Most wine produced in the world is derived from a shared grape species, Vitis vinifera. Consisting of thousands of varieties, vinifera spans broad geographical regions from western Europe to southwest Asia, from the Middle East across to North Africa. When you enjoy wines like Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling, or Merlot, you’re enjoying vinifera. But wine is a mutable force. It’s always changing to reflect its present circumstances, and the story of vinifera is evolving.
While the planet adapts to the increasing pace and impact of climate change, winegrowers and winemakers all over have seen drastic shifts in vinifera, especially in places where it isn’t indigenous, like in the United States. Constant disease pressure and extreme weather can affect grape health, resulting in expensive losses. Compromised grapes do not become wine that anyone wants to drink. Winegrowers—farmers—must deal in practicalities. With roaming vineyards addled by invasive insects, pools of heavy rainwater in seasons that used to be bone-dry, and contagions that spread from vine to vine, they’ve asked the fraught question of whether wine as we know it will exist in the future at all. If so, under what rules of engagement?
Leaders in the industry are working to ensure that future thanks to a cross section of professionals. Their contributions range among production, curation, resource-sharing, and innovation, resulting in wines as bold as they are delicious. The wines from this trajectory highlight labrusca, a different Vitis species that has invigorated drinkers, particularly in North America.
For evidence of a groundswell shift in American winemaking, you can look at a number of excellent producers in the country, but the East Coast has a spark, from Maine to North Carolina. The most exciting wineries are defining what it means to make regional, terroir-driven American wines.
Jahdé Marley took note of this sea change. A New York portfolio manager in wine and spirits sales, she and close colleagues, a cohort of renowned sommeliers, sales reps, and producers, took a road trip to explore wineries like NOK Vino in New Hampshire, Camuna Cellars in Pennsylvania, and R.A.S. Wines in Maine—all producing wine in this manner. They found the wines to be “lively, lighthearted with playfulness. Some are lower in alcohol, higher acid. They even look electric and fun,” Marley says of the striking range of bluish reds, deep rose hues, blush pinks, and golden yellows.
These wines vary by personal preference, location, and ethos. Some growers work with limited vinifera but increasingly use native grapes like Catawba and Concord (yes, the grape of your childhood juice box memories); local fruits like black currant, berries, or apples; and hybrid grapes, meaning fruit crossbred from more than one species, like Chambourcin, Marquette, or Chardonel. Hybrids result in heartier grapes that withstand environmental challenges, and richer, complex flavors that balance the end product.
Marley and her colleagues weren’t just impressed with how these wines tasted. The growers’ farming practices were foundational. Marley had seen other winemakers in the region force vinifera varieties to grow, but “every couple vintages, they’re ripping up the vineyard to replant the same grapes with different viticultural methods.” It’s a pricey approach that stresses the land and doesn’t yield great wine. She noted that growers who prioritized what worked best in the vineyard, rather than being preoccupied with legacy grapes from Europe, were farming hybrid and endemic fruits that thrived. Marley and her peers agreed, more people needed to know what was happening along the East Coast. Producers could share wise farming methods, sales reps could amplify the message through distribution, and consumers craved intentional approaches to wine.
In 2022, Marley launched Anything But Vinifera Ferments, or ABV Ferments, a traveling summit that’s part tasting experience and part educational platform. Alongside dozens of producers, beverage directors, buyers, and supporters, ABV became a destination and community. It’s now an established ecosystem. The Brooklyn-based organization has now hosted tastings and panels in Miami; Asheville, North Carolina; Waynesboro, Virginia; Oakland; and Los Angeles. Centering a decolonized ethos and celebration of all cultures that ferment fruit, ABV attracted industry newcomers, and it connected deeply with longtime veterans.
Ben Jordan, a celebrated Virginia-born winemaker, has been instrumental in shaping what regional wine can be in the Shenandoah Valley, situated along the Blue Ridge Mountains in the western part of the state. He is cofounder and partner in Commonwealth Crush Co. (CWC), Midland Wines, and Lightwell Survey wineries, known for their decisively creative takes. “ABV is important to me personally,” he says. “It gave me renewed perspective and energy…to engage with people who are open to different expressions and flavors. That’s truly inspirational.”
