Todd Kliman - The Wild Vine: A Forgotten Grape and the Untold Story of American Wine

Copyright 2010 by Todd Kliman

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.clarksonpotter.com

CLARKSON POTTER is a trademark and POTTER with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kliman, Todd.
The wild vine / Todd Kliman.1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Wine and wine makingUnited StatesHistory.
2. Norton, Daniel Norborne, 1794-1842. I. Title.
TP557.K55 2010
641.220973dc22 2009033963

eISBN: 978-0-307-59130-2

v3.0_r1

F OR MY FATHER , T ED K LIMAN,
WHO TAUGHT ME TO TRUST IN MY OWN EYES
AND SHOWED ME THE COURAGE IT
TAKES TO CREATE

PART ONE

C LOUDS OF DUST drift through the open windows of my rickety Toyota as it shudders along the bumpy gravel path of Champe Ford Road like a washing machine on spin cycle, stirring up sticks and pebbles.

The vineyard sits up ahead, just beyond a grove of ash and walnut trees so densely crosshatched that the road through it resembles a tunnel. Its a sunny, sweltering late spring day in Virginias hunt country, but having entered the tunnel, its as if Ive entered a different realm altogether. Light and sound disappear. The heat, meanwhile, has not been dispelled by the intersecting bands of shade but becomes more concentrated, and the air has the odd, uncirculating stillness of a locked vault, of something trapped, a gathering of ghosts.

I emerge onto a steep and narrow road to find a woman standing outside the tasting room with her hand over her brow, squinting into the slanting afternoon sun like a land surveyor. Im late. Even before I cut the engine, she bounds out to meet me in her pale yellow blouse and white skirt.

Hiya, she says, giving me her hand. Jenni McCloud. She doesnt squeeze but instead, at the moment her fingers come into contact with my palm, allows them to go limpa delicate gesture meant, I suppose, to reduce the effect of their size.

I apologize for keeping her waiting. She waves me off. No worries, she says, as though worrying itself were the greater offense. Come on, let me show you the property.

A pair of sweet, rambunctious dogs runs out from the wings to escort us to her all-terrain vehicle.

Say hello to Treixadura and Fer. Hello, cuties!

Tresha what?

Treixadura and Fer Servadou, she explains, unhelpfully.

I stare blankly.

The grapes? Spanish? No? she offers.

Sorry. Never heard of em.

She shrugs.

A couple of arthritic-walking chickens join the party. Hey, little goobers, Jenni says, stroking their lustrous coats.

Youve got quite the menagerie, dont you?

And a parrot inside and Im getting pigs next. Little piggies. I love it. All this land, and all these animals. Im a country girl. I love being able to be free on the land like this, and breathe. Thats why I moved here.

We hop in and drive. To the east, Bull Run Mountain, soft and shimmering in the heat haze, conjures a slumbering giant, lolling on the horizon as if it were a hammock. Catoctin Mountain lies opposite at a distance. Embosomed between them, the tiny village of Aldie nestles. Other than the planes that knife across the sky, unwelcome reminders of nearby Dulles Airport and the congested exurbs of northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., feels like a time zone away. As humid and thick as the air is, I can feel myself beginning to unclench and breathe, too.

What is that, air? I say, inhaling.

Jenni throws her head back in laughter. Welcome to wine country, man.

Its sometimes the simplest of things, the silliest of things, that draw you to people, not their well-intentioned gestures or deepest thoughts. And so it is that I take an immediate liking to Jenni for following wine country with man, for subverting the gentility of the one with the vernacular of the other. Theres a subtle point here, too: Chrysalis, her vineyard, might be in equestrian country, but it is not of it.

Had I not turned sharply off John Mosby Highway, I would have continued to historic downtown Middleburg, skirting low-riding stone fences as I rose and dipped and wound my way through the arcadian countryside. Middleburg and Aldie are five minutes apart. They might as well be five hours. It is Middleburg that the rich and powerful flock to, Middleburg that is synonymous with the good life, Middleburg that is widely regarded as the village with a claim to history, all those battlefields of the Revolutionary and Civil wars scattered about the lush and rolling valley. Aldie is a small town; Middleburg plays at being a small town. It gestures toward simplicity and taking it slow, but revels in its members-only auraa private club, lacking only bouncers to enforce its codes. The smell of old money, palpable as the smell of fresh-mown grass in summer, draws new money. And the presence of both, in turn, is an irresistible turn-on for those with no money. On nice weekends, particularly in the spring and fall, droves of Washingtonians set out for Middleburg to stroll its boutiques and buy its overpriced jams and sleep late in its inns and fantasize, if only for a couple of days, that some of Middleburgs charm and gentility has rubbed off on them.

Aldie is the opposite of a tourist haven. It is Middleburgs unlovely, unlettered sister. The town was established in 1765 and for a time was the fourth largest in Loudoun County. By the late nineteenth century, however, Middleburg was incorporated and Aldie descended into obscurity, only a Civil War battle punctuating its many meager decades of nonhistory. On principle alone, I would much rather find myself with a few hours to spend in Aldie than in Middleburg, preferring the hungry, unwashed outsider over the preening insider.

The SUV rumbles over the hilly, uneven earth toward the vineyards, a yapping field dog running alongside. Jenni comes to a sudden, playful stop, and the dog nearly leaps into her lap. Hey there, she coos, stroking its fur. Then, like a mother grown impatient, she dispatches it: Now, get out there and chase those deer!