Will Anyone Drink the Wine?

The promise—and the challenge—of introducing hybrid grapes to American wine drinkers

Part 2 of 2

In my previous post, I wrote about disease-resistant, cold-hardy hybrid grape varieties Melissa and Parker Aellen are tending in their family’s experimental vineyard in central Maryland for their label Simple Theory Wine Co. The vineyard showed promise because the vines, only in their second leaf, survived the April 21 freeze that killed a lot of vines outright throughout the Mid-Atlantic, including at the Aellens’ primary vineyard, Linganore Winecellars. In this post, I address the elephant on the crush pad: Even if these vines thrive, will anyone buy the wine?

When I began visiting wineries in Virginia and Maryland in the late 1980s, a decades-long debate over the future of viniculture in the eastern United States was winding down. Team Vinifera — led by Dr. Konstantin Frank in New York and R. Treville Lawrence in Virginia — prevailed over Team Hybrid, led by Philip Wagner of Boordy Vineyards in Maryland.

Wagner advocated French-American hybrid varieties as better suited for the climate in the eastern U.S. and easier to grow than the European vinifera varieties. Frank, Lawrence and other fans insisted the European vinifera vines could indeed thrive here and produce superior wine. The debate even echoed some of the vitriol of Europe, where hybrids had been banned not just as inferior to vinifera but also allegedly toxic.

My wife and I visited Hood River Vineyards in Oregon around this time. That winery was known for its fortified fruit wines, and we giggled over its Marionberry wine (which was delicious), because Marion Barry was the notorious mayor of Washington, D.C. We waited patiently for our tasting while another young couple enthused to the tasting room manager about their recent trip out east and the surprising variety of wines they encountered. “They have all these hybrids we’ve never heard of,” the woman marveled. We snickered quietly, because well, we knew better, or thought we did.

Cousins Melissa and Parker Aellen in their experimental vineyard of disease-resistant and cold-hardy hybrid grape varieties, near Mt. Airy, Maryland.

Improvements in viticulture and a desire to make world-class wines helped push vinifera to ascendence in the eastern U.S. Today, French-American hybrid varieties are rare in the Mid-Atlantic. You can find the occasional Traminette, Seyval or Vidal Blanc, often in a dessert wine, and Chambourcin still has its fans for juicy, light-bodied reds. In New York, Baco Noir and Chelois, a light red, are holdouts. But vinifera is king.

Vinifera is also expensive to grow, because it’s susceptible to downey and powdery mildews, requiring frequent spraying of fungicides to prevent the diseases from getting hold of the vine canopies and grape bunches. This is especially a problem in the rainy, humid climate of the Mid-Atlantic.

In 2011, the Wine Bloggers Conference was held in Charlottesville. This was a big deal for Virginia wine, as many bloggers from around the country were having their first exposure to the Old Dominion’s vino. The main tasting was held on the lawn at Monticello and featured an appearance by “Thomas Jefferson” himself. The mercury soared over 100F that day, so tasting conditions weren’t ideal. I recall hearing several bloggers from the West Coast asking winemakers “How many times have you sprayed this year?” The questions were so persistent that some winemakers, already irritably sweaty, were visibly annoyed.

Two William & Mary alumni at the Wine Bloggers Conference at Monticello in 2011. The red bandanna around my neck had been soaked in ice water as relief against the 100+F degree heat. Thank you, Stinson Vineyards!

I mention the Oregon and bloggers anecdotes because they’re relevant to the current discussion of hybrid varieties. Hybrids are back on the agenda, but the same questions persist: Can they make great wine? And will people buy them?

Today’s discussion of hybrids differs from the earlier debate in two ways:

• The varieties are different. The science of creating genetic crosses has evolved, and more recent varieties have a greater component of vinifera DNA than the French-American hybrids of old. This should improve their quality (more like vinifera varieties), while the American DNA offers protection against phylloxera and American plights like downey and powdery mildew.

• Varieties can be created with specific characteristics in mind. The University of Minnesota developed several winter-hardy varieties — the best known are Frontenac and Marquette — designed to survive harsh winters. These are popular in the northern Midwest and New England. So-called PiWi varieties are bred to be resistant to disease and reduce the need for pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. They are developed mostly in Germany and Italy and also popular in Austria’s Styria region. They are also gaining interest here in the United States.

Skeptics remain. After I posted my previous piece, Jordan Harris, winemaker at Point of the Bluff Vineyards in New York’s Finger Lakes, commented that hybrids are less profitable than vinifera.

“Marketability and value matter,” said Harris, who has made wine from hybrids and vinifera varieties in Virginia as well as New York. “For an independent grower, the value of hybrids is often 1/3 or less of vinifera varieties.”

The newer varieties “have even less marketability than more popular hybrids . [and] in the tasting room, the ceiling on price is also way lower than vinifera,” he added.

The Aellens share these concerns as they tend their experimental 5-acre vineyard near Mt. Airy, Md. The bulk of their planting is two varieties developed by Vivi Cooperativi Rauscedo in Fruili, Italy, called Merlot Kanthus and Cabernet Volos. These are crosses of those vinifera grapes and something called 20-3, with resistance to downy and powdery mildew and cold hardy down to -24C.

Parker Aellen said they chose these varieties because some wineries in Europe had made wine from them to critical acclaim and in the hope that consumers would respond to their familiar names. The other varieties they planted, Monarch, Helios and Johanniter, won’t have the advantage of familiar names and may be best used in blends if at all.

As Eric Aellen, Parker’s father, quipped, “No one’s going to buy a wine called Johanniter.” (Sounds like janitor?)¹

They hope to make wine from these vines in 2027. Only then will they know how the wines will taste and whether customers will like them. But Melissa Aellen said customers at the Simple Theory tasting room in Frederick, Md., like those West Coast bloggers in Charlottesville, frequently show interest in how the wines are made, including sustainability and chemical use in the vineyard.

And like that young couple in Oregon back in the 1980s, younger consumers today may not have inherited their parents’ biases against hybrids. The interest in sustainability and willingness to try something new could create a ready audience if the quality is there and the message is compelling.

After all, if the wines are good in the glass and the farming is better for the environment, why should we cling to old convictions that hybrids are inherently inferior to vinifera?

The Aellen family has been meeting consumer demand for three generations at Linganore Winecellars, from off-dry and sweet wines to fruit wines and dry table wines. They’ve also grown experimental varieties developed at Cornell University. With Simple Theory, they aim to help define the next era of Maryland wine. These disease-resistant varieties may be part of that era.

“We’re not just shooting from the hip,” Melissa Aellen told me. “We’ve been doing this for 50 years. Customers will be receptive.”

The Vines that Survived the Freeze

1. Johanniter is a Riesling cross, and well, no one thinks of Maryland and Riesling in the same breath.