For some time, I meant to say a few words about what I have witnessed in Loudoun County recently.

Recently, the pace at which new wineries have opened in Washington State for example, accelerated from one each fifteen, to one every seven days.

If viewed from the history of Virginia, the attempts date back to 1604. With an eye on the time frame of my own experience, I have witnessed the birth and death of individual vineyards, the former across the road from Chrysalis in Middleburg, the latter, the disassembly of an establishment planted in 1987 near Oatlands Plantation.

This is the compass of my own view.

Czarnecki's moved from DC to Loudoun from work with the World Bank, and planted both a Christmas tree farm and a vineyard, about a thousand, split between chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. The most intriguing of Czarnecki's was the eastern two rows in the lower tract.

Whereas the cab and chard vines had suffered the lack of tending since Marion Czarnecki's death about 2005, his favorite four dozen table grapes continue to thrive, to flower and one presumes, bear fruit if the dried rachii still attached to the canes is indicative. Why that might be, is unclear.

After a few days exploring Czarnecki's old Oaksworth vineyard as I had offered to help take posts and wire down to clear the site for a new church, it appeared that unlike the majority of old vines for wine grapes, the eating grape rows were labeled on their posts. Two features were notable. First, the vines were installed on either side of each post.

In the twenty first century, posts are ususally sited between vine trunks.

And the labels were carefully attached, label-maker vinyl in some cases nailed to the post wood.

Although I later learned from a Loudoun grower who had managed the place from 1995 to 2005 that Marion himself took care of his table rows, there were two varieties among them which were more than table grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon and Baco Noir.

Among the rest were Suffolk Red, Himrod, Blue Mars, Steuben, Seneca, Ontario, Catawba and Caco. Black varieties (Baco noir, Steuben, Blue Mars), Reds (Catawba, Caco, Reliance) and whites (Niagara, Seneca, Himrod). Some were seedless (Himrod, Blue Mars and Reliance) and some hybrids (Baco Noir).

On each post, an upper and a lower label.

Hybridizations?

It led to the various commercial grape catalogs, and to a Lynchburg expert on grape breeding.


While the breeding rationale in general evades me if attempts at breeding it is, there is much there to learn once grapes at our own patch bloomed and for the first season, I noticed enough to look in detail. 

On my last trip to look over the flowering types at Chrysalis, I also visited a just-planted vineyard across the road in Middleburg. Some thrity-two hundred vines each in a growth tube with a bamboo stake. And, some weeks before I had visited a site next to Bull Run battlefield that had been cleared but not planted, and another massive planting on Hogback Mountain in its second season.

There is a rationale for what is planted and where that seems to be emerging for those of us new to the sport of grape farming. It is an emerging community and occupation that goes back at  least to Jamestown.

Having witnessed the birth and death of vineyards, it remains to watch and listen as the middle years unfold in the coming weeks.  

It is a vigorous time of ferment in Northern Virginia for anyone who watches these events transpire.

If you happen by a vineyard on an early summer morning and see a man muttering as he moves vine to vine, it may not be as it seems.

In fact, the vineyard and its keeper may be having more of a conversation than meets the eye. Engaging one another to meet current and future needs.

In the bargain, there will be a crop for one and pampered care for the other for the coming season.

Some owners tell you that at twenty-five, vines become too old and must be replaced. Then there are reports of vines eighty years old that produce superb wine grapes.

What is the substance of these early morning conversations at summer's onset?

If there has been ovecast and rain, the caretaker looks for the telltale orange spots, one or more that signal the germination of fungal spores responsible for black rot. The preventative and curative sprays are what the man considers.

There is a threat if spray fungicide use is indiscriminate, and the risk is selection of a subset of fungal spores that have resistance to the fungicide. There is also the concern for the environment and the folks down stream whose water comes from the vineyards and surrounding terrain.

Guignardia bidewellii is the hazard toward the end of May if wet weather sets in. The fungal lesions are orange surrounded by a black rim of ascospores. At this season, leaves are removed from the plant as part of managing the foliar canopy, so the physical removal of blighted leaves keeps things in check.

Although the leafy symptoms are most obvious, close attention to green stems reveals a black scar where black rot is present.

The remedy if all else fails, is a spray program with Mancozeb, a fungicide containing manganese and zinc. And rotation through Captan, a sulfur-containing mix, although it is well to consider that American grapes such as Norton (V. aestivalis with some vinifera) are senstitive and should not be treated with sulfur.

