsman carpenter to focus on this new project and placed the completion of our new house aside. In no time, the building was constructed right on the same footprint of an erstwhile barn on the farm.

Then came certification for occupancy. Mike, the carpenter, called and advised me that the code compliance people were on the site and were unhappy. I drove down and met with them and the issue was simple. We had built a bathroom downstairs for our viticultural personnel and the seat was one half inch too close to the wall according to regulations. I could not believe it.

I was told that we could remove the toilet bowl and the building would pass code for occupancy. I argued that it was my wish to provide personnel with clean and pleasant latrines rather than tell them to go in the woods. Finally, one of the three inspectors came up with a solution, suggesting that we use a PVC adapter that would allow the bowl to move that special half inch away from the wall. Another storm in a tea-cup. We followed the recommendation, and Jeanette was cleared to move into her apartment that had all the pleasant conveniences that any hard working dedicated person deserves to have.

Viticulture planning was on the forefront of the action. We expanded vineyards on site and again visited as many Virginia vineyards as we could. During the summer, Jeannette hired Eric Capps who was to prove a valuable associate for many years. Eleven acres of vineyards were planted that year.

In the meantime, we began filing our application for the federal permit to operate a winery and learned that it was slightly more complicated than we thought. Requirements included FBI clearance, personal interviews with federal agents, granting the federal government unlimited access to our bank accounts, disclosing the sources of our savings, etc.

Then, we also had to receive a state farm winery license. We met with Chris Curtis, then VA Head of ABC Compliance, around our kitchen table, and that was actually neat. Virginia was interested in developing the wine industry, and we therefore enjoyed a receptive audience even if the application had to strictly follow procedures.

Next on the list was where were we going to do our first crush? We had been advised that securing our federal and state permits would take possibly six months. Our application had been filed on July 20. There was no way that we could have the building approved for our first crush and production. We had to be creative.

We inquired as to whether we could lease a portion of another winery, install our own tanks in their facilities and process our first crush there. We were advised that such was approved.

Among the regular trips that we had made, Charlottesville had been high on our list as the then epicenter of the winemaking development in Virginia. We had developed a good relationship with the Reeder family that owned and operated Burnley Vineyards, and we quickly made a proposal that they accepted as they found the project interesting.

In the course of a visit to Charlottesville, we met with Steve Warner whom we had met during our tour of Wineries in ’84 to discuss his eventual interest in working with our operation. Over a luncheon on Route 29 with Steve, newly married to Brenda, Peggy and I made him a proposal. We came to an agreement that he would join us in late November.

Next was ordering stainless steel tanks. California, of course, was the place to source those tanks. We were advised that another winery in construction under the control of Tom Payette, was also planning on acquiring tanks from the West Coast. We coordinated with them and secured that our three 1500 gallon tanks as well as the other tanks were on the same trailer to reduce shipping costs.

Upon arrival, we were there to help unload the various tanks and install them first in Tom’s winery and then within the cellar of Burnley. We had ordered them with special stands such that they would be easy to place on a regular concrete floor. (The bottom of a tank is sloped to facilitate cleaning).

Jeannette had taken care of the viticultural contracts such that we would have the grape supply that we felt was needed. One contract was with a vineyard on the Eastern Shore; one with a vineyard owned by Seagram’s West of Charlottesville; and, a third from Northern Virginia. That and our limited harvest on site would be sufficient to plan a production of some twenty-five hundred cases.

Since the first planting, I had been intrigued by the importance of packaging and particularly wine labels. I remember our friend Barend Lodbrok, the head of a division of Hoechst in Germany with whom I had discussed our winery plan. He was a man of refined style, a great admirer of modern art, and was emphatic about the importance of label design for wines.

For months, I had been looking into the concept of a label design. We labored through an entire list of hundreds of ideas. One of our investors gave us a large envelope of perhaps sixty or more existing labels to use as a base to create different options. We also wanted to have unique names for the various products. Finally, with the assistance of Kathy Gilbert who was the designer in a shop of a couple of neat ladies from Richmond, we came up with both a design for a logo and the visual balance for the label.

Simultaneously, we had been in extensive conversation with a local lawyer turned business entrepreneur who recommended and subsequently assisted us to transform the partnership into a “Sub S Corporation” and bring in a few participating local investors. That was wrapped up in late August. We held the first shareholders’ meeting in Berret’s, a nice seafood restaurant in the old part of Williamsburg, and were joined by Dr. Don Messmer, a faculty member of William & Mary who taught marketing.

We had Riesling, Vidal and Chardonnay. Our total production plan was for 2500 cases of whites and a blush. I went to Crozet, just below the Skyline Drive, with Jeannette Smith who, at that time, was our vineyard manager to coordinate the picking.

It was a beautiful day and the pickers worked very well until, all of a sudden, a cloud opened up just as the picking of the grapes was completed and we needed to lift the lugs and put them on the back of the trailer. The pickers decided that they were finished, ran towards their vehicles and disappeared. It was left to Jeannette and me to get the grapes to the winery. She drove the tractor and I collected the lugs walking ankle deep in red clay under a heavy downpour.

We drove the tractor and the trailer to Burnley and processed the grapes. That was our first crush, twenty five years ago.

Then, in October our hearts started pumping faster. The Dow Jones had a terrible seismic downfall of some 23 percent. The news was alarming. We sat grim faced at the kitchen table and planned an alternative course pending a clear vision of where things were going to lead us. By the late evening, we had a plan: keep our personnel and discuss cutbacks in salaries. (At that time Peggy and I were operating on our savings and felt we had the resources to face an extended deferral if needed).

Very soon, the economic environment got back to a more optimistic course and we could shelve our “emergency” plan.

Whenever time allowed we continued finishing the new house and, by Thanksgiving, we moved in . All the bedrooms and bathrooms were operational as was the kitchen. There were several rooms that needed final touches, but they could wait. Ken Crook, his wife and children moved into the old house. The working team was expanding.

On November 24th, we received our ATF approval and the ABC telephoned us to tell us that we were immediately being issued our Farm Winery License.

The folks at Burnley advised us in early December that the fermentation of our grape juice was about completed. Racking and filtering were next, and we could come and pick up samples of our juices.

Excitement and expectations. Rob Bickford planned to come down from New York for the tasting. Jeannette and Steve were equally on edge. 1987 had been a race.

What were those first wines going to taste like?

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 12: The Silos on the Farm

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:40:55 GMT

Part 12: The Silos on the Farm

There were three silos on the farm. Big. Some fifty to sixty foot tall silos made in concrete interlocking pieces held tight by metal rings. One was right next to the location where we wanted the winery. It had to go. We contacted a demolition company and the price was $5K. We thought that was excessive. Dynamite would do the job. We inquired and were advised that we would need a special permit from the federal government and that it required prior FBI approval. Forget that avenue.

I went to look closely at the silo (see the first picture). It was an impressive construction covered in Virginia creeper. Checking on the concrete units, I decided to try to literally shoot the silo down. With my 30-30 gun, I made a few shots, and it very nicely penetrated the concrete pieces.

Michael Waltrip, our craftsman carpenter, was intrigued. As he was also a good shot, we decided that I would shoot the silo on the North side, and he would shoot it from the South side to chisel sideways in the concrete until we would leave a single central piece on the East side. We also shot at an angle from a nice safe distance to ensure that even if my calculations had been incorrect and the silo might collapse earlier than planned, everybody would be safe.

The moment came when there was just an eight to ten inch wide piece left right in the middle of the two sliced areas. Mike took his motorized camera. I told Patrick II and Terence to step well back, and I took the last shot. The silo collapsed just as we wanted it, and exactly where we wanted the rubble to accumulate. Cost of the operation: about $175 of ammo.

One of the other silos served as a “medieval tower” for Patrick II and Terence. Here is their description of what it became for them:

From Patrick II:
Shooting down the silo was a really impressive thing to behold for the younger Duffelers. As I recall, I was somewhat skeptical about the manner Father chose to demolish that structure. I have to give it to him; he’s one very determined and stubborn individual. Once he sets his mind on how something is going to be done, it is a rare occasion that would sway him from his course.

Terence and I were intrigued with the relative ease with which we were able to punch holes in the side of the concrete silo. After the first silo was removed, there remained two on the property, and we selected one to convert into a fort. The silo was adjacent to an abandoned barn which served as the source of lumber for our project. Armed with a couple of hammers and crowbars, we made short work of the barn pulling out beams and decking. We then punched small holes in the side of the silo about 7 ft up the side of the wall (large enough to support the beams removed from the barn). Two beams across the silo allowed us to place the decking across half the circumference of the silo. After nailing a few 2×4’s together, we had a working ladder and repeated the operation over and over. After a few weeks, we managed 6 levels and we were easily 40 ft up the silo. My parents were seemingly impressed with what we had managed to put together, but I’m sure they spent time verifying the structural integrity of our work.

To this day, I’m still grateful that they did not question what we were doing and that they gave us the space to have fun and figure things out on our own.

From Terence:
My recollection is my father and some of the local ‘yocals had a great time shooting down the silo. There were several firearms involved and, at one point, Michael brought his side arm which didn’t even dent the concrete. It sounded like a military shooting range for several days and my father’s shoulder was heavily bruised from the recoil of the .35. The silo withstood a surprising amount of damage. It was made out of concrete panels about 2 and a half inches thick and was tied together by a series of metal bands around the outside.

After expending about 75 rounds, my father hammered out some of the sections of concrete by hand using a small 5 lb. sledge. He swung the mallet repeatedly resulting in a very satisfying yet ominous reverberating booming sound in the circular concrete structure. Think of a large 60 foot tall concrete drum. My mother thought this was a terrible idea and was petrified the whole thing was going to collapse on his head. His calculations turned out to be right; still, he was lucky that removing several feet of the base by hand didn’t result in a serious injury or worse. Fully two-thirds of the circumference of the structure had been blown out at the base before the final rifle shot removed the last wedge, causing the silo to collapse.

Knowing that a silo could withstand a few blows from a sledge hammer, my brother and I then had the idea to pound a few holes of our own in one of the two remaining silos on the property. Our goal was to build a fort – a medieval tower of sorts. We ran a few beams through these holes in order to construct a series of staggered platforms. After erecting six rickety levels inside, we ran out of barn to demolish for building supplies and never reached the top. For a few years, we had the best kids’ fort in the whole county.

(Just to clarify, Terence is correct that I did hammer the two side sections to connect the bullet holes and leave the integrity of a solid pier between these two sections. I was very comfortable that Mike and I were being very careful.)

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 11: Size Matters (Vineyard and Winery sizes matter, that is.)

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:59:41 GMT

Part 11: Size Matters (Vineyard and Winery sizes matter, that is.)

The year was 1986. The focus was now on financial projections and the determination of how much more additional cash would be needed. How soon could the project reach stability and generate profits. One of Rob’s friends, an astute attorney, whom I met on one of my weekly trips to NYC, giggled and told me the old adage in the US. “To make a small fortune with a winery, start with a large fortune.” It was distressing and also thought provoking.

The draft vision looked almost enticing as a quick sketch. It was to change a lot.

From the mass of documentation we had identified two charts, one on production cost per case at different volume levels and one that revealed the level of production needed to achieve return on investment. It was clear that we had to focus on a target of rapidly growing to 40-60,000 cases. The wisdom in those charts was that virtually all wineries producing less than 25,000 cases were losing money. Yes, in the boutique winery business, size does matter.

The wishful thinking idea that these old buildings could become the basis for the winery.

Defining commercial wineries, such as Gallo which has been the dominant giant of the industry for years, begins at one hundred thousand cases and extends to millions of cases.

Our plans were now being completely redefined, as they should, not by a narrowly focused view based on what might be appealing to a family but by the financial realities clearly identified by those two charts.

We expanded our viticultural concept to target on 35 acres of various varietals. Chardonnay was going to be just one of the several varietals to be selected. One more time, we went back to the drawing board.

The initial thought of converting the old barns and turning them into the first stage of a winery was abandoned during discussions of cooperage size requirements for stainless steel and the barrel cellar capacity, both to be temperature controlled. All factors that were never in focus in Burgundy.

The list of things to do was getting longer.

We were encouraged by the coverage we had received in the local press and by some local enthusiasts, though there were still a number of people who looked at us with a quizzical look. Reading their minds, I thought I was hearing “A winery in Williamsburg? Is this for real?”

While I was in NY, I had made arrangements to visit the budding wineries on Long Island. I was introduced to Jeanette Smith, a very nice young lady from Virginia, who was working as agricultural extension specialist for the area and was very knowledgeable in viticulture.

We met at my office in Long Island, and I made a proposal for her to join our project and she accepted.

Back in Williamsburg, Peggy and I met with Rodgers Huff, a senior executive at United Virginia Bank who was very familiar with our acquired property as he had his own hunt club and the farm had been his favorite hunting grounds for many years. We were delighted that he had offered to renew the lease agreement in that his vigilance kept poachers away from the farm where Peggy was living with the young British au-pair gal and our two sons. I was still on my weekly commute.

Rodgers was one of those exceptional clear-headed, old-fashioned bankers, who would tell you in a low-key, friendly tone. “This is bankable and that is not.”

The next meeting was an introduction organized by Rodgers with Bud Geddy who, at that time, had a connection with the law office of our lawyer friends, John Patterson and John Cogbill. Mr. Geddy had been the Mayor of Williamsburg and intimately knew the inner workings of the County Government apparatus. He introduced a bill that provided the specific permit for the establishment of the winery on the farm.

Returning to New York, and polishing the new sets of financial projections, it was clear that boosting the equity was going to be required. With Rob’s assistance, we developed the first document on the planning of the project and circulated it to a few contacts. We then brought together a small group of those interested in the wine industry and formed a limited partnership with the help of the law firm.

While the business of Fragrances Selective had been growing nicely, more than doubling itself in the US, I was informed that the family controlling the operation had made a strategic decision. They would focus on their own home market and forego some of the international expansion for which I had been engaged and had actively pursued over the prior 5 years. That change of focus raised a new question. I am not one to just accept coasting as either a business approach or a lifestyle direction. A conversation was initiated that resulted in an agreement that by early ’87, I would be free to dedicate one hundred percent of my time to the winery project.

Times of great excitement, anticipation and anxiety.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 10: The First Planting

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:49:20 GMT

Part 10: The First Planting

Let’s do it. Just do it. Demonstrate with deeds, not just plans. We had committed ourselves to the project in 1980, purchased the farm in ’83, and had done a lot of studying. Now, 1985 was the time to get serious. The decision had been made to go ahead and do the first planting of grapes on a nearly three acre size plot on a South facing slope just East of the new house which was under construction.

Specifications:

Chardonnay varietal with plants sourced from Jochem Hollerith, the winemaker at Prince Michel.
Rows: 8 feet apart oriented along the slope to minimize run-off. Plants three feet apart.
Trellising: vertical shoot positioning. Cordon wire at height of 38 inches. Posts: treated wood every 12 feet. Heavy end posts with ground anchors. Additional 4 wires to hold the shoots.
Plant density: approximately 1,600 plants per acre.

Irrigation: goal was to install a drip irrigation system with underground line and a tube running about 10 inches below the cordon held by another wire and a drip diffuser per plant.

Now we needed the equipment and the supplies. A contact gave us a folder on great agricultural buys, and I noted a 50 HP foreign made diesel tractor at a price of $5K. I had scouted the regional ag equipment distributors and well-known brands were running about twice as expensive for comparable size tractors. Within a week, the tractor arrived. Zetor brand; it was made in Hungary and was rugged. We secured a good bushhog and the auger implement for drilling holes in the soil for the installation of the posts. The wire, the posts, and all the corresponding supplies were ordered and deposits made.

As I was still flying back and forth for my weekly work, Peggy arranged for the plowing of the area and personally did the discing. She quickly became a comfortable and effective tractor operator, in addition to her management of the construction and farm cash flow.

Next was installing small flags to locate the rows. By April, the designated area of ground was ready for the planting. Peggy called me and advised me that the planting was going to be made with a mechanical planter and that Jochem and his crew were coming within a couple of days. The posts had not arrived, and the vendor could not confirm the date of their delivery.

We had no choice. The planting had to go forward. The evening of the planting, she called me at the office in NYC and advised me that all had gone well in just a few hours. We were excited, and we had a nice coverage in the VA Gazette. Now we had to wait for the posts to arrive and watch the plants grow without training sticks to train them. I had done a quick cost analysis and while a number of growers use bamboo, I had opted for PVC pipes as more lasting and stronger and also cost effective.

The posts did finally arrive in June on two huge trailers. Unloading the bundles of posts proved there is always another way to skin a cat. Not having a forklift on location, the driver of the truck told me to take a long chain, attach it to the tractor, and pull the bundles straight off the flat bed trailers.

We now had to straddle the growing plants in order to auger the soil between plants to make the holes to install the posts. I had a few days of vacation. Jean-Francois, a seventeen year old nephew who had come to spend a summer with us, had recently arrived from Europe. He was given the task of directing me to ensure that the auger was properly lined up. As we were moving row after row, the augering became more and more difficult and the three point hitch did not seem to have the power to auger as deeply as we needed the holes to be. In the relatively dry spring, facing the South sun, the clay soil had dried up. I asked my nephew to add weight on the three point hitch by standing on the top of the piece lining the auger over the exact place where we were to install the posts as marked by the little flags.

As we felt frustrated by the progressively slowing process, I got off the tractor and examined the auger. Its shape had been burned by the hard gravelly clay and instead of having a good bite by its wing tips as it should, it had literally been chewed up and looked like a dart as opposed to an auger. We rushed over to see our neighbor, Pete Farmer, a uniquely resourceful and talented person who knew how to weld the auger in such a condition that was better than it had been new. He welded special tips to bite into the ground and the next day we were back drilling the holes.

During the following week, while I was back in NY, JF, as we called him, Patrick II, and Terence helped Peggy install the posts in the ground and tamp the soil. Soon the wires were strung and PVC pipes installed such that we could tie the growing vines. The mayflies which were still alive in June, were wicked, and our vineyard crew was unhappy. They still had to learn from the carpenters that coconut sun-tan oil is a great repellent for mayflies.

By August, it looked like a vineyard, but our next challenge was weed control. After my years in upstate NY, Switzerland, France and Spain, our appreciation of the vigor of weeds in Virginia was somewhat deficient. Soon we found ourselves with vines facing heavy competition from the aggressive Johnson grass. We had purchased our spray rig to hook to the back of the tractor, but I did not want to take a chance with spraying any kind of herbicide so close to the young vines.

I remember asking Patrick II and Terence to help me weed the rows on a Sunday in early August. The temperature rose to nearly one hundred and that day, and I noted that my teen-age sons no longer thought that this project was fun. They quit at one point, in plain disgust. I, stubbornly, kept ripping the rhizomes of the Johnson grass in order to give the vines a chance. It was a long, hot Sunday.

The vines grew and grapes developed. We could see the vineyard evolving from the future master bedroom window in the house under construction.

It was a real milestone.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 9: Discovering the History of the Farm as well as its Soil

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:34:32 GMT

Part 9: Discovering the History of the Farm as well as its Soil

Williamsburg has a special place in my heart. In 1961, as a graduating high-school student on an AFS-Rotary scholarship program, I was taught during that senior year in Upstate New York, on the edge of Lake Ontario, that English America had begun with the settlers landing at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts in 1620.

During the end-of-the-year extensive bus tour in the US, we visited Southeastern Virginia. What a surprise it was to hear that the first landing of settlers actually took place in 1607 in Jamestown, VA. How in the world could history books be so wrong?

Anyway, the film, “The Story of a Patriot” had just begun to be shown in the Visitor Center of Colonial Williamsburg. It deeply impressed me. I had made my decision that my future would be in the United States. The many trips that my parents had organized, from Norway to Portugal, always incorporated numerous visits to castles, palaces, cathedrals, historical sites, even museums. It had left a trace. Visiting Williamsburg was for me a discovery. Learning about XVII & XVIII century English America, the proud decision of these settlers to seek their independence from the Royal Crown, and the inspiration that guided them was fascinating.

As mentioned earlier, we had come back to Williamsburg on numerous occasions. Now we owned a farm in the middle of that center of history. Of course, the primary focus was on how the soils should be analyzed for improvement and to ensure the health of the vines to be planted.

Alongside that process, we could learn more about the history of the farm. Quickly, we found that it had been initially called “Archer’s Hope” after the preference of Gabriel Archer, the second in command on the Discovery, one of the three ships that brought the settlers in 1607. Surveying the North coast of the river that they named the James in honor of the King, Captain Archer had identified the site of our farm as his preferred spot for the landing. Captain John Smith overruled him feeling that the adjacent island would provide a more defendable site.

We contacted Nick Papas, an historian at Colonial Williamsburg, who indicated that our farm had been the site of the landing of French troops in 1782 when Marechal de Saint Simon joined Rochambeau and Lafayette on their way to Yorktown. The French military cartographers had provided the best maps of the area. Excellent copies of the Desandrouins map showed the farm as the property of Reverend Bland who had been active in the meetings at the Raleigh Tavern in town to support the movement towards independence.

The site of the Bland Plantation had been researched and discovered by Bill Kelso in the 70’s but was covered over as the funds were lacking for a serious excavation of the brick remnants of the footing of the dwelling. (Bill Kelso was then state archaeologist and has now achieved fame and notoriety as a result of his research and discovery of the Jamestown Fort during this last decade)

We learned that, during these past centuries, the farm had also been named Jockey’s Neck beginning as far back as 1635. That was intriguing. A bit of study in older documents revealed that the farm had been owned by a German called Jochen, and as it is bounded by water on three sides which constitutes a neck of land, received the name “Jochen’s Neck” which became “Jockey’s Neck”. Nothing to do with horse racing.

The archaeological site report, dated ’73, was identified and so was the VA Landmark Commission form, dated ’74. Abstracts of VA Land Patents and Grants were listed in the book Cavaliers and Pioneers . There were numerous references to Jockey’s Neck farm and Archer’s Hope Creek (since renamed College Creek). We began appreciating the historical relevance of the property. Apparently, the lawyer who sold us the farm had not been as interested in history.

All this history fascinated Patrick II and Terence. One day on their one mile walk to catch the school bus, they found a musket ball. At other times, as we were digging the soil, we would find beautiful pieces of pottery. We became friendly with a good number of archaeologists who seemed pleasantly surprised by our enthusiasm. We were introduced to Nick Lucchetti and soon thereafter to Bill Kelso.

One of the big questions at the time was could we divert funds to dig the Bland Plantation. The finances were stretched and that would not have been wise even though it was very tempting. Consequently, it was deferred for the future, long term future. Over the last twenty five years, we have discussed, on numerous occasions, what it would require of funding for such a project to do it correctly. To this day it still remains in the future.

Subsequently, we were to get multiple archival research documents on the farm as the portion that we had not acquired was being considered for a real estate project. But that was several years later.

Maurice and Elsie Northrup, my landlords from my early years on Lake Ontario, came visiting just as we had shot a pheasant on the roof of the house. (I really do not hunt.)

Simultaneously with all this historical research, we had received the soil reports and were surprised to learn that there were 15 areas with 11 different type soils on the 300 acres classified by type and with different agricultural practice recommendations. We determined that our first planting would be located on a gentle South facing slope, East of the old house. The soil was a sandy clay with a gravely sub soil with erosion hazard. Accordingly, the plan was to run the rows along the slope as opposed to up and down the slope.

We invited Dr. Leslie McCombs of VA Tech to come and inspect the farm and give us his opinion on the prospect for grape growing. He was very supportive and also advised us to consider the potential for early springs such as in mid January or February that might lead to very early budding, followed by late frost that could severely damage the young leaves.

We also were in contact with Lucie Morton, who having studied at the University of Montpellier in Southern France, had worked with Professor Pierre Galet, the author of a book on ampelography. She translated it and then came back stateside and had it published. It has been a reference book on grapevine varieties and how to care for them. Lucie came and met with us and offered plenty of suggestions. It was still early in the year ’85. She suggested several nurseries where we could secure the plants and drafted a very long list of the supplies and equipment that would be needed.

On my weekly commute, back in New York, Rob Bickford and I would review the studies and planning. The goal was to bring the project to a condensed concept, looking beyond the first planting to the days when we could hope for a first harvest. That meant also that we would need a place to process the grapes, and secure an approved federal license as well as the VA ABC license. Any document that would at some time in the future be presented to a bank would also need a detailed marketing plan. Rob had done well as a sales person with an import operation in NY and had learned great deal about the US approach to marketing wines. Occasionally, he would fly down and do a bit of hunting on the farm.

We penciled in ’85 as the year to go ahead and set up the trial vineyard. I asked Peggy if she felt comfortable getting it all done while I continued my commute to NY and Europe. She just nodded and said “Lots of questions still, but no problem!”

(To be continued)

If you wish to see the previous blog posts, scroll down below, or look to the top right for Recent Posts.

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 8: Did We Have Credentials in the Wine Industry?

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 18:40:53 GMT

Part 7: A Visit to Virginia Wineries. Barboursville, Rapidan & Ingleside

The wine industry has been around for several thousand years. The Romans introduced and planted vines in Bordeaux, in Burgundy, on the banks of the Rhine, and the Mosel, the Danube. In Burgundy, the Corton Charlemagne, one of the most prestigious appellations, is said to have been originally planted by the Frankish emperor Charlemagne himself sometime around AD 800. There are thousands of wineries in various countries from Europe to the New World to down under Australia.

Many times, we have been asked whether we really knew and understood the wine industry as we were beginning our adventure. I do not claim to be either a winemaker or a viticulturist. Still, in the early 80’s I felt I had a reasonable command of the world of wine, be it a grasp of viticulture, winemaking and wine marketing and a solid understanding of its financial aspects.

Around the early seventies, Philip Morris International had acquired Lindeman’s in Australia. The European management became excited about a study project and a market test which was conducted in Belgium, one of Europe’s toughest and most competitive wine markets. While I was purely involved in the management of the Marlboro World Championship Team project and its activities in Formula 1 Racing, in Rallyes, and in the Marlboro sailing Cup off Antibes on the Med, I followed with great interest the market studies on the wine project.

The company, in its selection of sourcing wines for the market, test developed contacts with some of the largest wine wholesalers in Europe, several of which were established in Switzerland. I learned during meetings with them that the bulk wine market was huge. Orders were placed on shipments of multiple railroad tankers of generic wines far more often than orders of limited volumes of prestigious appellations from world recognized wine chateaux that packaged their products in decorated wooden cases.

My father had been an excellent teacher on the appreciation of wines. He was very low-key and had little patience for certain Parisians who wanted to out-snob friends and acquaintances while pretending that they, in a blind tasting, could identify the vintage and the producer of all the top growth Bordeaux. My father focused far more on the little known regional wines that were served young and exhibited their true fruit character. His knowledge included German and Austrian wines, Italian and Spanish wines, and of course all the various areas of France that produce fine wines. Occasionally, he would also enjoy a well aged wine of enviable pedigree.

During our numerous trips in the late fifties, (I was then a teen-ager) we ended up visiting a great many vineyards and were unashamed that we were allowed a very small tasting of the nectar of the Gods. Seriously, it was truly educational. In European cellars, you do not drink the sample, you let it roll in your mouth to get the flavors and then spit it out in a dump bucket. The range of the size of operations was impressive. While listening to a farmer-viticulturist-winemaker who tended a two and a half acre vineyard and crafted his wines with tender loving care, on the one hand, I also well remember looking at a towering wooden vat which was allegedly the world’s largest fermentation tank. This was in Southern France near the Spanish border.

In the mid seventies, I was advised of the opportunity to acquire the prestigious Chateau de Meursault in Burgundy. The property was owned by an aging aristocrat who had decided to retire and go live in Paris and offered his business for a private sale. The project was diligently pursued with a number of potential American partners and a full presentation was made to the lawyer representing the owner including a formulation of a purchase proposal. More discussions took place and time went by when we were finally advised from Paris that a decision had been made that the French government wanted a “French Solution”.

Oh well! In those days, France was in better financial condition than it is now.

The house in the back of the chateau that was the residence of the proprietor family.

