Virginia’s Governor’s Cup trophy was awarded March 13 to Barboursville Vineyards for its 2023 Vermentino Reserve. This result was significant in so many ways I’ll just rattle them off before launching into a story.
It was the sixth time since the Governor’s Cup competition was launched in 1982 that Barboursville took top honors, and the fifth time for its GM and head winemaker, Luca Paschina, who took over the winery in 1991. Paschina accepted the trophy from Gov. Glenn Youngkin, along with winemaker Daniele Tessaro and vineyard maven Fernando Franco.
It’s unusual for a white wine to win top honors in this competition. (Horton Vineyards won in 2019 for its Petit Manseng.) The bias toward reds was so strong that for three or four years the Virginia Wineries Association, which sponsors the competition, held two separate judgings and awarded two trophies, one for the best red wine, and one for the best white. The thought was that holding the competition early in the year disadvantaged white wines because the previous vintage would have sold out and the new vintage was not yet bottled. So the white wine competition was held in the summer. This format proved unwieldy and expensive so it was dropped after 2011, and the following year the competition took on its current format with two rounds of judging, in which judges in the final round assess the top scorers from the preliminary, and the 12 top-scoring wines become the “Governor’s Case.” That proved a wildly successful marketing strategy, as it shone a broader light on Virginia’s top wines and help get a lot of publicity as the Governor’s Case was sent each year to wine, food and travel writers around the country.
“I’m so happy for Vermentino,” Paschina told me. “It has all the characteristics a wine drinker looks for — intense, complex aroma, a smooth entry texture, a briny salty finish, bone-dry sensation and a long aftertaste.”
I was pleased with the result too, as a regular judge in the final round. (I’ve missed only two years since the format was changed in 2012, and have judged most years since 2000.) The Barboursville Vermentino is a perennial gold medalist and has made the Governor’s Case in 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, more than any other wine. And it retails for just $23 on the winery website. (For more on this year’s competition, Frank Morgan, the director of judging for the last two years, has written a superb summary on his blog, Drink What YOU Like. And he discussed the overall competition in an earlier post.)
When the judges rate the wines, we are told only the category, either the grape variety or a broader descriptor such as red Meritage, or vinifera blend. We are not told the producer, for obvious reasons, and this year we were not given the vintage. However, in each of the recent years I have judged the final round, there has been a flight with a single Vermentino. Every judge in the room knows that’s Barboursville. And there we get to the story.
A little history: Barboursville was created in 1976 by Gianni Zonin, scion of one of Italy’s largest wine producing families. In 1990, Zonin recruited Paschina, a young winemaker from Piemonte, to go to Virginia and report on what could be done to improve the struggling winery. Paschina’s answer was essentially, “Put me in charge.” So he moved permanently from Piemonte to Virginia’s Piedmont (see what I did there?) the following year and built Barboursville into Virginia’s most significant winery. Barboursville is best known for Octagon, Paschina’s merlot-based red blend, and for seamlessly weaving the legend of Thomas Jefferson’s oenophilia into its identity and marketing.
Paschina planted Vermentino in 2009 following a visit to Italy, when he remembered how much he had enjoyed the white wines from Sardinia, Liguria and the Tuscan coast. He made a small commercial crop in 2011 and released it the next year. It was an instant success, and suddenly other wineries in the Charlottesville area were planting it. But then the polar vortex in early 2014 decimated a lot of young vineyard plantings throughout central Virginia, including Vermentino. Suddenly, the grape had a reputation as unsuitable for Virginia’s fickle climate. Having lost their investment, many wineries were reluctant to try again.
But as Paschina noted at the time, his 2009 plantings survived the winter kill just fine. So he has continued with it. I can’t say no one else has, but Vermentino did not take off in Virginia because of that winter kill. So Barboursville’s is essentially unique for Virginia. (Raffaldini makes Vermentino in North Carolina; Tablas Creek in Paso Robles and Troon in Oregon also work with the grape.
The Vermentino’s win spotlighted a year in which white wines actually showed really well, with six making the case. Here’s the complete list of the 12 wines in the Governor’s Case:
50 West Vineyards, 2021 Aldie Heights Cuvée
Barboursville Vineyards, 2023 Vermentino
Barboursville Vineyards, 2017 Octagon
DuCard Vineyards, 2023 Cabernet Franc Vintners Reserve
King Family Vineyards, 2021 Mountain Plains Red
Michael Shaps Wineworks, 2022 Chardonnay
Paradise Springs Winery, 2023 Cabernet Franc, Brown Bear Vineyard
Potomac Point Winery, 2023 Albariño
Trump Winery, 2018 Sparkling Rosé
Valley Road Vineyards, 2023 Petit Manseng
Veritas Winery, 2023 Monticello White
Winery at La Grange, 2023 Petit Manseng
And I want to give a shout-out to Frank Morgan for the way he conducted this year’s judging. The panel for the final round included 11 wine luminaries (plus me), including four Masters of Wine, a Master Sommelier, and the chief somm for the Inn at Little Washington. The star headliners were Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher of the Grape Collective, who wrote the wine column for The Wall Street Journal for many years. It was a diverse panel in terms of age, gender and ethnicity — the common thread was a shared love of wine.
Thanks, Dave. Lovely column!
Great to see recognition of Vermentino - a " super white " grape variety and wine