At this point in the season, it is important to protect the emerged clusters, flowers that will pass a delicate stage over ten days, and the early fruit. The dose of mancozeb for affected plants is higher than as protectant immediately prior to rain
in healthy vines.

Copper is also used: early on in the French vineyards, the rows closest to passersby were sprayed with copper sulfate, a bright blue compound, to deter theft of grapes. Turns out those vines showed substantial resistance to some forms of rot.

Earlier in April, it had been the steely blue flea beetles that feasted on emerging buds which could also be physically removed without recourse to chemical pesticides. To come would be the annual emergence of Japanese beetles three weeks down the road, and whether floral baited traps would do the trick of keeping the beetles away from grape leaves.

So it went: inspection of vines for health, watching carefully where the clusters had flowered, and seeing to the topiary shaping of vines and their leafy canopy for the best grapes.

There is a lot there in all this that will result in the best wine grapes come September.

But for the moment, we will leave the man muttering among the vines to his own ruminations.

Initial impressions of the terminology and all those names were bewildering.

The first grape that registered was Pinot gris, and that only when associated with the sights and sounds of harvest that hot September weekend. My daughter and her friend and my wife were all there, and somewhere in nearby rows, that low sound of contented volunteers snipping their way down the aisles of greenery.

It was that multicolored cluster that caught the eye: part green, part purple. That moment my biology training kicked in and following it up was my entre' into the molecular biology.

The multi-faceted nature of vineyard and winery work was appealing as well. Part literature, part biology, some business and geography and don't forget meteorlogy and history.

Here was the way forward, with its twinkling of economic sustainability amidst the downturn.

Add to that the glamor and spice of major economic forces moving into Virginia, and a history that led back through Jefferson's Monticello and Jamestown, and it was not to be resisted, any of it.

It was pure joy to be out in the fresh country air, watchfully waiting as the vines stirred at season's onset. And, a link to time passing and all the goodness of the farm life.

Hard work to be sure, but the labors demanded were balanced against the reward anticipated down the road. This was by definition, the rebirth of hope.

When all was said and done, there would be the likelihood of worthy gains at the far end of the journey.

The last week of May, many things came to fruition. There were babies born, and several colleagues completed their homebuilt projects by taking to the air in work that spanned eight years. The first run-up of the new Anzani engine succeeded.

And, that month marked three years we had been planting, tending and watching grape vines.

It was only in the past twelve months I had seen to them almost daily, and the results were rewarding. Phenology, an obscure botannical term that meant the stages in plant development, rose from the textbook, embodied in living, growing tissue.

Strange I had never taken time to watch flowers develop, or the obvious fact that flowers come in both sexes, explaining the biology of grape fruiting.

Hard to miss that: the farm had been overrun with wild grape when we first moved here in 2002.

Hard to pin down when the urge to plant toward wine grapes arose. Maybe Heidelberg in 1992, when antique apples and orchard planting became a notion so far from home and before we had the land.

Late May brought the shocking realization for colleagues that they could fly their 1917 airframes, and the prospect of winemaking seemed just down the road for us.

It was science and business, culture and hype, but beyond all, the Virginia winery came into its own about 2010 or 2011. The ring side seat was more than I had expected, and the view was to the future in Loudoun County.

The unmistakeable chug-rumble of a big radial made itself known even before she showed just above the treeline headed east toward JYO.

It was the third '40s biplane gracing the skies over Oatlands in less than two weeks. The first had appeared while I was helping neighbors a plant an acre of grapes. Then, a day or two later, a low flying Stearman I later learned was out of Warrenton or Manassas.

It was on a walk that Sunday after dinner, and the aircraft had been tracked down to JYO, a brand new YMF-F5C WACO. Not of the '40s, but built in 000. The lighting made it impossible on either sighting to call the color, but by following the FAA postings for N128L and airshow stills, she was, or had been earlier this year, red.

I did leave a call with whom I thought might be the pilot to ask the owner if I could get some dynamic photos on the ramp or taxiways on her way to or from her hanger at JYO.

Hoped it might work out.

I had ridden one over Bar Harbor Maine some ten years ago. That one alternated seasons between ATL and Bar Harbor, and was a ride for hire operation. My understanding was that 28 Lima would also go for hire.

