Janette Evans of Mattaponi Winery, Virginia
Ξ February 6th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Interviews, Wine News, Wineries |
To start a winery is a demanding calling. You may first begin in the garage tinkering with the exotic chemistry of fermentation. Trials and errors later, with a passable wine now and then made, you are next tempted to invest in equipment upgrades. Against all odds you impress your friends and neighbors with your productions. Never thinking of quitting your day job, a strange idea nevertheless occurs. Maybe I could sell to the public? Bottles, labels, corks, mailers, yeasts, beakers, a hydrometer, hoses, buckets, wood chips, carboys, the list of minimal tech is a black hole of expenditures.
Undercapitalized, many give up or remain hobbyists. And there are some home winemakers who live for the art, crafting wines as superb as first growth Bordeaux. But others persist in the mad dream of commercial success, like Native American Janette Evans, the creative force behind Mattaponi Winery in Spotsylvania, Virginia. What follows is a candid talk with this soft-spoken, determined woman. Her story, and that of husband and winemaker Mike Evans and her faithful family, is one of 20 years of hard work, hard work that has brought them not only recognition in Virginia’s wine world, but perhaps closer to quitting their day jobs!
Mike Evans is largely self-taught, a disciplined reader of wine books and of the superb WineMaker magazine, while Janette studied wine analysis at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University in Blacksburg under Prof. Zoecklein
Enjoy.
Admin It’s a pleasure to speak with you, Janette. How long have you been it the winemaking business?
Janette Evans I’m the other half of the winery with my husband, Mike Evans. We’ve been making wine for about twenty years. We began about the end of 1989.
Did you begin by making fruit wines other than grape?
JE We actually started with strawberry. Strawberry wine was the first wine we did. It was just a hobby that we decided to try. It turned out pretty good. Our strawberry wine today has been written up in the Virginia WineLover’s magazine as one of the best summer wines!
Was the strawberry wine for retail right away or were they for your family’s pleasure?
JE It was just for our family’s pleasure, and for friends. But it’s to the point where today we market the strawberry wine as our signature wine because it was the first we ever made. People are coming from everywhere just to try it. They hear all about it. We actually call it our Wow! wine because that’s the first word out of anybody’s mouth when they try it.
What is the alcohol percentage?
JE At one point in the beginning we were doing it a 12% alcohol but we’ve changed that. Our berry wines are more at 10% alcohol.
So whose idea was it to start making wine, you or your husband?
JE Well, it was my idea. Why is because my job kept sending me out to California. There was this one particular year that I was sent every month. One day I brought home a sacrometer [aka hydrometer] and gave it to my husband as a gift. He decided then to make wine because his grandfather used to make wine. I explained to my husband that since I’m going to be gone a lot longer instead of bringing him tee shirts home all the time I thought maybe he could start a hobby, something. He did. He started making his own wine and it really took off! People loved it, friends, our family. And now we’ve got a tasting room where we’re open to the public and doing our part helping folks enjoy all our wines.
So what is your case production? How has it developed over the years?
JE We make about 1000 gallons right now. We’ve been doubling our production every year. This year we’re actually going to buy the equipment we need like the bladder press and the destemmer to help us get to higher production levels.
So you guys are moving up!
JE Yeah, we are. Five hundred gallons last year to a thousand this year. So it’s doubling. Next year it’s going to be a lot more.
What are the grape varieties you use?
JE We use Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, we have Petit Verdot growing on the property, it grows very well here. And we do have a Riesling, we also do Concord. We try to stick to the hardier grapes. Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon aren’t that hardy but the Petit Verdot, Sangiovese, we’re going to grow that, does very well in our area.
Are your grape wines all 100% estate grown?
JE We grow them all on our property but if we need a little help we might go to another winery that has extra grapes they want off their hands. We’ll then add those to what we have to meet that production level. Especially while we’re still planting.
How much do you have under production, how much vine acreage?
JE We have about an acre. Originally our farm grew Christmas trees. Right next to the trees we are planting our grapes. We just got our land cleared off 54 acres, we took the stumps out just two weeks ago for a couple acres where we’re going to be doing more planting.
Have your wines been entered into any competitions?
JE Yes, and we won, just recently, the Town Point Virginia Wine Competition for our 2007 Merlot. We’re very excited about that! Other wineries have congratulated us, it is great just to be recognized as one of the family of wineries in Virginia. It is a great thing to be involved with.
Congratulations! Who made up the judging panel? How many wines were included?
JE I believe there were about 15 judges. I’m not sure but I think there were a couple hundred wines. There were a lot of wines. When I first entered I thought it was just for the people at Town Point but later found out it was a state competition. You were able to mail your wines to the judges.
