Laughter is bubbling from the deep porch of the big yellow house high above Little River Dam Road where the sweeping Virginia meadow-and-sky view is as sweet as a young Riesling.
Arriving to the house for a spring wine tasting, there is a young couple swaying in rocking chairs comparing notes of a red, holding stemmed glasses up to the sun, mulling and slurping and chuckling with their heads together.
Inside the breezy screened porch, bottles are clanking and guests are arrayed on sofas listening intently to a man with leonine silver hair and blue eyes talking about the wine they’re all drinking.
“For the pinot noir, it achieved fame as the red wine grape of Burgundy – in France, I mean, not that so called California burgundy,” he said.
It’s Jessee Ring, owner of JBR Winery and Vineyard.
One of the several guests is from Oregon.
“A lot of pinot noir was grown in Oregon,” Ring tells the group. “Our pinot noir is similar in style to an Oregon pinot noir.” They all sip and nod.
Guests (from left) Gregory Doss, and Sydney Vaughn, drove up from Roanoke, Twange Kasoma, a Radford University professor and her husband, John Armstrong, arrived throughout the early summer day to sit on the breezy porch sampling and learning about pinot noirs, cabernet francs and Rieslings.
In 2006, Ring and his wife, Debby, had just arrived from California with some money and a dream. They planted the southeast-facing hillside below the house with vines.
Successful business people in California – Jessee is an engineer, Debby is involved with horses. One might ask why the Rings came to grow grapes in Radford.
“A lack of good sense, maybe,” Debby said laughing, “But my husband’s always been a wine collector. We started small and it just seemed to take off.”
There was a method to their madness, she said. He’s from Narrows and their daughter wanted to go to Radford University.
On the porches, amid amuse bouche and palate-cleansing crackers, guests chat.
JBR, like many small wineries, are usually open by appointment. This open tasting is special.
“We don’t do events like weddings,” Debby said helping a guest buy a bottle she’d tried. “We focus on making good wine. We do specialized tastings in the house, personalized for people: vertical tastings (one varietal of wine across years to give a sense of yearly climate in your glass), and horizontal tastings (different wines in the same year), and triangle tastings with two wines the same and one different.”
Like any good party, they make it look easy, but wine making and selling is
has its rocky places.
All vineyards east of the Rockies are beset by disease like black rot and botrytis. Like all agriculture, managing pests – insects, deer, birds, weeds – is a struggle. Untimely spring frosts, rain at harvest can be calamitous and difficulty in finding skilled and willing workers is a national problem in agriculture.
“It took us five years to find a good, skilled worker. We’re looking for another. It’s hard work. Jessee, Tommy, our worker, and I harvest the grapes every year,” Debbie said.
These battles squeeze blade-thin margins, but a winery that makes wine has the diversification advantage of selling the wine.
“It takes four years for vines to produce and ten years to break even. We made every mistake in the book. Now we’ve expanded into Giles and have an actual winery.”
“It’s an art and a science,” says Ring.
The pinot noir is from the hillside just below the porch, black and bright green, just leafing out in late April. Wine grapes like a southern exposure, but he worked with what he had.
Merlot is supposed to like clay,” but planted on the sunny slope, they all died. “We tried twice,” he said. “Then in 2009, we decided on these two grapes. pinot noir and cabernet franc.”
On the breezy porch everyone is talking and laughing on the early summer afternoon. State marketing and advertising helps bring customers.
Allan and Coreen Bookout of Christiansburg are local.
“We saw it on Next Three Days,” they said. “We were looking for something to do and we’d been wanting to come here. It’s usually open by appointment, and here they are open to the public today.”
A light breeze lifts the smell of hot grass and cows from the pasture across the road. Another car is coming up the drive.
For more information about JBR’s hand-crafted wine and the terroir of the New River Valley Tastings can be scheduled by calling 540-250-7291.
