I get really excited about new releases. A new vintage year, a new blend, something different that shows a different characteristic of the way that weather, soil, location, and farming practice came together with winemaking to create something unique and exciting. New releases are especially exciting when the growers and makers share their insights into the wine with you as you taste and reflect.
While I don’t live in NoVa anymore, I make time to get there for wine that I love. Sometimes I’m sad to be further from wineries I adore in Northern Virginia, but it really isn’t too bad a drive at this point to visit them for things like this. Notice of the winter release came, and the option of attending a dinner to get walked through the wines seemed too great to pass up.
Jason Murray, co-owner and wine grower and winemaker at Arterra has been creating videos to walk us through each wine. He provides us a summary of the growing season and what he is seeing in these wines, and insight into how they may develop moving forward.
Our evening began with some 2022 Cabernet Franc. The team from Nomad Provisions catered the dinner, and we had a fantastic Focaccia with olive oil for dipping while we prepared for the dinner. There were a number of faces I recognized from other Arterra events, including Mike Macey, who is growing four acres of Norton for Arterra. I had not tried any of the 2022 reds yet, as I wasn’t able to make it for the fall release that focused on the Seven Oaks Vineyard wines. This release focused on wines from Estate grapes, those grown on the property in Delaplane. The Cabernet Franc was really our “welcome wine.”
Our first pour of this evening’s releases was the 2022 Petite Sirah. You may recall that this varietal’s 2021 vintage made my top ten wines of 2023. 2021 being a much hotter vintage year produced a bolder version of this wine that really did something for me. 2022, as Jason described it, was a more balanced vintage, with a mixture of hot stretches of days with cooler nights and enough rain to provide a typical Virginia growing season (if that still exists at all). As a result, this wine is less bold and shows more restraint and balance. It is a shift closer to the 2020 vintage. I enjoyed it, though I certainly miss the boldness of 2021. Jason noted in his discussion of this wine that Petite Sirah is a grape that makes denser and bolder wine as the vines age and mature. He’s been releasing this wine since the 2017 vintage, and it has definitely shown more depth each year. The wine was paired with a meat, cheese and veggie plate, which was wonderful.
The next wine was the 2022 Petit Verdot. Petit Verdot is a longtime favorite of mine, whether in a blend or by itself. The bolder, the better in my book. This was was shocking and lovely too. The wine is ready to drink now and will certainly continue to evolve. It carries that big juicy feeling that I always get from Arterra’s Petit Verdot – tons of fruit at the beginning and dark earthy tones fill your mouth as you sip. This is a great vintage of Petit Verdot for them- expect to hear more about this one. This round also came with a pour of the 2022 Tannat. In the video introduction, Jason notes that this vintage of Tannat still feels young, and in real life it did too. It felt a bit lighter than normal, but with an edge to it. Jason suggests cellaring for a year or two, and that is my plan. It was pleasant, but it wasn’t showing us what it really is yet, and I look forward to meeting this wine in about six months or so.
The next wine was my much beloved Crooked Run, and this was the 2022 vintage. Crooked Run is a blend from the Estate red grapes, in different proportions each year. This year it is 60% Tannat, 20% Petit Verdot, and 20% Petite Sirah. As with all of its predecessors, it’s simply lovely. This is a dark wine that pairs well with anything very savory and with meats. The dinner paired it with a vegetable tart that had brussel sprouts and squash with goat cheese. It was just stunning together. The calmer Petite Sirah and Tannat I think gave this a mellower feel than its 2021 counterpart, but it still shows the silky depth I normally see from this blend. Lots of fruit on the front, and I suspect this will age amazingly well (Crooked Run typically does).
The final wine and course was the 2023 Late Harvest Tannat. Jason has not made this since vintage 2019. It requires a growing season that allows tannat to hang long and build up sugars so that fermentation can end and leave residual sugar behind to create the sweetness for this lovely dessert-style wine. I’ve had Jason’s late harvest for many vintages, and it’s a really fun wine. It’s fairly consistent year over year. This one had characteristic depth and sweetness and was great with the chocolate tart. I really enjoyed this reminder of a wine that my dad thoroughly loved from Arterra, and he would enjoy a small glass of it at night in his apartment in Springfield. It was always fun to surprise him with a bottle. Jason noted that the 2023 vintage was a perfect year to produce this wine, and that 2024 did not produce it for him (makes sense, we had a few rounds of heavy heavy rains during harvest timeframe). Maybe 2025?
I ended up bringing home four Crooked Run (one for my supposed vertical collection), 2 Tannat (both stuck on the back rack to age), 2 Petit Verdot (this will be a fun wine to sip and watch over time), 2 Cabernet Franc, and 2 of the 2022 Norton – I missed this wine in the fall release. I cannot wait to try it out – I also have a supposed Arterra Norton vertical I am building.
Jason dropped a ton of interesting notes about the wines and vintage, and where Arterra is now, entering its tenth year open to the public. Arterra has a large number of wines it is producing now, and as such, production is decreasing slightly for each wine. The cellar cannot accommodate a much larger volume without diminishing Jason’s ability to attend to quality, and as the vines age, they stabilize their production. I believe Jason’s farming practices also lead him to exercise restraint for the sake of fruit quality for the wines, and so he is very selective in pruning and cluster dropping. Seasonal variance in vigor as well as any recovery the vines need to make from a difficult year will impact production too. Arterra has moved to three releases per year – partly to match wine styles, and partly for business reasons. The wines described above truly are perfect winter wines – they will warm you up. My friend described the Late Harvest Tannat as something perfect for conversations by the fireplace, and I’m 100% with her on that. Arterra will have a spring release focused on their white wines and rosé, and a fall release focused on the Seven Oaks vineyard, lighter white wines perfect for fall’s varying temperatures. This allows them to refresh their tasting menu more frequently too, ensuring that they aren’t releasing too many wines at one time, and running out of some. It makes perfect business sense, and perfect stylistic sense.
As the evening closed, Jason thanked the group for being loyal customers, thanked the Nomad Provisions crew for excellent food (here, here!), thanked the incredible Sandy for her work at the dinner and the winery, introduced Mike Macey for the Norton Vineyard and another Michael, who is Arterra’s sole volunteer, tending an acre of the Estate Tannat (what a great guy – volunteering that kind of labor!). He also introduced your favorite blogger (eeeeek). I get shy about that stuff, but I genuinely appreciated a winegrower and winemaker who I deeply respect saying that he respects my writing.
I’d say all of these wines are solid. While the Tannat doesn’t feel like it’s quite ready for prime time, it will be, and it will be good. The remainder are solid examples of Arterra’s practice, and will be great additions to your collection. I’m hoping to bring a few bottles to some of my favorite wine people to share some of what I love with them and get their impressions. Arterra has pioneered and largely perfected something I’m seeing more and more of in Virginia – the use of low to no intervention in the vineyard and in the winemaking process to produce wine that is truly representative of this time and place, not wine that is like everything else in the grocery store wine aisle. They continued to do incredible stuff with each release, and I really cannot wait to see the 2023 reds drop – the 2023 white wines were solid, if intense examples of what Arterra does well. The future looks very, very bright.
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