New Business Introduces 'Participatory' Wine Making

Business
By Bill Walsh
Source: Fauquier Times-Democrat
TUESDAY, APRIL 14 2009

Unique Taste, Too

Vint Hill Craft Winery will offer a different tasting experience, just as it offers a different learning experience, Ray Summerell said.

"Someone who wants to taste wine, just like someone who wants to make wine, is going to have an elevated experience," business partner Chris Pearmund agreed.

"We are going to have flights of five," Pearmund said of what the tasting room will offer and how it will be presented.

"You pick a grape varietal...and each flight, each bottle in the same grape variety will have a description of how that wine was made — what type of barrel, what type of yeast, the philosophy of the individual who crafted it. That wine will be available for tasting and for sale.

"You can taste five different...cabernet sauvignons and learn the differences of how wine is crafted. That is an elevated tasting experience that is just not available anywhere else right now."

New Business Introduces 'Participatory' Wine Making

By Bill Walsh

Times-Democrat Staff Writer

It's new and untried, Chris Pearmund said of the different kind of winery he is launching with partner Ray Summerell at Vint Hill later this year. But don't be surprised, he suggested with a smile, if you see the pair someday opening clones in Richmond, in Baltimore, perhaps in Philadelphia.

"This is an urban winery," Pearmund explained at the barn complex that will house his new winery at the former U.S. Army base last week. "Traditional wineries have been in agricultural, rural land, surrounded by vineyards. This is not surrounded by vineyards. We are bringing winery and 'winery knowledge participation activities' to the consumer in urban areas."

Winery knowledge participation activities. Quite a mouthful.

What Pearmund and Summerell intend to do at Vint Hill Craft Winery is invite people into the wine-making process. Their potential customers are individuals — though this is a distant possibility, given that the minimum investment is $6,000 — wine clubs, restaurateurs, other wineries and wine shops.

What they are offering "is a collaborative and educational experience," Summerell said, that goes beyond "just growing grapes and making wine."

Vint Hill Craft Winery's annual capacity is about 160 barrels, roughly 4,000 cases of wine. Pearmund and Summerell hope to sell most of the capacity in one-barrel units, each barrel producing about 25 cases of wine. They will keep the remainder to produce their own wine to sell in the tasting room currently under construction (see sidebar).

As an owner, "you pick your fruit type, you pick your barrel type, you pick your processing options, and that sort of determines what your price structure is," Pearmund said. Pricing starts from a base of $20 a bottle, or $6,000 a barrel.

"A customer commits to us for a year's worth of wine-making experience. It's educational, it's hands-on. It's their wine, their barrel, their label at the end," Pearmund said.

Pearmund and Summerell's role is "to ask you questions you would not have known existed," the former said. "We're going to teach you the question, we're going to teach you the choice of answers, we're going to teach you the ramifications of those answers, and we're going to ensure that there is no bad answer or bad question."

And at the end, they insist, there will be a product in which the wine maker can take a good deal of pride.

"The quality of wine production that we will be doing is very rare for the East Coast," Pearmund said, noting that the methodology will mimic the work of "ultra-premium wineries."

That includes far more sophisticated cleaning of the fruit before fermentation, and greater control over fermentation duration and temperature, Pearmund said.

"Other wineries we are associated with can process 10 to 12 tons of fruit a day with three guys," Pearmund said. "This winery is going to process five tons of fruit a day with 12 to 14 people. We are going to be very, very hands-on."

The new winery is entering virtually uncharted territory, Pearmund claims. There is a similar experiment underway in San Francisco, but that winery does not have a tasting room and is more geared to the industry than to individuals, he said.

"There is also a place in New York City that has something similar to this, but there is less involvement by the customer."

Pearmund and Summerell plan to open Vint Hill Craft Winery this summer, though the tasting room offerings will be from their other wineries — Pearmund Cellars in Broad Run and La Grange in Haymarket.

This fall's harvest will provide the first grapes for the new winery. The new wines' aging requirements mean that the tasting room won't be in full swing with the new product until summer 2010.

"With the changes in the national and global economy, people are looking for more experiences and participation, rather than showing their wealth on their shoulder or lapel," Pearmund mused.

Vint Hill Craft Winery will provide a high-level wine experience similar to an avid golfer "playing on a fancy golf course," Pearmund said, similar to a racing enthusiast taking his car on a race track. Similar, he said, to going to a fine-dining restaurant for cooking classes. "I think you will see more of these type of high-level experience activities evolving," Pearmund said.

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