Horton Vineyards
6399 Spotswood Trail
Gordonsville, VA 22942
(800) 877-5533
hortonsvineyards@aol.com
There’s not many states that have a native winemaking grape [like the Norton grape]. And I thought it would behoove the marketing end of the stick to be able to deal with a grape that came from Virginia, made in Virginia, and produces a nice bottle of red wine. And it proved to be successful. – Dennis Horton
Hermann, Missouri, is home to Stone Hill Winery, once the second-largest winery in the country. It’s also home to Dennis Horton. He was born there in 1945 and grew up hearing about the official grape of the State of Missouri, the Norton. As an adult, Horton developed a passion for winemaking and kept vines in his backyard. In 1977 he and his wife, Sharon, found themselves in Virginia, where the Norton grape was first cultivated. Twelve years later, they decided to take their hobby to the next level: they started a vineyard. The Hortons devoted the bulk of their acreage to Norton, with cuttings purchased from Dennis’s hometown winery, Stone Hill. Today, Horton Vineyards is credited with the resurgence of the Norton grape in Virginia. The Hortons also pioneered the plantation of Viognier in the region. But Dennis Horton is one part visionary, one part businessman. In addition to his celebration of native, as well as European varietals, Horton produces nine different fruit wines.
What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
Subject: Dennis Horton, owner
Date: June 16, 2008
Location: Horton Vineyards - Gordonsville, VA
Interviewer & Photographer: Amy C. Evans
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Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans on Monday, June 16, 2008, for the Southern Foodways Alliance. I’m in Gordonsville, Virginia, at Horton Vineyards with Mr. Dennis Horton. And Mr. Horton, if I could get you to state your name and what you do for a living for the record, please?
Dennis Horton: Dennis Horton and I am the proprietor of Horton Vineyards in Gordonsville, Virginia.
May I ask you to share your birth date for the record?
December 1, 1945.
All right. And you’re from Missouri, originally, so may I ask how you made your way to Virginia and when that was?
I ended up going to the University of Maryland after the United States Air Force and spent the rest of the time basically selling and working in the Washington Metropolitan area and in Virginia…My wife [Sharon] and I moved down here in 1977. And we started the vineyard, planting in 1989, which our initial planting was eight acres of Norton, five acres of Vidal Blanc and five acres of Cabernet Franc.
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You had vines at your home to begin with, is that right? Were you growing for yourself, originally?
Yes. I was what they call a home winemaker for probably in the area of maybe thirty-five years—thirty years. And in most of the locations that we lived it was an extended period of time, I had put grapes in the ground. The grapes that I had planted at the present residence was, oh, just a little over a quarter-acre. It was two rows of Cabernet Franc, one row of Merlot, and one row of Cabernet Sauvignon. And that was kind of the origin of our planting. After that, we leased sixty acres from Helen Marie Taylor, due to the fact that leasing land was more financially able than buying land. The main reason being, if you find a nice vineyard site, it has to be attached to 300 acres. And she had a very nice site, and she was willing to lease the land for twenty-five years with a twenty-five year option in five-year increments. And then that’s when we started planting that in ’89. We actually completed the planting there in 1991.
Can I ask you how you got into that originally and where that interest came from and then also how you found your vines?
Basically, I’ve always been interested in—and not only when I came to Virginia, but I had grapes in Maryland, when we lived there and grapes when we came down. And just an astute interest in grape growing and winemaking. And there weren't many places where you could buy grapes, and the ones that were in Virginia at the time were kind of a preponderance of Concord or Niagara. They weren't specifically wine grapes, more juice grapes than wine grapes. And then that’s when we planted the Cabernet Franc, the Merlot, and the Cabernet Sauvignon. And obviously, with the higher grade of fruit, you ended up with a higher grade of wine. And from there, when we planted the other section, as I said earlier, Norton was the first planting of eight acres. It was basically or is a native grape of Virginia. It was selected by Dr. Norton in, I think, about 1835, somewhere in that area, and was actually the backbone of the Virginia wine industry up until Prohibition.
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Now when you first planted in 1989 and had eight acres of Norton, that was your largest acreage devoted to a grape…What made you make that decision?
That was basically a no-brainer. I mean there’s not many states that have a native grape, okay, or a winemaking grape that originated in the States. And I thought it would behoove the marketing end of the stick to be able to deal with a grape that came from Virginia, made in Virginia, and produces a nice bottle of red wine. And it proved to be successful.