In the late seventies, as I had become involved in a Geneva based investment company, I was asked to drive every week to Beaune, Burgundy for some three years to analyze marketing efficiency and wine export expansion with a focus on the US. I became very friendly with the French family who managed that operation that had its roots in 1747. I began building a large log of information and experience in the complexities of the wine industry. To mention just one instance that I can well remember, in July ’79, there was a horrendous hailstorm that hit Nuits St Georges. The hail was as large as golf-balls and dented hundreds of automobiles while at the same time destroying the grape harvest of those very high value appellation grapes. That is one element that happens in agriculture and is not predictable.

I also learned of some of less glamorous realities of the wine world. Walking on the sidewalk of the road that surrounds the medieval walls of Beaune with the sales manager of a relatively substantial company, I heard him comment about a tanker truck that had stopped in front of a wine wholesale operation. “Probably another truck without paper” he said softly. I asked him to explain his comment. He launched himself and said that anywhere in the French wine world there were trucks of bulk wine without paper meaning without official origin, ie unknown varietal or appellation that might be blended with other wines. There might be trucks with all the proper papers and there might be papers available without the truck.

In a similar type of consumer fraud, as I was visiting the facilities of a wholesale operation in Belgium, it was shocking to watch personnel un-labeling bottles of French wines and re-labeling them with a descriptive of origin that would make the bottles more valuable.

Sadly, already then, the reality of the “globalized world” was already impacting the wine industry. There is an enormous difference in the attention to quality and authenticity between the family operations and the industrialized giants that seek to produce standardized products of modest quality that can be sold at very low prices.

During these years I had met a lot of CA winery operators and they were invited to join us in Beaune for some of the large celebrations that take place at the Clos de Vougeot. In ’79 we had the visit of special guests Bob Mondavi who was travelling with his daughter Marcia. I had enjoyed a private lunch with him in Napa and he had been most gracious. Representing a French operation, I had brought some fine white Burgundies. Before I could present these bottles, he signaled that during the meal we should enjoy a white Burgundy that he had selected, that was already on the table and compare it with his own chardonnay.

We had discussed my recommendation to the investment group management and their resulting deep interest in potentially partnering with a CA winery. Bob Mondavi had raised the point of his inclination to create a joint venture with a French producer. Subsequently in reading his book, I found out that it was his stop-over in Burgundy before his flight to Bordeaux to begin his famous Opus project with the Rothschild family.

A number of other CA fine wine families did visit us in Beaune. I was impressed by the questions that they would raise. “What is the temperature of the fermentation for your whites or for your reds?” The classic French answer at that time was simple. “Let nature take its course. We hope that the vintage will be as good as the ’47 vintage of grandpapa.” Compare that to the mindset of the CA vintners who were researching how to make better wines and were determined to understand the factors that affected the transformation of grape juice into fine wine. I quickly became convinced that the evolutionary trend would ultimately favor American wine-making. When your focus is to “do things better”, you will achieve a better result than those who only express nostalgia about the past.

I did have at least a bit of background before even thinking about the New Settlement and building a winery.

However, in the French world, there are thousands of small wineries that have a vineyard of one varietal, that receive an enormous amount of infrastructural support from the government and in return are told just about everything they can do and more importantly everything that they cannot or should not do, down to the very day of release of Beaujolais Nouveau as determined in Paris, for instance. By comparison, in the US, you can plant the varietal you choose with the density of planting per acre you determine, etc. You have a great deal more freedom, freedom to experiment and also the freedom to make mistakes, sometimes great mistakes.

But in the eighties, the infrastructure of the wine industry in VA was non-existent. Finding qualified personnel was difficult if not nearly impossible. Where to source the right equipment was another challenge, and one always needs to think in terms of the small spare part that will unfailingly be needed right during the harvest and that must be available within twenty four hours.

As I think back at those days, I have to recognize that, regardless of all the “homework” that we did, these points of the difficulty of finding personnel and the sourcing of equipment including the issue of spare parts were challenging aspects that we had underestimated.

Somehow or another, persistence also became a motto.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler Founder & CEO

Part 7: A Visit to Virginia Wineries. Barboursville, Rapidan & Ingleside

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 18:32:29 GMT

Part 7: A Visit to Virginia Wineries. Barboursville, Rapidan & Ingleside

We had now been in Virginia for almost one year.

The old house had received quite a facelift. The new house was in construction. Our containers of furnishings had arrived from Spain and Geneva. The Mercedes 6.3 SEL was happily sleeping in the garage. We had met with the viticultural specialists of VA Tech. We had asked Lucie Morton, a well connected and knowledgeable viticultural expert, to give us her point of view on the “terroir” based on both climatology and the soil characteristics.

We had defined that we would begin our planting with the goal of making a Loire Valley type wine, a fresh, light white. I always loved Sancerre as an aperitif wine. It is refreshing; it is light, dry and fruity. Sancerre is very different from the Muscadet of the Loire Valley right on the Atlantic Coast which is the quintessential wine to drink with fresh oysters exhibiting much sharper acidity. Sancerre, on the other hand, is far more gentle; that was the flavor profile target.

Now was the time to go visit the various wineries that operated then in VA and taste the products, look at their vineyards (particularly trellising and canopy management) look at the facilities and the equipment and begin to evaluate how they projected themselves to the wine consumer.

So, in May, we took the old Mercedes that we brought from Europe, drove to Charlottesville and arrived at Barboursville. At that time, they still had a cattle operation and their facilities were far less expansive than what they offer now. The manager was a very pleasant Sr. Rossi who was happy to share his experience with a visitor who could get along in Italian. We tasted the wines, discussed the then emerging interest in wines and the alleged frailties of some of the wines being offered by other wineries.

The Farm Winery Act was passed in 1971 under the impetus of Archie Smith, Sr. who then began Meredith Vineyard. Following his footsteps, a number of individuals, mostly retired foreign service officers, had wanted to bring a bit of their European lifestyle to Virginia and planted vineyards.

Next on stopping list was Rapidan which was then owned by a German dentist and had been operated by Jochem Hollerith, a Geisenheim Wine Institute graduate who had departed to launch the Prince Michel Winery, a very substantial project funded by a M. Leducq who had built a sizeable fortune in the servicing of bathroom linens in France. The general manager at that time was Steve Warner, a Californian with academic background from Fresno. Again, we tasted the wines and visited the facilities.

We were within a few miles of the Prince Michel project and so we identified the place where site work had begun on the edge of Route 29.

Driving towards the Northern Neck, we arrived at Ingleside and were greeted warmly by Jacques Recht, a Belgian who had worked as key wine buyer for Delhaize Le Lion, the Belgian supermarket company that had established its reputation on its excellent selection of wines. (Delhaize is the parent company of Food Lion.) Jacques had been encouraged by his employer to attend the Montpellier University course in winemaking. He and his wife Liliane were most charming.

They had crossed the Atlantic on their sailboat and arrived in VA. They settled and met the Flemer family who owned the Ingleside Plantation, a large nursery that had begun a small winery operation. Jacques joined them and made some pretty good wines. I was, however, surprised at his private vineyard that he had planted following the strict French regulation with respect to height of the trellis and canopy management.

On the way back home, we commented that the chardonnay from Barboursville tasted like an Italian Soave, the chardonnay from Rapidan tasted like a Rhine wine, whereas the chardonnay from Ingleside exhibited a French flair. Conclusion; the climate and the soil can produce good chardonnays. “Let’s make sure, we have the right winemaker and give him the right direction.”

Rob Bickford, a family friend from Upstate NY, who after living with us in France had participated in the harvest in Burgundy and decided to become a wine person suggested that we look at Mondomaine, another winery located close to Charlottesville owned by a group headed by Steve Bowles, a Pan Am 747 pilot, which had produced some particularly good chardonnays.

Another visit was made also to Oakencroft, the project of Felicia Warburg Rogan, a very dynamic personality married to John Rogan who had developed the Boar’s Head Inn, now an iconic hotel just outside Charlottesville.

Our backlog of information, documentation and mental notes was rapidly expanding.

On a totally different track, the operation of Fragrances Selective was also expanding. Impressed by a small brand that Myrurgia, the Spanish manufacturer that controlled the international network of distribution companies, I thought that the “Natural” line would strike a favorable echo in the US. It was launched and met with a very positive market response. It was phenomenally stimulating to feel the enthusiasm of the sales force and the results in terms of strong sales growth. I was torn about the decision on determining the timing of our next step which had to be my resigning my well-paying executive job and dedicating my time to the winery which I knew was not going to generate any cash for quite some time.

As the year was coming to an end, I was feeling a bit tense and impatient. The weekly commute to NYC and the monthly meetings in Europe or even in Puerto Rico and Mexico were, in many respects, very pleasant but were wearing me down. It was also leaving a hole in my life.

I was the man and the father who comes back late on Friday (maybe) and wants to get some needed rest and simultaneously drive the winery project forward. Peggy was a fabulous trooper. She loved the farm and quietly was telling me of the solitude that she was enjoying in the middle of the 300 acres and her pleasure at seeing Patrick II and Terence bloom with the spirit of freedom that they could experience growing up virtually without external restrictions on their early teenage years.

In NYC, my life consisted of down the elevator, cross the street, up the elevator, luncheon meetings, dinner meetings, no classical music (no turntable and no record collection in the apartment), no car (in NYC, you don’t need one and don’t want one), no Peggy. I subsequently termed it my “purgatory’ years.

The input on the financial characteristics of the US wine industry that we had received was clear. The illusion that a small five or six thousand cases winery could be profitable was a pipe dream, and realism determined that new elements were to be brought into consideration. The focus was then on how to finance the next steps including that of planting the vineyards and the construction of the winery. I had to extend the purgatory years.

There is no project in the world that I have known that is ever easy.

(To be continued)

G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 6: Combining Executive Life, Project Development & Construction

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 18:22:57 GMT

Part 6: Combining Executive Life, Project Development & Construction

I think every person has multiple facets to their personality. I have known that since my younger years, I have been a car guy. I love mechanical & technical things, construction, building things whether physical or in abstract forms. I love to draw, to work with wood, to operate big equipment.

Building the new garage: footing, wall, structure, tar paper to close in cedar shingles, Mike Waltrip and I working on a fast track project.

I have been lucky in life. In the late sixties, working on a farm as a 19 year old, I learned to operate bulldozers, large forklifts, drive ten-wheelers. I made mistakes and have not forgotten them. They were good lessons. My assignment in the seventies to develop the Marlboro World Championship Team and bring the elements together to bring it to world championship success was a thrill. I have also made a fair amount of furniture in very rustic style with hand-carvings.

It may seem almost contradictory but I have all my life been immersed in reading the study and the appreciation of history. After all, that was one of the major factors that attracted me to come back, again and again, and decide to eventually settle in Williamsburg.

The year was 1984 (not the same 1984 that had been described by George Orwell and that got me depressed as a teenager), and the overall plan had been laid out with priorities. Build a garage for the ’72 Mercedes that I was planning to ship in from Europe. A garage large enough to accommodate the Cherokee that we added to the pick up truck and give proper cover to the various furnishings that we had then stacked in old sheds and would eventually find a place in the new house we were designing to be built next to the 1736 house.

I continued commuting to NYC and flying off every month back to Europe. Michael, our talented, artisan carpenter, was steadily working at his pace when I was gone. On weekends I would become a roofer or a plumber as requirements demanded. By late spring we had the garage closed in, siding in place and cedar roofing completed. Next was completion of the West portion of the roof on the old house and we were back in the summer. Pounding nails in the cedars shakes was a job. I was trying to go so fast that Peggy took a couple of pictures so quickly and merged them into one that makes me look like I fooled the camera.

An exciting find in digging the soil for the pour of the concrete floor of the garage were large stones that were identified by an archeologist as ballast stones that had come from England probably in the eighteenth century. Many other artifacts of broken pottery were also found.

The little house looks rejuvenated. Compare it to the picture in Blog/Part 3: Decision Time.

Peggy and I drew the plans for the new house and submitted them to the County for approval. The package quickly came back with a few red lined suggestions for improvements. The concrete footings were poured on September 10 with a large crane to span the spread of the lay-out requiring a diameter of one hundred and sixty four feet. Peggy directed the entire operation with the transit she had acquired to check on the correct level of the various elevations of the concrete pours. I was on a trip and nobody had ever seen such a good looking construction worker.

Peggy organizing batter boards and shoveling up the earth in the trencher before the pour.

We began by building the garage wing of the house and to have it closed and dry as we were concerned about winter and creating adequate storage space to keep construction supplies for the new house.

In the meantime, Michael had found a mason and their first task of his team was to attack the fireplace in the old house and bring it back to operational condition. We only knew him as Mr. Hardy and he always addressed me as C’ptain.

As the fireplace had been bricked up, first order was to see how that could be dismantled. I looked closely and noted that some of the bricks were rather loose. So, I carefully scratched the cement surrounding a brick and gently began removing it. The care was intended to prevent the bricked up portion from collapsing on the floor.

As the brick was now in my hand leaving the dark hole, I was stunned to note the eyes of a snake looking at me. I jumped back, asked Patrick and Terence to step out of the room and went to get my gun. The snake had not moved. A single ’22 caliber shot and he was dead. A pretty good size snake. Not a good thing to have him live in the house. (See photo) That was enough excitement for that day. We carefully checked with a flashlight whether there had been other occupants and took down the bricked up part in order to prepare for the rehabbing of the fireplace.

Mr. Hardy and his crew came in the next day and when I told them the story of the snake, they laughed and laughed. Quickly they were working and within a couple of days we had a new fire box and flue and fireplace that would dry up and be ready for winter.

Every Monday morning, I was back on my way to NYC. I had a very narrow focused life while in the big city. The apartment was across the street from the office on 6th Avenue. Early at work with a close knit crew that was expanding as the company was growing rapidly. The evenings were dedicated to study any and all the large volume of material that was available from wine industry sources as well as from studies from accounting firms that had surveyed and/or analyzed the many West Coast wine operations. UC Davis had of course plenty of reading material available.

Preparing for the construction of the fireplace in the old house.

The US industry was (and still is) very different from the French wineries that I hade been involved with or had had the opportunity to examine. The many years of active participation in the French wine world had given me the essence of the industry and the stimulant to open a winery in Virginia. I knew the US wine world was going to be a challenge and I needed to adapt my thinking.

Reading as much as I could, meeting trade people in wine bars which were then relatively new but thriving. Trying to understand consumer patterns, likes and dislikes. Then putting pencil to paper and narrowing issues to the major decisions: what varietal to plant first, where, review again the soil reports, the pH, what pre planting steps to take, what size winery to build, arrange meetings with the VA Tech specialist, follow up with the extension agent over the phone, get all the costing aspects well detailed and begin to build some rough five year projections. Inadequate, make them eight year projections.

But, like the settlers who had arrived some three hundred and fifty years before, once committed, one has to persevere.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 5: Share the Joy with the Family

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 18:03:41 GMT

Part 4: The Arrival, July 1983

Within a matter of ten days from leaving the family on the farm with remodeled kitchen, I was back in Spain, working my “executive” life, focusing on business growth in the US and following up on the restructuring of both the Swiss and the Dutch companies. Frequent calls were reassuring me that all was well. Patrick II and Terence had begun schooling at the local public school after their earlier school-years in France and then Spain. The US school system was a real shock for them. Let’s let Patrick II & Terence give you their impressions.

From Patrick II

“School in Williamsburg provided a significant contrast to what I was accustomed in Spain. The small school we attended in Cabrera de Mar consisted of two classrooms; one for the boys and one for the girls; in both instances for grades 1-8. School started at 9am and went through noon with a 3 hr time for “siesta”. The school-day finished from 3pm to 5pm. The atmosphere was relaxed, the students were mostly keen on learning their lessons and there was a tremendous amount of respect for the “Maestro”. Although “Sr Miguel” brooked no nonsense in his classroom – with the occasional raps on the head with the blackboard pointer doled out to the dawdlers; nonetheless he received a standing ovation from the students on the first day of class.

“Of course the greatest challenge in Spain was learning a whole new language in short order, as well as a whole new culture, but young children are very adaptable and 6 weeks into the school year we were more or less fluent. It was an unusual, but very old-fashioned approach to teaching. Juggling three different lesson plans to a class of 35 students must have been challenging. Of special note was the fact that he was able to discern who the special students were and always made a point of tailoring his lesson plans to the needs of the children. In some cases working with students whose faculties were simply not up to the rigors he imposed on the majority of the class, and in other cases working with kids who had mastered their lessons in short order and needed greater stimulation. I seem to recall that he spent time teaching one eager 2nd grader the fine points of trigonometry.

“Seventh grade is arguably a difficult time for most people and when you add the challenges of a different culture to the uncertainties and insecurities of puberty; that can make for a rather cranky teenager. I can only hope that my parents have since forgiven my sullen moods during that time.

From Terence

Berkeley Elementary was quite a change of pace from the two-room schoolhouse in Spain. In my mind, no expense had been spared – a dedicated gymnasium, a library with thousands of books and dozens of computers, a full cafeteria with a kitchen (serving industrial food), a large music room, a cavernous art studio stocked with supplies, offices, dozens of buses, lockers, a clinic with a full-time nurse, a program for everything and everyone, a dedicated cleaning staff, a landscape department, fire drills, procedures, standardized tests and on and on. And everyone even used the same textbooks!

After the novelty wore off, it became apparent that the outcome had more to do with who was sitting in front of the classroom than anything else. The old maestro may have had to deal with forty kids in eight grades but I suspect I learned more from that man than from any single teacher at Berkeley. He more than made up for the lack of a curriculum with his years of experience and general wisdom. There were some good teachers at Berkeley, too, and most were better than Rosa, the other teacher from Spain.

In October, the first container had arrived with our furnishings and belongings from the house in Spain. We had even managed to get a formal approval from the State ABC to bring in the content of our extensive Spanish wine cellar. We looked around for a wine cellar where we could store our precious Rioja bottles and found out that in the eighties, wine cellars, or even cellars for that matter, were not terribly widespread in Virginia. There was more furniture than what the little house could hold, so we stored some well packed items in one of the barns.

The second container of the furniture from the house outside Geneva had also arrived after having been kept in storage for almost three years. When calling the freight forwarding agent, I was advised to sit down and learn the fate of what had happened. The instructions had been misread and the container that we had purchased and was to have been kept sealed until arrival at the farm had been opened on the docks in Norfolk and unloaded on the spot with all these cherished possessions left in the rain until hastily repacked in another container.

The unloading took place in one of the large sheds on the farm with rather sad faces. Many items had been damaged by the rain. Some of the boxes of books were dripping water and had only one possible destiny: the dump. I am a book worm who had a large collection of books and seeing all the results of that mindless negligence was infuriating, not to speak of the wet oriental rugs and scratches on antique furniture.

The relatively large stock of wine bottles from the cellar we had kept near Geneva had been considerably reduced. All the cases of First Growth Bordeaux had vanished. Still, some of the old private reserve Burgundies had survived. To this day (May ’12) I still have some in my cellar.

