At the end of February, if tradition holds during the current pandemic, judges will pick Virginia’s twelve best wines and one of these will win the prestigious Governor’s Cup®. To get a feel for the level of difficulty in winning the cup, more than 530 wines entered last year’s competition for the top honor in 2020 – and each one was considered among the best the Commonwealth’s vintners had to offer.
While the honor typically falls to one of the Commonwealth's red wines, last February's Cup went to 868 Estate Vineyards for its 2017 Vidal Blanc Passito – the first top win in the vineyard’s 8-year history, the first top honor to go to a wine made from fruit grown entirely in Loudoun County, AND the first dessert wine to win in 15 years!
It is the sort of happy surprise you should come to expect from 868's three unconventional families who have combined highly successful careers outside of agriculture with a love of great wine, great food and great art.
Co-founder and Winemaker Carl DiManno was a former chemical engineer who discovered a love of wine, left the petroleum industry and then went to U.C. Davis to get a degree in Vineology. Nancy Deliso, a member of one of the three family owners, says Carl loves to experiment and typically won’t make the same thing every year so he can expand his knowledge of the art of winemaking. He likely will continue to refine the passito method because of its success, though this year’s crop was a challenge.
The challenge begins with the appassimento process where grapes are partially dried on straw mats or pallets to concentrate the grapes’ flavors and sweetness prior to vinification. Nancy confirms that the process of making the wine is “extremely labor intensive.”
She explains, “The grapes are put into a refrigeration trailer and held for about six weeks. They are then hand carried from the trailer to the press.” The juice for the 2017 vintage was “nice and sweet with about 8% residual sugar, but we had to go to great lengths to get it to stop there. We chilled it, filtered the wine, and bottled it in a small bottle to which wax was applied by hand.”
Nancy describes the taste as “lots of fruit, where the apricot and sugar balances nicely with the acidity to give you a nice clean drinking experience – you won’t get that cloying feeling of some sweet wines.” If you were lucky enough to have purchased a bottle, she recommends pairing it with dried apricots, blue cheese and roasted almonds to amplify some of the flavors in the wine. “But make no mistake, the wine IS the dessert.”
By winning the Cup, Nancy hopes to expand the appreciation of dessert wines among consumers, many of whom say they “don’t like sweet wine.” She says, “I think reds tend to be perceived as more serious, more sophisticated, right?... Our Passito really was a different kind of dessert wine than people were expecting. It’s not just sweet. There’s more going on in it than that.”
“Right now, in our barn, we have bins of the vidal grapes drying. There’s a fan that blows across them. You have to be patient. It’s a process that requires leaving the grapes hanging as long as you dare. This year it was a late harvest, and then there was the threat of a very early frost. We were playing the same farming weather waiting game that we played in the Spring where there were five nights of potential frost that could destroy your whole crop, even though it had been unseasonably warm in March. Everything leafed out early, then we had five nights in late May of wondering, ‘Is tonight the night we’re going to lose the whole crop?’” After the grapes were ripe they were left on the vine as long as possible, “then it sat in a refrigerated trailer for a couple of weeks, keeping that constant chill, then moved from there to our barn where it will be drying probably into January as it continues to dehydrate and shrivel and concentrate all of those wonderful flavors. We’ll press as soon as Carl says it’s ready.”
Despite the detail, 868’s goal isn’t to educate consumers about wine, but to encourage them to come and enjoy it with the three families as if they are family themselves. On Thanksgiving, friends and neighbors often hike to the top of the hill overlooking the vineyards, which has an elevation of 868 feet, and thus serves as the namesake of the estate.
“We want the wine that we make to be part of getting people together around the table. We want people of all walks of life to feel welcomed, and experience wine. What we want is for people to come, be in community and enjoy what we are making. That extends to what we’re making in the winery with Carl, on the beautiful grounds that we have and even the local artists that are featured in the tasting room. Those are all the elements that go into making an enjoyable customer experience.”
- Founded in 2012 by three families, Winemaker Carl and Erin DiManno; Wendy and Chris Charron; Nancy and CEO Peter Deliso, and named for the winery’s highest point of elevation.
- Found online at https://868estatevineyards.com/ and in Purcellville at 14001 Harpers Ferry Rd., 22 acres under vine: Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay, Vidal Blanc. Watch a video of the winemaker discussing the Passito at http://vimeo.com/LeesburgLifestyle
- Its on-site Grandale Restaurant isn’t open during ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, but its unique farm-to-fork food is available through Grandale Catering.
- Submitting for the 2021 Governor’s Cup: 2019 Cab Franc, 2019 Altezza (a Nebbiolo blend), 2019 Meritage, and a 2018 Chardonel.
- The wine club is free to join with a commitment to buy 12 bottles per year that the winemaker picks unless the customer wants to swap – something last year’s members did with the 2017 Passito to their great chagrin.