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Great wines from great grapes: North Gate wines take top prizes at state fair
Just off Hillsboro Road, nestled into the east slope of the Short Hill, two entrepreneurs are dedicating their land to growing great grapes, and turning those grapes into great wine.
They're off to a running start. Mark and Vicki Fedor's North Gate Vineyard just got its farm winery license in April, and has two labels to offer this season.
Both labels, the 2005 merlot and the 2007 chardonnay, won a silver ribbon at the state fair wine tasting earlier this summer.
"Growing good grapes is not easy," Mark said, "but to make a great wine you have to start with great grapes. You can manipulate it all you want in the winery, but it will never be great wine if you didn't start with great grapes."
The Fedors followed his job in information technology to Loudoun from the frozen winters of upstate New York. After a brief stint in Sterling, they headed west for more land and bought a house on 16 acres in 1996. They bought the lot and house next door – his parents live there now and help in the vineyard – and the property totals 26 acres.
In the shape of some neglected Concord grapevines in the back yard, fate beckoned the Fedors. Mark read up on winemaking and produced some wine from the grapes, and some more wine from the apples on the property. Vicki made some jams.
They planted their first vinifera vines – famed as the source of French table wines -- in 2002, and went to work making wine for the fledgling Waterford Vineyards, now renamed Corcoran Winery. Mark's winemaking brought more than 50 medals to Corcoran over the next five years.
Humans have been fermenting fruit since biblical times, Mark said, but doing it well consistently -- that's the challenge.
"It's a blend of science and engineering, and I'm an engineer,” he said. “I just love the process, tinkering in the process. You know the outcome, the flavors and taste, you want."
So once you start with those great grapes, Mark said, the artist/engineer can go to work in the lab to push the wine along to a certain style that will say, "I'm a North Gate wine."
In the winery, he can choose to put the grape juice in different oaks, different barrels, decide how often to rack the wine, whether to leave it on the sediment a little longer, when (and whether) to go from oak to a steel barrel.
North Gate doesn't have a tasting room yet – that's coming soon – so they take their wines to the public at farmers markets, bed-and-breakfast events and other Loudoun tasting rooms.
By August, the Fedors should have their distributor's license in hand, and be able to deliver to local restaurants and selected retail outlets.
They will harvest their first crop of petit verdot this year, the viognier has taken root, and they are buying some first-class cabernet franc. The first North Gate cabernet franc will go in the bottles this August. More labels are coming soon.
They may grow, but not too big, Vicki said. The real goal is to be making quality wines that people want, that are winning some medals and to be considered a top-end winery in Loudoun County.
They also want to give credit to whoever grew those great grapes. Doug Fabbioli, of Fabbioli Cellars near Lucketts, grew the merlot grapes that became the silver-ribbon-wining North Gate merlot. The industry, and its winemakers, should be giving credit to those top growers, Mark said.
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