Plans were set to invite Peggy’s mother, sister, brother and his wife to come and join us for a Xmas celebration on the farm. Xmas over the previous ten years had been celebrated in Europe, several times with my family. A new oil furnace heating system had been installed with ducts running underneath the house in the crawl space to distribute the heat on the main floor. We thought of the weather in Virginia as being relatively mild. So the upstairs which had couple of vents from the downstairs room would be a bit chilly but relatively comfortable.

I flew in from NYC on December 23 just in time to greet the arriving family. The interior of the house was decorated and we had all the food and wines we needed to provide for a memorable Xmas. In European tradition, we had our meal on the evening of the 24th. That was when the weather began to turn chilly, then outright cold, and soon, bitter cold. The outdoor thermometer indicated eighteen degrees Fahrenheit with the wind blowing from North-West. The oil furnace was pumping warmer air non-stop. The old house was creaking and was allowing the warmth to seep out from multiple spots. Still, by candlelight and with traditional Xmas music the mood was happy.

Then on the morning of the 25th, we were looking at the snow outside and wondering how long that cold weather might last. It was picture perfect for the holiday. Then the heat stopped running…… We checked everything and realized that the furnace had gobbled up the entire content of the oil tank. Finding furnace oil on a Sunday, December 25th was hopeless. I called a local hotel and sent the family packing to the comfort of a nicely heated space. Peggy and I opened the cots and the sleeping bags and stretched out in the kitchen with a moderate amount of heat from the electric oven, took in the dogs and fell asleep bundled up in a room where the temperature had fallen to around 40 degrees.

The next morning, we woke up and checked the other rooms. It was well below freezing in the living room. With the cold around twenty degrees, the poinsettias had simply collapsed. We spent the balance of the time with the family between their hotel and the farm. They were good sports and never, at least that I know, raised any serious question on our sanity.

For the New Year, we were just the four of us, Peggy, Patrick II, Terence and myself, we had stocked on furnace oil, the weather had warmed some, we cracked a bottle of bubbly and had schnitzels of venison hunted on the farm, cleaned and dressed by the wood-cutters. We were grateful at our good fortune in spite of all the hurdles. Peggy had been absolutely marvelous at coordinating all the work that was being done and keeping track of all the various issues that needed attention. A radical change, indeed, it had been. But, there were bright prospects, we thought, and cheerfully discussed those around the table, looking forward to 1984. That was the end of the first year of the new settlement. It was a starting point.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 4: The Arrival, July 1983

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 17:53:58 GMT

Part 4: The Arrival, July 1983

It was a rather warm weekend. On the last working day before the 4th of July weekend, we had closed on the purchase of the farm, made our payment after raiding our savings that we had kept in Europe. We had signed the loan agreement combining the bank guarantee issued by United Virginia Bank and the loan issued by the European Bank. We called Spain to advise our sons that the adventure was really beginning. They could tell all their friends, say good byes and think about packing during the month of July.

Ahead of us for Peggy and I was the job of doing everything we could to prepare the older house that had been rented to William & Mary students. The heat must have been around 90 degrees as we drove to the farm. The three quarter of a mile long driveway had been arranged as one might expect to find on a working farm, a dirt road without ditches.

The water available at the old house was pumped directly from an old well and rather unsanitary. What were the electrics like? The power company was closed; the power had been turned off for a good while and there would be no power. Another item for the list.

As we walked in to the house, we began by creating a pile of garbage for disposal. The tenants had not been kind to the old cottage, a forty by sixteen foot construction built on brick piers and with two shed roof expansions on the East side and a screened early twenty century porch on the West front looking at the driveway.

There were abandoned school books, paraphernalia for illicit substance uses, pillows and the whole lot was moldy, dirty and repulsive. Our goal was to assess whether it might be salvageable. The other house on the property was a typical nineteenth century wood frame building that looked like it had provided ample haven for hungry termites and it had been our feeling from the first day that whenever our “wood-cutters” determined that they wanted to leave the place, we would have it demolished.

Our preliminary assessment was that we would need to tear down a wall between the existing tiny kitchen and the other small room under the shed roof expansion. Importantly, an operating, functional kitchen is essential. Plan was that needed to get done as soon as we come back with the entire crew at the end of the month. Next thought was to look at the fireplaces. Clearly the original brickwork that must have dated from the time of construction had featured two fireplaces that had been bricked up both downstairs and upstairs leaving holes for stove pipes.

The bathroom was a total disaster with porcelain fixtures from the fifties. Whenever water could get connected back to the house from one of the wells on the farm, and thoroughly cleaned up, it could be functional for a few months in time to get it fully redesigned and hundred percent remodeled. The roof needed work, but the asphalt shingles would hopefully last one more season.

We peeled the clear plastic sheathing that had been stretched and stapled all around the house as mentioned. We now had a few loads of garbage and made the first of numerous trips to the county dump site.

Back in the local hotel where we were staying, we continued making numerous lists including that related to the costs anticipated for all the needs that we felt were immediate upon our arrival.

We celebrated the 4th of July, a celebration of independence, by watching the fireworks thrown by Colonial Williamsburg for the visiting tourists. The house was more or less tidy. We knew and had agreed on all the next steps. Tired as we were, we felt exhilarated. We had begun the first and not such a small step towards “our independence”.

Next day, another flight back to Spain and continue the regular routine of travels, while Peggy was taking all the steps for the organization of the end of July trip, closing of the house on the beautiful Costa Brava, planning shipment of the furnishings from Spain to Norfolk. The trip was going to be interesting in itself. I needed to be in NYC as of mid July. Peggy, Patrick II (age 11) and Terence (age 9) and the British au-pair as well as the two dogs of the family plus a fair load of suitcases would fly to Kennedy where I would meet them, transfer to LaGuardia, fly down to Richmond, pick up the largest rental car that was available and arrive in Williamsburg to a hotel where we had made reservation for at least a week.

It all happened as planned. Murphy’s law did not surface on that day. I had three weeks of vacation. The race was on.

Get an electrician to look at the old fuse box and install completely new circuit breakers and get connected to have power. Buy a large double door refrigerator-freezer and install it in the living room. Use an ice box for luncheon food such that we could work non-stop. Go buy a pick-up truck, basic no frills, standard transmission, three gears on the column make an offer for $5K, get turned down, walk out, salesman runs after us and says, “You are killing me, but I’ll take it;” take it straight from the dealer’s lot and turn in the rental car.

The old kitchen cabinets are ripped; the kitchen floor is ripped, the inside wall between the two rooms is removed, inch thick old plaster partitions and stud framing; the plaster board on the ceiling comes down. More trips to the dump. Power approved, refrigerator is connected. The pump in the well works and water flows. Showers outside at the end of the day. Back to the hotel and crash.

As soon as the little house was clean we moved in to camp. We had folding cots and sleeping bags. The hotel was happy to see us go. The two dogs were very well behaved but they were frightening other guests by their sheer size. The bigger one weighed about a hundred pounds of muscle and was the friendliest dog one could think. He and his sister had been actually bottle fed by Peggy.

Follow up on all the purchases, construction supplies, an electric stove, an oven, a kitchen sink and a dish-washer. Built cabinets, countertops, connected new plumbing lines, electrical lines, new kitchen floor joists, installed insulation in the floor, put down sub-flooring, drywall after placing heavy duty beams across the new space. The kitchen was operational. The telephone was working. I could fly back to NY Piedmont Airways had a 6:55am out of Norfolk to LaGuardia which would make me the first to arrive at the office.

I managed to organize a long week end at the farm in October, continuing the planning of new projects. Rob Bickford, a young, close friend who had lived with us for short periods in France and Spain provided the help that was needed to take down the nineteenth century porch of the house such that we could anticipate installing new siding to restore that house to its more original appearance.

A local neighbor that we had met offered to work with us on rehabbing the little house. He was a talented carpenter and had the soul of a craftsman, ever even tempered, kind, well mannered and easy-going. Michael worked with us for the next three years. First on the list was the new siding on the back side.

The next week I was in Mexico for a major marketing meeting with the entire US sales force and representatives of the Swiss, the Dutch and the Puerto Rican organization. Peggy was calling me every day and keeping me up to date with the repair work on the North side of the house. The original twelve by twelve beam that had served as the structural base of the North side was of no value anymore; that entire wall was hanging from the cross-beam tying the rafters at the second floor level. It had to be replaced and was. By Thanksgiving the house had a different look.

It was decided to tackle half the roof before Xmas. It was the portion over the two shed roof expansions and where small leaks on the side of an old chimney had appeared. The asphalt shingles were ripped and replaced by cedar shingles. By that time, my office had been moved from Europe to NYC and I could fly in and out late Friday night and depart from the farm at 5am on Monday with Peggy driving me to the airport in the pick-up truck. That gave me more time to work with Michael and speed up the process.

The settlement had begun. History tells us that the early settlers experienced some difficulties, particularly in winter. Well, they were not the only ones.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 3: Decision Time

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 17:31:09 GMT

Part 3: Decision Time

The call from Virginia came in at the very exact appointed time at the office where I was working. Would you believe we had been in our new house for about a year and a half and did not have a telephone line connection (but that is another story).

The real estate agent on behalf of the attorney indicated that our proposal was generally acceptable to the owner and asked who would represent us to handle the legal work. We gave the name of John Cogbill at the law firm. John was a specialist in real estate matter and a West Point graduate. An engineering survey was needed to define the boundary of the portion that we would acquire. Review of the health of the soil. Environmental survey. Archaeological survey.

In the meantime, the US dollar had continued to surge in value against the European currencies. We devised a way to structure the purchase by having the US correspondent bank of our European bank provide a bank guarantee to their partner by securing a deed of trust on the property and borrowing the required funds in European currency that had an interest rate around 5-6%. Much better than the 12-14% then charged by US banks.