And you’re, as far as I can tell, really known for bringing back the Norton grape in this area.
I was the first, if that’s being known. [Laughs] Yes, I brought it back to the state. I actually got my cuttings from Stone Hill Winery back in Hermann [Missouri]. And I had them rooted up in New York and then planted in 1989.
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Can we talk about now the period in Virginia’s winemaking history between Prohibition and the 1970s, when there was really a resurgence of farm wineries cropping up and some government support in incidents to make that happen and kind of what those interim decades were like here in Virginia?
Getting back into the game or into the business in Virginia was kind of tough because (a) California had come online; (b) a lot of the vineyards had been devastated in this whole area during the Civil War. And during Prohibition, the wine industry was nonexistent. It was shut down, what was left of the industry. There were some wineries that did get started back in the ‘70s, but I don’t think it really flourished until they changed some of the laws in the ‘80s that enacted—the Farm Winery Act and so forth and so on to actually take it out of the commercial setting and put it into the agricultural setting. That seemed to spur a lot of Virginia wineries. Plus, there was a lot of technological changes that had transpired from the time they had really shut down the Virginia wine industry to the resurgence in that new spray programs were adapted. Grafting had been taken care of and a lot of other things to where it was possible to grow vitis vinifera in the state of Virginia. And I think that was actually the big surge that was done for a period of time.
In the beginning, I think a lot of people looked at the market and said, “What are people buying?” and they figured that since that encompassed let’s say sixty-five or seventy-five percent of the wine market, these are the grapes that will grow, which was like Cabernet, Pinot Noir, Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon, and so forth. So rather than look at what could be grown extremely successful, they were looking at the market and what do the people buy. And that’s what they planted, and that’s what they grew. There’s been a transition in the state of Virginia now; they’re looking more toward the vineyard and what can we grow extremely successful to have a nationally and internationally competitive product, than what percentage of the market is that.
When I planted, I was one of the first in the area or in that timeframe to start planting in Viognier and to plant other grapes that had not been planted, but I thought they were more suitable for a grape-growing area as Virginia was with the hot—humidity and so forth and so on. And some of them proved to be successful. It’s not that everything I put in the ground did what it was supposed to do; some of them didn’t. But Viognier was one, Tannat is another one, Petit Manseng is another one, and recently I introduced Pinotage, which is a South African grape to the area, which is I think going to be very successful. So there’s been a huge transition from the ‘70s to the ‘80s to the ‘90s to the 2000s, and the grape varieties that are very successful or reasonably successful right now are varieties of people that have made the change with varieties.
And I understand, too, that you kind of ignored geographical characteristics of different grapes and will try anything, like, for example the Georgian grape—the Russian grape—that you have here.
Well yeah, but there was a logic to that, too. I mean it wasn’t that I just picked it out of the wild. Rkatsiteli, which is the grape, is an extremely late-budding white grape, which is what you just drove by—the six acres that you [saw when] came in here. And if when you drive out you take a look, this is a pothole; it’s not the prettiest vineyard site in the world, although the vineyard is extremely pretty. You’re looking up at everything, which means it’s a frost pocket. And I planted it because it was late, and by the time we get our late March or early April, mid-April frost, which we did this year, this particular of variety hadn't even broken bud, so there was no loss or no possibility of loss for that particular variety. So it had a reason for being planted. And one of the requirements of the Farm Winery Act in the state of Virginia is you have to have vineyards attached to your winery property. The rest of my vineyards are not here. That’s six and there’s a whole lot more. But so there was a reason for doing that, as well.
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Tell me about the Cotes d’ Orange.
It’s—I’ve gotten—some of the varieties that I make—and they’re—they’re Rhone varieties, okay, and we couldn’t call it Côtes du Rhône because that’s—you’re going to get put in jail for that, or at least the French will put you in jail. So you have to have—and we had a hard stretch getting Cotes d’Orange put on the label. I mean I fought TTB [Tax and Trade Bureau] or—which was ATF [Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms] at that time—tooth and nail that they said I’m trying to show that I’m making French wine. And I said, “I’m not trying to do that at all.” And I had to write a letter to the state that we were not trying to duplicate or be French in style or whatever. And we finally got it through, and it’s a Rhone style of wine, pretty—closer to Châteauneuf-du-Pape than it is the northern part of Rhone, where the Syrahs and so forth and so forth Cotes du Rhotes are made, which is Syrah. But it’s—it’s a delightful bottle of wine and it sells, so those are key things that add to the ingredients of success.
And we’re in Orange County, hence the Orange?
Yes, from the hills of Orange. That’s what Côtes du Rhône—or Cotes d’Orange means. But it’s a nice product.
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You talk about an international competition, but what about your United States competition and Napa Valley and California and the West Coast, and how Virginia has figured into that and how that’s changing now?
Well, I think there was a time when the—let’s just say we were the—what was it Rodney—whatever his name was—Rodney Dangerfield. We—we were—we kind of didn’t get any respect…And the wine, I don’t think at that time, it was really nationally or internationally competitive. I’ve done several tours in France. I’ve taken my wine there, and some of the people actually thought that I had exported the grapes from France and brought them over, and that is anything but the truth, okay. So the respect came from the ability to, rather than making mediocre wine, making nationally competitive wines. Viognier, we can compete with probably any area of the country as well as any area of France; the same thing with Tannat and some of the other grapes. Uruguay makes a lot of Tannat and very successfully. And we can make a bottle every bit as good as they can—or better. And that’s what it takes to be able to be successful. That’s where the transformation came from being a Rodney Dangerfield-type of vineyard to being a nationally competitive wine-producing state, which I think Virginia is now doing. And which is given us recognition in California. California grows Viognier. I just sent 52,000 buds out to a grower out in California who is going to start growing Petit Manseng and—it’s going the other way rather than coming back here, which I think is where the respect actually comes from. And there’s people in California and Napa Valley that now know Virginia grows grapes and knows that we grow them very successfully, so I think that’s where the transformation came from. It came out of respect for what’s happening to us in this part of the country, not because we just happen to be growing grapes.
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What grape is prominent in your vineyards that you plant most of these days?
Oh, Viognier is, obviously—we have about twenty-some acres of Viognier. We have about six acres of Petit Manseng. I think we’re up to about eight or nine acres of Cabernet Franc. We still have about five acres of Vidal and then we’re up to about eleven or twelve acres of Norton, and then we have some Rkatsiteli, obviously, and then we have some Petit Verdot, which is only about a quarter acre; we use it for blending. And we also have Touriga Nacional, Tinta Cao, and Tannat, which is all over at the house.
How many grapes is that relative to how many wines you make?
We actually have more varieties in wines than we do in the grapes. That came from a marketing situation. The preponderance of our market is within the state of Virginia, okay. If you’re going to, for lack of a better word, try to make a living in selling wine in Virginia, unlike, I think, California, who can go out and get a national distributor and make a Chardonnay and a Cabernet Sauvignon and have the distributors put it in all fifty states, okay? Well if you get 1,000—1,000 cases out of each state, which is nothing extraordinary, okay, you can go from zero to 50,000 cases, okay, probably in a year or in a very short period of time. If your preponderance of your business is getting a share of the market in Virginia, your population has been obviously drastically reduced compared to the United States and then you’re going to have to say, “Okay, we have white wine drinkers, we have red wine drinkers, we have sweet wine drinkers, we have fruit wine drinkers, we have—.” So in order to expand on that particular market, which is the preponderance of our market, if you make twenty or twenty-five or thirty different bottles of wine, you can address your wine to a lot of different product markets where people would be interested in it.
Are they the wines that would internally impress people? Possibly. Possibly not. But there’s a marketing 101, page one, paragraph one and what you want to do is make products that the person on the other side of the counter wants to buy. And I not only believe in sincere winemaking, I also believe in sincere capitalism in that you have to have a product for the guy that you’re selling to, whoever that individual happens to be or group of individuals. So we’ve done very well with fruit wines. We’ve done very well with some of our sweeter products, so it helps you expand the market, increases your sales volume, and helps you do what you’re supposed to do as a business and that’s make a profit.
And the sweet wines, I understand you have nine or so different varieties?
In the fruit wines we have blackberry, raspberry, cherry, blueberry, pear, peach, cranberry and strawberry, okay, which as a total group ends up to be something like 6,000 cases, which is, to us, a considerable value in terms of staying in the marketplace. Would I like to make nothing but these kinds of wines? Yes, but then if you just make that kind of wine and you make one Cabernet and one Chardonnay and you’re in the state of Virginia, you may not be in business, [Laughs] so that wouldn’t be successful either.
So what would you attribute their success to, the fruit wines? Would it be a price point or would it be familiarity, as far as people in this area coming up and making home wines?
