It’s 3 a.m. on a cool September night. I’m driving north on U.S. 221 from Asheville to Boone, North Carolina. During the day, this drive offers stunning views of the mountains surrounding the Linville Gorge — the North Fork of the Catawba River winding on your left and steep, rocky walls looming on your right as you wind your way toward the engineering marvel that is the Linville Cove Viaduct. It’s worth the detour if you ever find yourself out that way.
Today I can only see what is immediately ahead of me thanks to some dense, early morning fog that clings tightly to the mountain. I chug my coffee and keep driving.
Why? Because I love wine, and I love North Carolina. The people I’m meeting and our task for the day are part of what I’ve been calling (in my own head, mostly) discovering North Carolina’s noble grapes.
In wine speak, “noble grapes” are well-known grapes, like Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, etc., that have a higher status in the wine world because they are popular worldwide and are considered some of the best grapes for making wine.
Those are not the grapes we are picking today, but we are picking varieties that could potentially change the future of North Carolina wine.
Caring for the vine and the wine
I arrive at Wildcat Vineyard around 5 a.m. I’m the first of about 10 volunteers joining the winemakers of Plēb Urban Winery for their second harvest day of the season. Some of the volunteers are the winemakers’ friends and family. A few others, like me, are neither grape growers nor winemakers. We’re just enthusiastic about wine in the region.
At 3,400 feet above sea level, the air is a cool 59 degrees, even though it will get hot later in the day. That’s why we’re here so early. Grapes are best harvested in cool weather.
Every second a grape spends off the vine before it is processed is more time for bad stuff (mold, bacteria) to grow. And the warmer the grapes, the more hospitable the growing environment. Grapes can also start fermenting too early if left for long in a hot truck bed.
Caring for the grapes in the vineyard and the winery is a big part of Plēb’s ethos. Plēb is a minimal intervention winery, which means they manage their vineyards as organically and sustainably as possible and work with other growers who do the same — all within two hours of their Asheville, NC winery. They also limit the use of chemicals in the winemaking process.
Plēb’s style of making wine is aligned to the increasingly popular natural wine movement. They are one of a handful of natural winemakers I know of in North Carolina. If you’re unfamiliar with natural wine, here’s a good resource.
A quick science lesson (please bear with me)
A big reason why Plēb and other wineries like them can grow enough grapes to make wine without intervening heavily in the vineyard is because of the grapes they choose to grow.
The day I helped harvest, we picked Seyval Blanc and Traminette. Neither of these grape varieties are very well known in North Carolina or the world. As I said, they are not considered noble grapes.
They’re what’s called a “hybrid” variety, meaning they are part Native American grape, part European grape. Some hybrids developed by accidental crossing between different grape species and persisted because they were better suited to the climate. Others have been selectively bred to be disease resistant, cold hardy, flavorful, etc.
There are many other kinds of grapes native to other global regions, including North America. A few important species where I live in North Carolina include vitis labrusca and vitis rotundifolia. Labrusca varieties include Concord and Catawba. Rotundifolia is better known around these parts as the Muscadine (or Scuppernong, depending where you’re from and what color it is).
Vitis vinifera are the species that every popular wine grape belongs to. These are your Cabernet Sauvignons, your Chardonnays, your Malbecs, etc. Even though these grapes now grow all over the world, they are all native to Europe.
Opening our minds and our palates
Plēb makes wine with hybrids, native grapes, and European grapes, using what can grow with minimal intervention in the vineyard as their primary guideline for choosing what to plant and buy from other growers.
This is a very different approach to winemaking than many others in the state and the world, where consumer demand drives the decisions. Basically, people love Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, so farmers plant it, wineries buy it, and retailers sell it.
This mentality makes perfect sense. It is extremely challenging — not to mention prohibitively expensive — to own and operate a vineyard or winery. Business owners have to make financially viable decisions to stay afloat, and the safest gauge of what will sell is what has sold before. Also some growers and winemakers genuinely love working with certain varieties, so that’s what they do.
The reality is, though, that many of the popular European varieties struggle in North Carolina’s climate because of the hot, humid summers and generally erratic winter weather. And climate change isn’t going to help this situation.
This is one reason why I am so excited to see more NC wineries making varietal wines from better-adapted hybrids, like Seyval Blanc, Traminette, and Chambourcin. Many NC wineries have long used these grapes to blend with their other, more famous varietals, basically as filler. But winemakers are increasingly allowing them to stand on their own.
I’ve also seen more variety of vinifera wines produced. Instead of insisting on growing Merlot – a famously early budding grape that will be seriously damaged by a notorious North Carolina mid-April cold snap – why not play around with some Blaufränkisch or Petit Manseng?
The more we can open our collective palates to new flavors and experiences with wine, the easier it will be for grape growers to choose grape varieties that thrive on their land naturally. In turn, this makes it easier for winemakers to produce great wine with less intervention in the winery. Not only is it better for the natural ecosystem, it’s better in the long run for the people in the winemaking ecosystem — financially and in terms of their health.
The other reason I think this is such a great thing for North Carolina is because, by discovering what works best here, we can create something that is truly, distinctly of this place. In the same way I now associate Burgundy with Pinot Noir, maybe one day I’ll associate Western North Carolina with Catawba or Seyval Blanc. That might seem outrageous considering they’ve been growing Pinot Noir in Burgundy for almost two millennia, but we have to start somewhere.
