Norfolk native helps realize Thomas Jefferson’s dreams of turning grapes into treasure

By Jim Raper

Correspondent

Growing up in Norfolk's Larchmont neighborhood, Andy Reagan showed little interest in the skills that today are winning him gold medals.

Agriculture? No way. He was a thoroughly urban kid whose kinship with dirt began and ended on the baseball diamond. And studies in chemistry or the culinary arts? They were not important to him.

Furthermore, his family is Irish, "beer and whiskey sort of people," as he describes them.

It took an unlikely alignment of the stars to lead him, at age 32, into the top tier of Virginia winemakers.

Reagan has been making wine at Jefferson Vineyards near Monticello since 2005. Although the privately owned winery has no business ties to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Inc., which owns and operates Monticello, the estate's 20 acres of vineyards are in precisely the spot where Jefferson tried in the 18th century to grow noble grape varieties imported from the Old World.

As resourceful as the Founding Father was, he lacked the viticultural knowledge to overcome New World pests and humidity, and apparently never produced even one bottle of European-style wine in Virginia. Nevertheless, he was a tireless proponent of wine and became the United States' first famous oenophile.

The modern Virginia farm wine industry, which has grown from only a handful of wineries 30 years ago to nearly 140 today, has aligned itself with Jeffersonian lore and is no doubt more prosperous for it. According to ads and promotional literature, the industry is finishing what Jefferson started - proving that great wines from noble European grapes can be produced in Virginia. So it follows that the winemaker at Jefferson Vineyards, working practically in the shadow of Jefferson's home, had better turn out some tasty juice.

By all accounts, Reagan has been up to the challenge. This year Jefferson Vineyards wines won double gold medals in two major competitions, the Lodi (California) International Wine Awards (Pinot Gris 2008) and the Tasters Guild International Wine Judging (Cabernet Franc 2007) held in Michigan.

During the same period, bottles produced by Reagan collected a dozen other gold medals and 17 silver medals from nine competitions in places such as San Francisco, San Diego and Monterey, Calif., and Finger Lakes, NY.

He blushes a little when he talks about the medals, but he recovers by offering up a quip. "Some people call me Thomas Jefferson reincarnate." He taps his red hair and adds, "I think there is a resemblance."

Reagan says he spent about five minutes in college, yet folks who know him describe him as extraordinarily inquisitive and a quick study. That's what got him into winemaking in the first place.

When he was 15, his parents - Joseph, a retired Navy captain, and Clare, a former history teacher and historic interpreter for the Chrysler Museum's historic houses - sent him to live and work for a summer with sister Anne, who had startled the family by taking a job with Benmarl Winery in New York's Hudson River Valley.

"Anne is brilliant," Reagan says. "She had a master's in Russian, and we all thought she was headed toward a career as a spy. Then she went to work for this winery, and my father sort of sold me to her for the summer. I think he thought I couldn't get into much trouble up there, and I could earn the honest wage of $25 a day."

Anne says two other brothers had been sent to her "boot camp" before Reagan. But neither Ian, who is nearing completion of a doctorate in psychology from Old Dominion University, nor Emmett, a restaurant chef, took to wine-cellar and vineyard labors like their little brother did.

Early on, Reagan annoyed the Benmarl winemaker, Anne remembers. "He would tell Andy to go out and prune that three-leafed vine growing up the grape posts. Of course, it was poison ivy, and Andy was a city boy."

After several stints at Benmarl, however, Reagan was no longer a novice. By 1997 Anne had gotten the job as winemaker, and a grape shortage in the Hudson River Valley forced the New York winery to import fruit from California. "Beautiful grapes," Anne says. "Barbera, chardonnay, viognier, zinfandel, cab sauvignon and merlot. We experimented with various yeast strains and blends. I think that is when Andy realized that winemaking was similar to working in a kitchen, which he had done (at La Galleria in downtown Norfolk) and enjoyed. We had free rein in the cellar and turned out some great stuff."

Reagan says he will always be grateful to his sister because of what he learned at Benmarl, and because she introduced him to Mark Miller, the winery's owner and a wine eccentric. Miller in the 1940s and 1950s had earned a name for himself as a magazine illustrator, working in the United States and Europe. He was a wine hobbyist, too, and he ended up moving his family to France, where he studied viticulture and winemaking before settling in on the Hudson to make something of Benmarl.

"For my wine education, I was drinking 15-, 16-, 17-year-old wines from this guy's cellar," Reagan says. "Some of the Burgundies were 25 years old. I drank Petrus and Lynch-Bages," two sought-after Bordeaux reds.

"And some of those wines we made at Benmarl were medal winners themselves, like a zinfandel."

After working the 1999 vintage at Benmarl, Reagan decided to seek his fortune in Virginia. He was a winemaking assistant at The Williamsburg Winery and winemaker at Chrysalis Vineyards in Middleburg. Then he moved around a bit, serving short stints at wineries in Florida and North Carolina before deciding that back home in Virginia was where he really wanted to be.

By the time he settled at Jefferson Vineyards, he had made more styles of wines from more varieties of grapes than he could remember. He also had become known as an expert blender and "fixer." He knows when to pick the grapes; what yeasts to use and how to manage the fermentation; whether to age the wine in new wood barrels; and how to blend various lots of wine to produce the best taste.

Anne Reagan switched careers to kennel owner after Benmarl was sold in 2006, but she still makes wine part time for the small Glorie Farm Winery in New York. "Today, if I have a problem with something at the winery, I can call Andy and he'll say, 'Try this or try this.' He's a very handy resource."

Reagan says his true gift is an ability to identify "really smart people to get advice from." Into this category, he puts sister Anne, his parents and Miller, as well as Virginia winemakers Jim Law (Linden Vineyards), Luca Paschina (Barboursville Vineyards) and Brad McCarthy (formerly of White Hall and Blenheim vineyards and now a freelance winemaker).

Paschina says the first impression he formed of Reagan was at a yeast trial done with the Norton grape variety that the young winemaker conducted while he was at Chrysalis. "I perceived that Andy can be enthusiastic, passionate about his work. I believe that if Andy will continue to gain more wisdom and remain humble, he will be able to leave a clear message on the pages of Virginia winemaking."

Phillip Craig Thomason, owner/chef at Norfolk's Vintage Kitchen, agrees. "Andy has a good, strong focus on making Virginia wines better," he says. The Vintage Kitchen has over several years been promoting pairings of the Jefferson Vineyards merlot with red meat dishes, such as beef tenderloin in a Virginia Gentleman whiskey and peppercorn sauce.

"Andy is a true talent in the winemaking industry," Anne says. "It seems you have those who get in because they have the money or a million chemistry degrees. But Andy's involvement is a calling."

Jim Raper, banyuls@cox.net