I think we all ought to send a check to Sutter Home. I don’t know. They made the first semi-sweet or sweet, whichever one you want to call it—blush—and what did that do? That probably introduced millions and millions of people to the wine industry because it was very acceptable to almost everybody’s palate. Now do they continue to drink that through the rest of their life? I don’t think so. There’s a lot of people that start out blush, and then they end up going to whites and maybe with a little bit of residual sugar, and then all of the sudden they’re drinking Chardonnay, and then from Chardonnay they kind of go to some of the dry reds and so forth and so on. So I think there’s a progression of that kind of thing. It’s kind of like with food. I don’t think you grow up and go into a French restaurant and immediately order escargot, even if you do know what it is, okay. [Laughs] But your palate structure changes, and your palate structure for food changes in the same manner. So you may have just been a peanut butter and jelly guy, and all of the sudden you’re into escargot on the way up the scale. So I think the same thing happens in wine. I don’t think the people that started drinking Sutter Home necessarily ended up, although they may still drink it, but it’s introduced just a ton of people to wine, okay, and I think that was the key thing that Sutter Home really did for the wine industry—not only this wine industry but also for California.
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Your international effort, really, that you have here at Horton Vineyards, with your Latino laborers and your European vines…The Norton grape aside, what makes the wine from Horton Vineyards Southern?
I think it’s absolutely a Southern wine and, of course, when we’re—believe it or not, I know you’re from Mississippi, but we are really south of the Mason-Dixon. [Laughs] Okay, Maryland guys, they’re the ones that are in trouble. But yes, and I think some of the wine style is made for Southern food as well because where are we? We’re in Virginia, okay, so that has a tendency to change what food products people want to have with their wine or wine that they have with their food. They want to pair them up and they want to match them, so you can't take one away from the other, especially when the preponderance of wine that is drunk is drunk with food.
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So in the recent history of wine in Virginia, would you say that there’s a single thing that has maybe changed the most or helped the most to boost the industry?
Yes. I think we’re getting better at choosing the right grapes, and I think we’re getting better at making good wine, both things which are important, which I think has brought us—we can't be on a national scale. You have to understand something. I mean California still produces ninety percent of the wine in the United States, okay. The rest of us are screwing around with the other ten percent, okay. [Laughs] But at least it’s giving us national recognition, if not in terms of just sheer volume, in terms of quality that we’ve gained a respect…So I think Virginia has been able to excel in what it’s done with grapes, and I think it’s been able to excel with what it’s done with its wine products, which is what I think several years ago Wine Spectator [magazine] said probably—other than California—one of the forefront states in the Union. New York and Long Island has got a great product that they’re developing out there, and some of the other states are getting into it, so I think there will be—it’s a competitive market and you have to have a great product or a good product to be able to compete in it, or else you’re not going to be successful.
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Tell me about the future. Are you going to be adding a lot more grapes, or are you going to be perfecting what you already have?
[Laughs] I don’t know. You know, that’s a decision my wife and I are toying with right now. Do we continue to grow? Do we continue to do this and, if we do, how big do we get? And those are questions that we have to answer. We’re both sixty-two years old, and when I started this, I was a lot younger than that [Laughs], so, if nothing else, you had a lot more piss and vinegar—you did then than you do now, so those decisions, I think, are going to be made in the very near future.
Do you have children who might be interested?
My daughter isn't. She’s actually an RN and a lawyer—and maybe my granddaughter, you know. She just turned fourteen a couple of days ago. Maybe she’ll be interested in it. She’s shown more interest in it so far, so that’s a possibility. And I never did have a crystal ball and was able to foresee the future. You just got to try to live through it. [Laughs] But I think the Virginia wine industry is really going to be something at some point in time. We’ve made a mark so far, and I think in the period of time, the twenty-five years that we’ve been at it, as compared to the European world, it’s been at it for a long time and has had more practice on what do you plant where and which grapes go where. I think that we’ll be very successful in the industry.
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All right, well we’ve spent a good amount of time here talking about you and your wine. I’ve enjoyed every moment. Is there something that I haven't asked you that you might like to make sure to add to our conversation here or a final word?
I think this is a new beginning here. We’ve come a long way, but we’ve got a long way to go, and I think that the people that are still getting into the industry are tenacious enough and are astute enough to be able to carry us from here on. I can't do it forever, and other people are doing it, so Virginia will have a wine industry.
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