Many times when we are out showing farms around Charlottesville, our clients mention that they’d like to start a vineyard. Having an apple background, I have to admit that I, too, have had this same thought–many times! I am definitely not an expert, but one of the most important aspects to having a vineyard is site selection. You can change almost everything else about a vineyard but if you have a bad site, you are doomed before you ever get started. Tony Wolf, Virginia Tech’s vineyard guru, has written a publication on the various components involved in selecting your site. Elevation, topography, slope, aspect and soils all come into play when selecting a vineyard site.

So once you’ve found your site, you need to start preparing it and decide on what varieties to plant. Once again, you need to know what will grow well on your particular site. Virginia Tech has a pulication for that as well, Commercial Grape Varieties for Virginia.

In the meantime, it might not be a bad idea to take a couple of courses at Piedmont Virginia Community College to learn from the mistakes of others and make sure that you get off on the right foot. Or if you want more intensive and hands-on training, you can take Jim Law’s of Linden Vineyards apprentice training. If you’ve ever spoken with Jim or tasted any of his wines, there is no doubt that this man has Virginia wine making perfected to an art!

One of the things that I have learned by talking with those who have started their own vineyards is that it is a continuous experiment, tweaking this and that and then tracking your results. It requires patience and persistence, a personality that likes to tackle challenges, but all say the rewards, not necessarily monetary rewards, but all the others are well worth the journey.

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