I recently did an interview with Luca Paschina of Barboursville Vineyard and came away with the distinct impression Virginia wine quality has become a force to be reckoned with.
JE I do know we are the fifth largest producer, Virginia is. I think we’re close to 200 wineries in Virginia.
Getting back to more pedestrian matters, what is your oak treatment? Do you have barrels?
JE Well, we’re still very small. We still work with glass carboys. We destem by hand. Everything is done by hand. We’re hoping that will change this year. We do use oak wood chips. But we will soon get the proper barrels. Everything is done in carboys right now. We have, like, a hundred of them! (laughs) But the point is they do make a quality wine. They really do. And you can watch the process which is very neat.
During the Crush do family, friends and neighbors come over to help?
JE For the most part it is family but many of our friends want to be a part of it. And I open my door to everyone.
Let me just add: because of the help we get from so many, when we attend the Virginia Wine Showcase this weekend at the Dulles Expo with 40 other wineries, it’s going to be huge, we’re entering our Cabernet Sauvignon and our strawberry wine for the People’s Choice Award. Hopefully we have a chance.
One of the pictures you sent me is of a very pleasant group. Who are they?
JE My mom is on the right, next is my sister, Lisa, then my brother-in-law, Jim, he’s the taller gentleman, Mike, my husband, he’s the winemaker, is the mustached and bearded gentleman, and Christine, operations manager, is the one with the curly hair. I’m the one all the way on the left. It was taken at the Yorktown Wine Festival, an event we attend every year. It’s a great event.
What is the focus of your winery? What atmosphere are you trying to create?
JE There is a lot of history in our area, with Jamestown, the settlers who came in with the Native Americans showing them how to live off the land. Today we’re trying to present that. Our fruits made into wines is a way of honoring today that very history. Visitors drinking our wines can reflect on the idea that these very fruits they now enjoy as wine were once shared by settler and native alike.
Where we live, in Spotsylvania, the local history you hear about is the Civil War. We didn’t want to go that way. There is too much there. Four miles from my house there’s General Lee’s headquarters. You go ten miles the other way you run into Stonewall Jackson’s house where he passed away. Even the farm where John Wilkes Booth was shot is ten miles from my house! So there’s a lot of history in this area. Then, as we were planting grapes, we started pulling up Indian arrowheads. To me it was very exciting because of my heritage, being Cherokee. I was just amazed at how many arrowheads we pulled up. When you come to the tasting room, while you’re doing the tasting, I pull out the rocks for people to hold, to see them up close.
We know there was a Mattaponi tribe that used to live here in Spotsylvania.
It occurs to me that although you don’t identify Mattaponi Winery as Native American on your website, is it fair to say that in fact it is? That would perhaps make yours one of only two in the United States, as far as I know. I did a piece some months ago on Native Vines Winery out of North Carolina…
JE Yes. I believe there are just two of us that I know of today. And I think we were earlier than Native Vines Winery. I haven’t seen any documentation to show they were earlier than 2002, the year of our incorporation with the Commonwealth of Virginia. We were bonded in 2004. So I think we may well be the first Native American winery.
You mentioned upgrading your website soon…
JE Yes, we are updating our website to include a picture of our award-winning wine medal, more pictures of how we make wine. We’re adding more wines to it. We do what we call our Freedom blend, which is a combination of Red Steuben, Blue Concord and White Moore’s Diamond. All three come from the Concord family. We introduced it last year and it was a big hit. We’ll sell it in the summertime. We’re excited.
I very much like your tasting room.
JE Thanks. We love it. And people love to come and take pictures of it. The fish hanging? I caught it. It’s a barracuda. The deer was caught on our property. The tasting room creates a very warm feeling, it’s a very relaxed place. We play very soothing Indian music as well.
And on the property we cleared we’re going to build an Indian village so you’ll be able to picnic out on the property next to the grapes, but also, you’ll be able to walk through a little Indian village.
It sounds more peaceful than another Civil War-themed park!
JE Yeah, they do a lot of reenactments on the battlefields around here. Four miles from us is Bloody Angle and it was one of the worst Civil War events that occurred in Spotsylvania, worse than Gettysburg. We just didn’t want… everybody’s doing something with the Civil War. We choose to do something more from our Native American heritage. We have a history, too.
Thank you, Janette.
JE I thank you for doing this.
Admin
A brief update. I received a note from Janette Evans 2/24: “We won the People’s Choice Awards for our Cabernet Sauvignon and Strawberry wines at the Dulles Expo.” Congratulations!