If lucky, it would be vineyard tours from the air.

But more on that later.

By the 22nd, the rain returned after what seemed weeks of dry Spring weather. And with the rain, the cold.

It had started a hazy week Tuesday when NASA's Discovery returned to KIAD. It was a moment to pause and watch. Watch the fathers lift up ambivalent toddlers to see Discovery fly-by and then land.

I had heard stories of WWII aviators whose fathers had held them up in a like manner to watch Charles Lindbergh pass. But this was consignment of the American spacecraft to a museum, with all its attendant agonizing.

Putting up an obsolete relic of an earlier age, the ambition and the passing on of the program that had begun about March 1962 with John Glenn.

What would the young boy become, after sensing his father's eagerness to see that huge piggy back airborne and stalling in on a slow pass? An astronaut?

America's Discovery laid up, flightless in a museum.

An image to consider and ponder, what with the recent passing of the centenary of the sinking of the R. M. S. Titanic.

Or perhaps the end of something begun in 1903?

That Sunday was Earth Day, and the First Lesson dealt was Genesis I:i, "...In the beginning, God..." and the origins and cosmology of Man.

What becomes of a society that retires its heroes, its astronauts and research scientists
and gives up hard-won live technical competence for the sterility of a glass display case?

We will learn the answer, and it may not take years to know the wisdom of current political decisions visited upon future generations.

When it got down to it, athletics was the better education.

Academics trained the mind to discipline. But sports added a measure of pain that
was beyond what technical or cultural subjects could offer.

Farming was to some degree the management of pain. Like athletics, it was foremost to maintain fitness, and a sharp edge. Body, mind, implements and equipment. The days were long and unforgiving when the cold season arrived and the summer's effort was found wanting.

Farming had the virture of simplfying and restricting, making choices easier. Where there was little or no choice, decisions were made without agonizing.

Physical exercise was not optional. Without it, restful sleep became problematic, and the flexibility that came with hard use lasted only while exercise was regular practice.

One forgets how much pain is associated with movement. It is there as a subtext while striving for a goal. Easy to forget in retrospect, but return to the regimen and it has a way of making itself known.

Pain was not good, but it had its function, to remind the body of changes taking place.

The bushhog lay inert, unused, and perhaps terminal in the boggy grass.

There were issues. The gearbox had vibrated the hull deck to its breaking point. Some torque that, to rend quarter inch steel.

Of the four five-eights anchor bolts, the unbalanced mower blades had so fatigued three of four, they had torn free. The eighty pound gearbox had been held by only one bolt.

I would never know how close to disaster I had come months earlier.

At first glance, I only meant to dismantle it, perhaps salvage the gear box and fittings in case a new hull could be purchased on the cheap. The blades were in dire need of balance and sharpening, and the hull itself was also gashed on the left side where a blade had let go.

Maybe twenty pounds of steel departed to who knows where, leaving the eighth inch hull gashed. At that point last autumn, I put it up on planks and walked away. I may eventually find that blade. Or not: seems improbably such a substantial object could simply disappear.

Nevertheless.

What was it, perhaps the warmer weather that begged for another welding project.

With the gearbox dismounted and cleaned, the matter of the broken gearbox mount appeared less onerous.

I have never welded quarter inch with oxyacetylene, but the deck appeard to have been neatly repaired once before and the stack of dimes appearance of the weld looked much like the work of a good oxyacetylene welder.

So I went at it with inspiration.

A few hours of cardboard models and diagrams and the deck was jury-rigged with a marginally aesthetic weld, and to try it, I reassembled the gearbox and PTO shaft and gingerly gave it power.

The tractor itself was just a day or two since being rejuvenated by the surprisingly simple expedient of tracing the harness until the broken wire was found, then installing a new battery.

To my amazement, the welds on the deck held and the new bolts held the box fast without vibration.

Wednesday evening was spent as only someone new to farming could enjoy it: early April, the grass and field flowers thick and as colored as a Persian carpet, viewing the fields from the seat with a careful ear to the drone and clatter behind for any telltale sounds of distress.

The aroma of Spring is cut grass, and onion grass, that salty pungent aroma of Autumn and Spring. And Glechoma, and the novocaine smell of cut dandelion.

And the smell of deadfall burst and shredded by whirling blades, mixed with the salty dust of the occasional small field stone dislodged and shattered.

As if it weren't enough of an olfactory riot, the oriental olives up the hill were blooming and throwing off as heady a perfume as can be sensed anywhere.

And the diesel, that wonderful mechanical perfume of a twenty horse diesel engine and hot oil, the sure sign that significant work was being done.

Don't tell me about it being work, however. I haven't cut grass in months and the first time each season is the best.

George, an industry insider, put it succinctly.

The number of wineries selling to the Metro DC public is increasing at a faster rate than acreage devoted to grape production.

Ergo, the supply of grapes with so many makers clamoring for fruit, will be a limiting factor in determining grape prices. Which justifies focus on grape production and setting up new vineyards in Northern Virginia.

While public preferences nationwide trend toward chardonnay and cabernet savignon, the classic vanilla and chocolate of the winery, the terroir argues for viognier and cabernet franc both of which have proven themselves over the past three decades in the vineyard, in regional markets, and in worldwide competition.

Given the three to five year lag between planting and initial bottling, the decison surrounding site and variety choice have inherent risks. Most growers do not allow their choice to be wholly dictated by markets: it is often said that a grower should focus on wines he personally prefers, climate and terrain permitting.

Having decided to plant, and which varieties, sources are the next consideration. It is not obvious during research from widely accessible information, which nurseries are foremost for Virginia vineyards. Various levels of relaibility emerge when growers and prospective growers discuss sources of vines.

There is the matter of standards, certification and traceability. Although quantitative documentation may be lacking, if enough growers are consulted, some unfortunate experiences emerge. Vines infected with various maladies. Vines with the wrong rootstock. Even vines purported to be one variety that are in fact, not.

A grower colleague suggested this weekend that one need not hire a consultant to steer clear of such obstacles. Many, if not most growers, are pleased to discuss their experiences, good and bad, with others in the realm of professional dialogue, perhaps over a glass at the end of an afternoon of volunteer pruning and tying up new vines.

Word does get around.

It the fast paced commuter universe, perhaps neighbors have been minimized by the time demands of the commute in the DC Metro area. A significant resource in the county is those words spoken over an adjoining fence between farmers, perhaps one novice, the other a veteran.

If the isolation of the commute and interference of electronic media can be avoided for a brief spell each week, the knowledge circulates.

Diversity is key to fostering continued growth and development of the Virginia winery.

First, wine.

The public is fickle, and trends in market preferences are for the most part untracked. Preference has many roots: in the absolute quality of the product, its price and the perceived ratio of quality to price. In a market of constant resources, the price will vary with production costs. Of course, there are economies of scale, but with increasing scale, quality may suffer. There will be a continuing and delicate balance among quality, price and production scale.

Second is the diversity of grape types in Virginia. New varietals feed into the uniqueness of the wine. If a limited number of wineries produce a type of wine that suits public fancy, the law of supply and demand prevails. A small winery may compete by offering high quality wine of a specific varietal that is not otherwise offered.

Third is style. The same grape may be handled in a variety of ways by skilled winemakers. Thus, the same grape used state-wide may be developed into a unique product by the art of the winemaker. A good example is the new port wine made from Norton grapes at Chrysalis by Alan Kinne.

Fourth, it is worth observing that wine is not the sole product in the tasting room. In congested metropolitan areas like District of Columbia and adjacent high density suburbs, the appeal of a short drive to the county cannot be underestimated. The diversity of tasting rooms is remarkable in the Virginia countryside. Each business owner has a vision of what appeals and with each personality, a unique institution emerges.

Diversity is what distinguishes the Virginia, from the Calfornian winery.

Many tasting rooms are retrofitted 19th century farm buildings. Some are purpose designed in a traditional style. There are also modern and postmodern constructions offering a wide range of view and ambience. Once inside, the wine taster may also choose the type of tasting environment and experience from a diversity of types, from austere tasting rooms that exclude large groups and wedding ceremonies, to corporate style tasting rooms, to family run operations where a sense of tribal membership may be as strong a draw as the wine itself.

With many burgeoning industries, the life cycle begins with many start-ups all clamoring for a place in the market. The industry matures, and as the market reaches saturation, the less able competitors drop out. In its final stage, an industry may tend toward a few large concerns monopolizing the market through consolidation and buy outs of the competition.

It will be interesting to follow the Virginia winery as it moves through these phases of development. The key to survival of the Virginia winery may be its diversity and broad base geographically in local, regional and world markets.