It was time to sharpen the pencils on all the spreadsheets. The outlook on cattle even for specialized organic beef destined for the Swiss and German market had considerably softened with the increasing value of the Dollar. Priority was given to the winery project.

During the summer we were on home leave in upstate NY and brought Patrick and Terence as well as other family members for a trip to Williamsburg and to see the farm that we were considering acquiring. Everyone agreed that as a large parcel of land with several large barns, it was beautiful, fronting College Creek and overlooking the James River provided a lot of water view property. Our sons were both somewhat shocked and enthusiastic. They knew it would be a radical change. Other family members nodded gently with a question mark written on their faces. What in the world were we doing?

Basic concepts needed to be very much fleshed out. Additional contacts with VA Tech were needed. Identifying producers in Virginia and the quality of their wines was part of our targeted studies.

Another trip to the US was planned for the fall ’82. Due diligence documentation. Meeting with the US representative of our European Bank headquartered in Atlanta. Introduction to executives of United Virginia Bank in Williamsburg. Walking on the farm and beginning to imagine where the projects would be set-up, where we would live. What was needed? The location for the vineyards, for the winery, for the proposed hotel. In what condition are the two houses on the property?

That last point was quickly answered. The farm had been hit by a hurricane and a number of smaller shed like farm buildings had been blown off. A number of trees had been taken down. It looked like what it was: an abandoned farm. A couple of military veteran sergeants were acting as wood cutters for the attorney owner and were essentially using one of the two houses as their country dwelling away from home. The other house reputedly built in 1736 had been rented to local college students and was literally wrapped in plastic sheathing to prevent loss of heat in winter. It was now abandoned and had been trashed. Ouch!

We walked up and down the ravines of the farm which gave us that impression of what the settlers faced when they arrived in 1607. Thick undergrowth, wild vines thick as a man’s forearm, plenty of wild life, deer, raccoons, groundhogs, foxes, owls, red-tailed hawks, a grove of old cypresses with their roots sticking out of the brackish water. And then some artifacts from the twentieth century to contrast; old dead cars, stocks of farming chemicals. A flat portion of the farm was rented to a local farmer on a year by year basis and corn and soybeans were being planted and harvested along with a large amount of Johnson grass.

The enormity of the project and tasks suddenly hit us. Pause and reflection time, just for a few minutes. We did not shy away from it all. Our minds had been made up. I was just nearing forty, Peggy was barely thirty five and we had a reservoir of energy.

The Little House Dating Back to 1736.

One more time, we flew back home to Spain, now with a lot of homework to be doing during the coming winter. Before our departure, we placed a final call to John Cogbill in Richmond to discuss details of the draft purchase contract which was to be developed. Nothing was done until the ink had tried on the purchase agreement. Plenty of issues could come up.

Another Xmas time on the Costa Brava. Superb weather, Patrick II, Terence, Peggy and I roller skating on the terrace overlooking the Med. During our time in Europe we had taken our sons on multiple trips with us driving at high speed in our company car, a top of the line BMW, to Germany, England, Austria, Italy and Belgium. We knew all that would come to a halt and life would dramatically change.

In January ’83, we were back in Richmond and drove down to Williamsburg. We met with the owner, under the auspices of Bud Geddy, the local representative of the law firm, and in the downstairs room of one of the seventeenth century houses of the old Colonial Capital that was Mr. Geddy law office, we signed off on the terms of the purchase contract. Still it was too early to drink wine. The only small thing now needed was to finalize the financing and get the closing organized.

More documentation, multiple telefaxes (the internet had not been invented or even anticipated), and of course maintaining my business obligations travelling constantly. We were on a rigorous schedule. We targeted the closing for late June ’83 to wrap the trip around the 4th of July weekend. We had been fortunate also during those many years to have been helped with some wonderful British au-pairs who had stayed with the boys when we were off on the scouting trips. That also would come to an end.

As planned, we met in a large conference room in the offices of McGuire, Battle & Booth. The financing was in place as had been structured. The president of the bank was present, John Patterson and John Cogbill, the two super star attorneys who had shepherded the project had the conference table literally covered in documents. It was stunning for me who having worked with European banks on numerous deals with contracts of a couple of pages, I needed to digest what it all was and give a final review before Peggy and I affixed our signatures. I bent to John Cogbill after scanning the bank agreement and queried him on some of the terms. His response shall forever be imprinted in my memory. “Patrick, as your counsel, I would recommend that you not sign any such one-sided agreement; but, if you want the money and close this deal, sign it.”

We did.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 2: The Search for a Farm

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 17:08:25 GMT

Part 2: The Search for a Farm

Fundamental decision: where in the world are we going to look to acquire a farm. Peggy smiled gently and showed me a world map with four areas that she considered to have a climate that would suit her likes. New Zealand, Argentina, the North-West, Virginia.

We were living on a blessed piece of real estate on the Costa Brava in Spain, about 30 km North of Barcelona. Our house overlooked the Med and every morning the sun woke us up as it surfaced from the blue waters.

We had a nice large terrace and a pool and spent virtually all weekends (if I managed to be there) living the outdoor life, cooking the sausages prepared by the local butcher, the pork tenderloin or the chicken on the barbacoa and fine Riojas were plentiful and very reasonably priced.

Since my first visit to Williamsburg in 1961, I had developed a fondness for Virginia. After graduating from high school in Hilton, NY, just a couple of miles off Lake Ontario, West of Rochester, the American Field Service had organized a very pleasant trip to foreign students that had taken me to PA, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and finished in NYC where we would take a Dutch ship back to Rotterdam.

In ’68, Peggy and I travelled to Williamsburg with my parents who still lived in Europe. We had come with friends from S. Africa in ’69, for a home leave vacation in ’71, with Formula 1 racing drivers in ’72 and ’74. We had felt comfortable in Virginia and somehow, it is a lot closer to Europe than any of the other three potential areas for scouting a suitable farm. So, I suggested that it should become our first area to go and visit.

As readers will remember, we had been living in Europe for over ten years and our two young sons spoke French, Spanish and English with a very British accent as a result of the indoctrination by our wonderful au pairs. We decided to take a cross continent trip in August ‘80 starting in CA and finishing in VA that would have Patrick II and Terence discover the North American continent.

While in CA, we rented a big, very big mobile home RV, drove up the Pacific coast on highway 1 to South of Monterey, crossed the state and went up to the Yosemite Park, returned back to LA, visiting with friends. Then we began our trek in a more sedate rental vehicle to Vegas, then the Hoover Dam, the Petrified Forest, the Painted Desert, and stayed for couple of nights in Santa Fe, NM. Crossing the Texas Panhandle was long and hot in flat country. It was followed by OK, AK, TN and then again VA.

Soon we were in the Tidewater area and began our broad analysis of where we should begin inquiring on cost of land, operating financials and all considerations that might impact the project. Under analysis were the thoughts of a specialty organic cattle farm, a small winery and possibly a glorified bed and breakfast but only one project at a time. Peggy was a disciplined researcher having come from a family of bookworms with strong interest in sciences. She acquired a quick and voluminous pile of documents for us to study.

We drove up North to catch our plane back to Spain beginning to format a concept of timing for this adventure. Next was the need to discuss with my friends on the Board of Directors of the company the decision we had taken for our long term plan. It was a very cordial meeting particularly as I was being asked to focus on the redeployment of the US operation with headquarters in NYC.

In early ’81, in addition to my international responsibilities, I was named CEO of the US company and began flying from Barcelona to Geneva to NY on a routine basis. Peggy was busy doing spreadsheets on large green ledger paper to begin financial evaluation of what we would need to fund the project. We sold our house located just outside Geneva, moved into the house we had acquired in Spain and dedicated time to landscape the parcel, create a healthy vegetable garden and targeted mid’ 80’s as the approximate time for us to move back to the US.

Late that year after the completion of a marketing get-together of the entire sales force of the US operation in the Bahamas, we flew to Richmond and arranged to meet the real estate agent that we had contacted. The man looked just like Colonel Sanders and couldn’t figure us out. He wanted to show us “toy farms” one after the other. Our definition of a toy farm is one where you want to play gentleman-farmer while the beautiful, well maintained property turns you quickly into a pauper unless you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth. After two days of driving all over the state we gave up on Colonel Sanders and decided to identify new agents and ensure that our objective was well understood.

We made contacts with several persons and got more listings and sell sheets of farms for sale that were all seemingly perfect. We saw a one thousand acre farm North of Richmond that was attractive and determined that establishing a contact with a lawyer was the next key step on our priority list. While on quick stop with family in Upstate NY we reached out to an old lawyer friend who reminded me that the husband of the daughter of a Hilton family that had been very supportive in the 60’s was in Richmond. We made the connection with John Patterson, a very solid ex Navy Officer and Duke Law School grad.

Among the list of contacts we had made was the VA Dept of Agriculture who had referred us to VA Tech in Roanoke and we had been briefed on the importance of agriculture to the state of the economy and the growing interest of reviving the VA wine industry which had been recently boosted by the adoption of the Farm Winery Act.

One of the farms in VA. The change in lifestyle would be challenging for the parents as well as for the children.

Our next trip was in January ’82. We continued seeing many farms. Peggy had completed projections on the project if the big farm North of Richmond might be a go. I had opened a dialogue with European Bankers that were interested in working with us through their correspondent banks in Virginia. On a very snowy day, we were shown several farms in the Tidewater area, including one just outside of Williamsburg. It was brutally cold but we remembered it as being extraordinarily beautiful. However the price was well above our targeted level on a per acre basis. So, we discounted that farm and continued our search and ended up looking at fifty-two farms in Central and Eastern VA from Mecklenburg County to the Northern Neck.

