Château Montrose buys RdV in Virginia

There has been a link with Bordeaux since the beginning of the RdV vineyard project in Virginia, giving a certain symmetry to the news this week that it has now passed into French hands, purchased by the Bouygues family of Château Montrose.

Owner Rutger de Vink, who created the estate, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains 45 minutes west of Washington DC, in 2006, has enlisted various Bordeaux names in the project from the beginning. Eric Boissenot, for example, consultant to four out of the five Bordeaux First Growths (and who has referred to RdV as an ‘American Grand Cru’), has been involved in the winemaking since 2008, brought on board by Jean-Philippe Roby, a professor at Bordeaux Sciences Agro. Corinne Comme, biodynamic expert and wife of Jean-Michel Comme, spent two years here helping develop the vineyards.

Roby’s colleague at Bordeaux Sciences Agro, Kees Van Leeuwen, does not directly consult, but was part of the initial development, having met de Vink first with a group of winemakers from Virginia at Château Cheval Blanc in 2002, and then again in 2004 when he was invited to give a talk to the American Society of Viticulture and Enology in 2004 in Roanoke. The first two vintages, in 2008 and 2009, were even blended out of Boissenot’s laboratory in the quiet Médoc town of Lamarque, on the borders of St Julien, until 2010, when Boissenot began travelling out to Virginia. More recently, it was Pierre Grafeuille, director of Château Montrose, who facilitated the introduction of brothers Martin and Olivier Bouygues.

De Vink said of the sale, ‘After an incredible 20 years, I have decided that it is time to leave RdV Vineyards and pass the baton to the next stewards of this special land. RdV will become part of an esteemed wine portfolio that includes Château Montrose, 2^nd Grand Cru Classé, Chateau Tronquoy, Clos Rougeard and Domaine Rebourseau.  I know they will continue to farm this magical hillside, produce a world-class wine, and take it into the future in the same spirit it began’.

The current RdV team will remain, including winemaker and Master of Wine Joshua Grainer working alongside consultants Boissenot and Roby, and president and CEO Grafeuille.

Together they will also oversee the rebranding of the property to the name Lost Mountain, already the name of its main wine in a nod to the history of the estate. The story goes that the area was missing from maps until a young George Washington plotted its existence while working as a surveyor for Thomas Fairfax, the English Lord who was the only English titled nobleman ever to reside permanently in pre-Revolutionary America. His cartographer missed these knolls on the maps he was drafting, and when Washington noticed, he called them (rather optimistically, as they head upwards just 260m) the lost mountains.

It is a place that I visited last year (you can read about it in the feature Building a Cult Wine in Thomas Jefferson’s Backyard, as well as see tasting notes of the Cabernet Sauvignon-dominant wine), and it’s exciting to see it become part of the Bouygues project, now under the umbrella Eutopia Estates, which also comprises Distillerie de la Métairie Cognac house and Loire truffle farm La Truffière de Cément along with the wine properties. Besides the potential of the wine itself, the purchase will have repercussions for Virginian wine in general, helping to increase the international visibility of a state with over 300 wine properties, but where the production is almost entirely sold at the cellar door.

Jenny and Rutger de Vink will take part in the harvest at Lost Mountain this September, before heading to California.

• Virginia, Delaplane
• Middleburg AVA
• Foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains
• 93 acres,18 acres under vine, planted in 2006
• Grape varieties:50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot, 20% CabernetFranc, 8% Petit Verdot