Producers make the case for the variety, and show how to get customers excited about the grape.

By Jameson Fink for SevenFifty Daily

Of the red wine grapes that make up classic Bordeaux blends, Petit Verdot seems to have the fewest fans. It ripens late and can produce wines with overwhelming tannins. Petit Verdot has been judged to be a supporting actor, a component for boosting color and body. It rarely gets to be the star. But every grape has its champion—or at least a winemaker willing to work with one often relegated to a minor role.

The Monticello Cup Awards (MCA) was held on Monday, May 7, 2018 at the Jefferson Theater to celebrate the winning wines of the 28th Annual Monticello Cup Wine Competition. All wines were produced by members of the Monticello Wine Trail (MWT) and contained at least 85% fruit from the Monticello American Viticultural Area (AVA). There were 13 gold (including the Top 3 Red, Top 3 White, and the overall Monticello Cup winner), 27 silver and 15 bronze medals awarded. The Monticello Cup was presented to Veritas Vineyard & Winery for their 2015 Petit Verdot “Paul Shaffer’s 7th Edition”.

By Jack Berninger for the Richmond Times Dispatch

RICHMOND — King Family Vineyards’ 2014 Meritage, a bright and complex Bordeaux-style blend with merlot as the dominant grape, was recently judged as the best wine in Virginia, winning the 2018 Governor’s Cup winner Tuesday night at a gala in Richmond that drew more than 600 spectators.

Charlottesville, Va., March 01, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Charlottesville Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau (CACVB) is excited to announce that members of the Monticello Wine Trail accounted for nearly half of all gold medals awarded in this year’s Virginia Governor’s Cup wine competition.

By Jessica Luck for C-ville

He pulls the golf cart onto the right side of the gravel path: “Let me show you some of this viognier.” Carrington King, vineyard manager at King Family Vineyards in Crozet, stops the driver of a Kawasaki golf cart heading in the opposite direction of the tasting room, toward the processing facility, loaded down with bright yellow crates called lugs, each filled with 25 pounds of grapes. The crates are marked with the name Roseland in black, the name of the farm and the name of a chardonnay/viognier/petit manseng blend the winery produces. King plucks a cluster of grapes and holds it up to the afternoon sunlight to show how these berries, part of a second harvest of viognier this season, are starting to raisin and dehydrate.