| Toasting
Virginia’s wine industry
by
Paula C. Squires
Virginia
Business
November 2003
As dream assignments go, this month’s cover story
on Virginia’s
wine industry was a perfect fit. It got me out of the
office into Virginia’s rolling countryside for
a redux of sorts. In 1996, I visited several wineries
and wrote a story then on Virginia’s flourishing
wine industry. Back then, wine was just coming into
its own as a serious industry. Seven years later, the
age-old challenge of making good wine has turned into
the state’s fastest-growing agricultural enterprise.
Good
wine starts with good fruit. Virginia’s climate
and terroir — a French term used by vintners to
refer to soil types, altitude and other geographic factors
— are conducive to growing premium grapes. So entrepreneurs
are investing millions in new wineries in the hope that
Virginia will be the country’s hot new wine region.
You’ll read about one couple that relocated from
Michigan and won a big award with their first vintage
— the Best White Wine in America — produced
at Keswick Vineyards just east of Charlottesville. So
promising is the industry’s economic potential
that even multimillionaire businesswoman Patricia Kluge
is making wine these days.
While
Virginia may never be a California — in terms of
producing millions of tons of grapes nor, hopefully,
movie-star governors — industry followers say the
state finally has the critical mass and talent to emerge
as a significant East Coast wine country, a development
that would create jobs, boost tourism and help keep
Virginia green. We hope you enjoy our look at an industry
that still picks most of its fruit by hand and is at
the mercy of the weather as much as any other crop.
The
November issue also includes our annual list of the
top CPAs in Virginia, along with a look at how the industry
has survived and how it hopes to recruit new talent,
despite recent scandals involving corporate fraud.
Speaking
of survivors, Nextel Communications is a Virginia-based
company that’s managed to move ahead while other
telecoms struggle. Richmond-based freelance writer Garry
Kranz visited the company’s Reston headquarters
and writes about Nextel’s successful strategy with
its wireless walkie-talkie product and the marketing
opportunities expected from its new role as NASCAR’s
corporate sponsor.
Racecar
drivers aren’t the only ones worried about safety.
Medical errors in hospitals have prompted patient safety
initiatives by major hospital chains and health insurers
in Virginia. Marjolijn Bijlefeld, a Fredericksburg-based
writer who frequently covers health care for Virginia
Business, looks at the new programs and an electronic
prescribing network that frees pharmacists from deciphering
the unintelligible handwriting of doctors. Our hospital
package is rounded out by a story on profitability —
overall margins are down.
After
27 years in journalism, I received my first poem-to-the-editor,
penned by an Alexandria reader after he traveled on
Interstate 81, the topic of October’s cover. The
highway was so heavily traveled by trucks and so nerve-wracking
that Robert K. Wineland titled his poem, “The Road
From Hell.” Sounds like he could use a glass of
wine.
Paula
C. Squires
Managing Editor
psquires@va-business.com
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