We met with the attorneys at McGuire, Woods Battle & Booth and were advised to proceed with caution in our friendly conversations with the operator of that thousand acre farm. In the course of detailed discussions, we learned that in order to maximize the arable land of the farm, the man had filled numerous ravines with dead tires and bulldozed earth and top soil over the piles of tires. Write that project off.

Around Easter ’82, we were back in VA. The real estate agent who had driven us to the Williamsburg property suggested that we stop in to look at it again. It was springtime and the weather in Eastern Virginia is just about perfect. Everything was green and the sky blue. “ A six hundred acre farm, with a lot of frontage on a creek, “Just ready for development,’ said the salesman. “You don’t get it,” was our response, “we are not interested in development. We simply want to operate a genuine agricultural business, like a winery.” The man looked at us as if we had just come down from the moon or anywhere else in outer space. “A winery? A place where you make wine by stomping on grapes and sell it?” He shook his head in disbelief and confusion but made no further comment.

“Do you think that it might be possible to acquire a 300 acre portion of this farm?” we inquired in a very low key fashion. The real estate agent said he would try to arrange a brief visit with the attorney who owned the farm for the next day. The man driving what looked to us as an incredibly large Cadillac limousine kept showing us more farms that afternoon.

The next day, we had meetings arranged with competing real estate agents and went to look at farms on the York River. We decided to keep our independence and drive our rental and follow the salesmen where they took us. A session with the owner of the special Williamsburg farm had been scheduled for the afternoon in Newport News.

When we arrived at the attorney’s office, we were greeted by the gentleman who had the reputation of being the largest land owner on the peninsula between the James and the York Rivers, one of his law office colleagues and a friend who was introduced as a real estate developer.

We outlined our plan and our eventual interest in acquiring a 300 acre portion and set financial parameters. It was clear that they simply could not believe that an American couple living in Spain would want to buy land just to farm it. The meeting was brief and the law office colleague told us they would send us a proposal.

It arrived two weeks later with plats of the farm with elaborate color coded areas that would identify areas that they would consider for sale as parcels without any water frontage and at a per acre price that was twice what we had defined as our upper limit. I was angry, called the real estate agent and told him that we did not appreciate people who insulted our intelligence or wasted our time. We would be prepared to deal with the principal on the general terms that had been defined; otherwise, there were plenty of other farms for sale in Virginia. By the next day, the agent sheepishly called back and told us the owner would welcome a specific proposal from us drawn on the plat that we had received.

The next trip was organized for the summer of ‘82. We had also identified a nice property on the York River that had a lot of appeal and was well within our budgetary plan. So, we were now on a course with two solid options.

During the spring of that year, the dollar value surged over the European currencies resulting from the high prime rate pushed by the Feds. At one point it reached 21% and our savings in European currencies were looking like snow melting in the sunshine. We certainly were not going to buy a farm by making payments in European currencies. Anxiety level rising.

It was July and the weather was warm. We drove to the York River farm and found an abundance of wild berries. We virtually snacked on them and while munching were trying to establish the positives and negatives of all the farms we had visited to reach a conclusion. Surry County had been added on our list. Yet, we were very impressed by the farm in Williamsburg and decided to meet again with the owner. We wrapped things up for the day and while staying at one of the properties of Colonial Williamsburg, we went over all of our calculations and the various points to consider. The next day we were back in the office of the lawyer that we had met in the spring.

PGD (right) with friend and Exec VP, George Share (left) and another Sr person (middle) at a meeting of Fragrances Selective Inc.

We made a specific proposal to purchase ca 300 acres identifying on the map the area of our interest and the per acre price we would be prepared to consider. The next day we were to fly back to Spain and suggested that his agent contact us to advise us of his response. We all knew that beyond any kind of response in principle, there would be a lot of due diligence such as survey, legal documentation, title search, easements etc. Now, the ball was in his court and we were to wait for a telephone call to advise us of his position.

(To be continued)

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO

Part 1: How it all began

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 16:31:04 GMT

Part 1: How it all began

The year was 1980. Peggy and I were vacationing in Guadeloupe in June. It was a fun trip, we had a small French rented car and went on a discovery trip of the main island and also took the put-put taxi boats to the many smaller islands that surround Guadeloupe. We went on that trip for a pause in our lives.

In ’69 after years of living in upstate NY, I had received an offer from an executive I had known at Kodak who had become a senior marketing person for Philip Morris Intl and wanted me to join his team in Switzerland. I had been given the plum job of running the Marlboro World Championship Team of motor racing.

Peggy Duffeler on the Harbor of St. Tropez in the ’70’s. I literally worked seven days a week for years, clocking 200 flights every 12 months. Two sons born in Switzerland. Construction of a house overlooking Lake Geneva. Two Formula One world championship titles, world rallye racing championship, outboard racing championship, Marlboro Sailing Cup on the Med. Hot dog skiing demonstrations from the Alps to the mountain above Teheran. Thank Heaven Peggy had been travelling with me on a great many of those adventures.

In ’76, I left Philip Morris when my father was diagnosed with emphysema and remained involved in motor sport organizing vintage car rallies while at the same time representing an investment group in their plan to expand a wine operation based in Beaune, Burgundy.

On the little put-put taxi boat going to Ile Sainte, Peggy was looking absolutely gorgeous and tanned in a light T shirt and khaki rolled up short. Turning over to me, she raised a big question, “What are we going to do next? We came to Europe in March ’70 and at the time we thought it would be for a couple of years overseas. Now, it has been over ten years. We are now living in Spain. You are the busy CEO of an international operation and where is our life going?”

That was a pretty dramatic question. Peggy was the kind of person who had this incredible ability to raise fundamental questions that would or could destabilize just anybody. More about that later.

I was speechless at the time and asked what her thoughts were on that topic.

She stretched a bit showing her smooth curves, leaning back on the bundles of sacks of merchandise that the taxi boat was taking over to the isolated little islets. She was relaxed and, smiling, with eyes twinkling behind her glasses.

“Let’s do something very different,’ said she, “like buying a farm in a place that has a good climate; you should quit your corporate rat race business involvement and we can raise Patrick II and Terence on a farm that breathes freedom and independence. You and I want to be autonomous and we should be.”

Sketch by Patrick Duffeler on site dreaming about a new horizon.

Soon the little boat stopped to unload passengers and freight on a small dock on the side of what looked like a very rocky promontory sticking out of the water. Then we were on our way to the Isle Sainte. As we were approaching it, we looked at the outline of the little colonial houses on the waterfront with one jetty where the taxi boat stopped. On an impulse, we asked how long the boat would remain to reload the passengers and would we have time to go visit the little port.

The answer was simple, five minutes maximum. We asked if there was another taxi boat that would stop later in the day. The answer was negative but he would be happy to pick us up the next day. The spirit of adventure caught us and we jumped off the taxi boat and told the driver that we would be there on the dock to return to the main island the next day at the set time.

So, we were walking on the dock towards this beautiful small village with different colors on the various house fronts. We had no overnight luggage. Peggy had her bikini bottom under her shorts. I wore a shirt with a credit card and the rental car keys in the pocket, my swimsuit under my jeans and we both had our beach sandals.

The main street of the village was probably five hundred feet long and we inquired about hotel accommodations. There was one hotel owned by a Frenchman from Northern France who had gotten tired of the rainy, drizzly weather of his native area. We booked a room and decided to walk to the nearest beach about one kilometer over the steep hill at the end of the main street.

The tiny beach was deserted so we dropped our clothes and took some sun. Since our trips in St Tropez in the seventies, Peggy had become a fan of topless sunbathing. The topic of where we wanted life to take us was on the top of the agenda. “Ok,” said I, “I know you have felt a tad frustrated at my being the ever travelling husband, and, we have serious concerns over some of the questionable ethics and pressures in this environment of world-wide globalism. Yes, a new direction sounds right for you, for me and for the whole family. How do we get there?”

After a couple of hours, minds churning, we needed a distraction, looked around and saw an abandoned house constructed in typical tropical style. Set in a coconut grove, overlooking the sea from both the front and the back of the house and surrounded by a covered porch on all sides, it looked like the perfect place for a Hemingway story. There was a “For Sale” sign. It was an image of temptation.

All of a sudden, the blue sky turned dark grey and heavy rain began pelting the area. For a while we waited on the covered porch, but as there was no indication that it would stop we put our clothes back on and walked back to the hotel arriving absolutely soaked, dripping of the warm rain. Wet as we were, we went to a small outdoor restaurant, sat under an awning and ate some chicken Creole with a bottle of French rose. The conversation continued, analyzing the many challenges we would be facing.

A young Patrick Duffeler.

We got back to the hotel and installed ourselves in the room. No air-conditioning. No running water except for a few minutes in the morning, we had been told. All the water available on the island came from water collected from the rain higher on the hills and piped to the village. It was very hot and muggy. We felt sticky. Another storm broke. We walked on the terrace in the nude and got a refreshing shower to cool us down. The next morning, in our clothes, kind of almost dry, we had our breakfast and talked, identifying all of the issues to be considered. The taxi boat took us back to Guadeloupe. The little Renault rental car was waiting for us on the pier and we drove back to our more comfortable hotel.

The discussion developed and continued over the next days, weeks and months.

That was the beginning of the adventure that would bring us to settle next to Jamestown Island, some 376 years after the first British settlement in the New World.

Patrick G. Duffeler
Founder & CEO