Jordan knows about lighting folks up. In 2018, while he was winemaker at Early Mountain Vineyards, his interpretation of Petit Manseng caught the attention of Lee Campbell, now wine director at the restaurant Borgo in New York City. Petit Manseng is a vinifera grape from Jurançon in southwest France that does well in Virginia due to similar climates. “The lusciousness of Petit Manseng that Ben was making back then, it was their own version of the variety,” Campbell says. The grape is known for a dry style that carries honey and pineapple notes. “The Virginia version tends to be more tropical and higher in alcohol, more rich, robust. I loved what he was doing.”
After connecting directly with Jordan, Campbell became a partner in launching CWC, along with Jordan’s brother Tim, a winegrower, and former Early Mountain staffer Patt Eagan. For Campbell, Jordan’s style sparked an awareness of the possibilities of Virginia wine, and American wine in general. “In many ways the domestic wine trade has been a facsimile of what’s going on in Europe,” Campbell says. “In the United States we’re always trying to deny what we are.”
That narrative of cultural evasion is prevalent in the American South, which is often uncredited for its contributions. We haven’t been drinking Southern wine for generations for the same reason the South’s role in cuisine isn’t more visible. Classic American foodways are rooted in the Commonwealth: barbecue, mac and cheese, Brunswick stew, even whiskey. Freetown native chef Edna Lewis wrote books about the seasonal rhythms of country cooking decades before Alice Waters became famous for California fare. Wine, too, has a complex history in Virginia.
Wine culture in the area is traced to native grapes like Muscadine and 17th-century colonial imports. Thomas Jefferson’s failed attempts at cultivating European vines on the Monticello plantation only amplified his insatiable taste for importing French bottles. His estate dining room was among the finer places for white visitors to sip and be served, an experience curated by Jefferson’s enslaved butler Burwell Colbert, believed to be the first American sommelier. Campbell says of being in Virginia, “I saw highway markers that indicated Black people’s relationship to this land and history. I saw that this was an American story that I could be involved in telling.” She’s far from alone.
In Charlottesville, winemaker Reggie Leonard took note of the synergy ABV Ferments was building in the region. He cofounded Oenoverse with Blenheim Vineyards, an initiative that expands professional opportunities for those systemically excluded and underrepresented in the Virginia wine scene. Oenoverse collaborates with the nonprofit The Veraison Project, which supports industry mentorship, scholarships, and apprenticeships. “If wine is about culture,” Leonard says, “then you look at the types of people who get access to make wines.”
The partners at CWC had the same thought and launched an incubator program for prospective makers to develop their own boundary-pushing projects that reflect Virginia’s range. The first cohort included Leonard and his business partner Lance Lemon. Their Parallax Project is a duo of white and red wines from the same grape blend. It features hybrids Chardonel and Vidal Blanc, with Tannat, Petit Manseng, Albariño, and Traminette, illustrating how the same ingredients can evoke different expressions while telling a specific Virginia story.
Marley has also collaborated with CWC, producing a series of wines, Love Echo. The offerings include a pét-nat style infused with foraged pawpaws. Lightwell Survey (the winery by the Jordan brothers) collaborated with New York sommelier Oniyx Acosta, whose nonprofit Co-Fermented now manages ABV Ferments. Jordan worked closely with Acosta on two wines from a base of Petit Manseng and Vidal Blanc—a still white infused with local pine cones, and a pét-nat infused with wine berries and Virginia wildflower honey. “In Virginia,” Leonard says, “we’re doing things with grapes that most others aren’t doing.”
Winemakers are diversifying, as is the American market. “People are less interested in hewing to the highly rated, so-called ‘important’ wines,” Campbell says. “People are drinking based on deliciousness, not elitism.”
Fruit and fermentation are known to every culture, and if we continue in this abundant direction, the breadth of American wine can represent endless ideas and flavors. “We’re in a good place now,” Jordan says. “And it’s going to get better.”