A quick history lesson (bear with me again)
North Carolina, as well as other unsung wine regions throughout the US, are going through a bit of a wine renaissance. Here’s what I mean:
Prior to the Civil War and Prohibition, there were multiple examples of world-renowned wine from the Eastern US, such as Nicholas Longworth’s Catawba sparkling wine, which was said to rival Champagne. While Longworth made his wine in Ohio, the Catawba grape is most likely from Buncombe County, NC, not far from where I live in Asheville.
But it wasn’t just the Catawba that was successful. North Carolina was the top wine-producing state in the US in 1840, mostly from Muscadine wine. Much of it was not-so-great fortified wine, but some caught the eye of people who cared enough to write it down.
Famous French wine fanatic Thomas Jefferson himself said this of dry Scuppernong wine from North Carolina in 1819, “North Carolina has the merit of taking the lead in the former culture, of giving the first specimen of an exquisite wine, produced in quantity, and established in it’s culture beyond the danger of being discontinued. her Scuppernon wine, made on the South side of the Sound, would be distinguished on the best tables of Europe, for it’s fine aroma, and chrystalline transparence.”
Flash forward 200 years, and it’s a very different story. If people have an opinion of North Carolina wine at all, it is negative more often than not — especially when it comes to Muscadine wine.
I recently took a class on wine at our local community college, and one of the other students referred to Muscadines as “those really nasty grapes they grow here.”
Pretty much everyone laughed except me. I almost flipped the table. Muscadines are delicious to eat, and I have had some great wine from Muscadines in recent years.
Our Winemaking Renaissance
100 years out from Prohibition, we have recovered some of the knowledge lost and learned a lot more. We are now firmly in the experimentation phase, and some of those experiments are panning out.
For example, Plēb’s aptly named “Mind Opener” is a blend of three hybrids: Seyval Blanc, Vidal Blanc, and Maréchal Foch. It’s aged sur lie (similar to Champagne) and made into a beautifully high acid sparkling wine I’ll gladly enjoy in place of Champagne on special occasions or any time at all — like when I popped some on a camping trip this summer.
Southwest Virginia natural winery Midland Wine’s Tram-Cham-Bapple is made with Traminette, Chambourcin, and Ruby Red crab apples. Easily one of the most interesting things I drank all year, it can go toe-to-toe with any natty wine bro’s favorite orange wine. Should we call it wine if it’s made with crab apples? I don’t care. It tastes so good.
In general, I am so much more interested in finding new and interesting wines that taste amazing than I am in drinking slightly different, pretty good variations on the same things I’ve had before. To me, that’s the beauty of wine. You get to explore new regions, uncover what makes them unique, and add them to your personal index of taste experiences.
As it stands, it is much more difficult for wine enthusiasts to learn about North Carolina than most other wine regions. For example, the 300+ page wine textbook I am currently studying dedicates more than 11 pages of its chapter on North America to California wine, two each on Washington and Oregon, and one on New York. It has lots of great information on most global wine regions, but it says absolutely nothing about North Carolina.
My hope is that won’t be the case in the not-so-distant future. I know it’s still an uphill climb, but there are some really fantastic, innovative wine makers who are starting to figure out what grapes have the potential to make great, distinctive wine throughout the very diverse landscape we have here.
New Noble Grapes
Bringing things back to my original (admittedly dorky) analogy, grape growers and winemakers in North Carolina, the East Coast, and beyond are discovering our own noble grapes.
Conveniently, Noble is also the name of a Muscadine variety that is considered to be one of the best for wine making.
By embracing our own noble grapes — the Muscadine, but also more broadly grapes that grow well here and winemaking techniques developed to suit those grapes — we can produce wine that is distinctly ours.
We can make great wine and so much more.
We can develop intimate knowledge of how the landscape influences the wine. We can contribute to a culture of reverence for our land and the resources we want to protect.
We can support farmers in growing grapes that require less harmful inputs and finite resources. We can promote winemakers who are making great expressions of uniquely local styles.
We can make winemaking more accessible for anyone in North Carolina who wants to join the party.
We can attract tourists who seek out North Carolina wines and continue to support North Carolina grape growers and wineries long after they leave our state.
We can proudly enjoy and share a beverage that is unlike anything anyone else in the world can make.
What Noble Grape is about
If you can’t tell by now, I think this transition toward more unique, better-suited grapes and interesting, distinctive wines is very exciting. I want to be part of it.
My background is in writing and communication, so, logically, one way I can participate is by writing about the wines I love. This is where I’ll do that.
I may also write about wines from under-appreciated styles or regions, like the 2021 Leoncio Pais. Pais is a grape brought to Chile in the 16th century by the Spanish. It took hold there but fell out of favor as Bordeaux grapes came in and dominated the larger commercial side of Chilean wine. It’s seeing a resurgence now as winemakers in the region try new techniques for showing the best version of Pais.
The 2021 Leoncio was one of the most interesting wines I’ve tried this year. It’s a light-bodied, chillable red with complex red berry and spice notes. I tried it at Pink Moon, an Asheville wine bar, and the bartender nearly fell over himself to explain how winemaker Leonidas Fernández and his mentor Roberto Henriquez are making amazing wines from Pais by working with local farmers to preserve the local land ownership and sustainable agricultural practices.
I may also just write about whatever comes to my mind. Be forewarned.
Thanks for reading, and cheers to a new noble grape.
P.S.
I am far from the first person to write about the potential for hybrid and native grapes to change American winemaking. The idea is also closely connected to the movement to decolonize wine. Here are some great pieces from knowledgeable authors talking with other people who are moving wine forward: