Ep 589: The Monticello AVA of Virginia- The Birthplace of American Wine

Wine for Normal People

Alcohol, Lifestyle, Arts, Education, Food, Wine, Dining, Grapes

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Located about 2.5-3 hours southwest of Washington DC, in the southeast of the United States, the Monticello AVA is making world class wines that you need to know about!

Photo: Afton Mountain Vineyards. Credit: WFNP

Although California is the state for which American wine is known, the first place to tirelessly attempt to make premium wine was, in fact, Virginia. In the land Thomas Jefferson, the greatest wine advocate in American history, called home, the third president never realized his dream of making great wine. But in 1976 a couple of prominent Italians made a go of it and since then, the wine of the Monticello AVA, located In the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of central Virginia, has gone from strength to strength.

In this show I discuss the history of how the Monticello AVA of Virginia finally was able to make good wine on a difficult terroir. I talk about the particulars of the climate and (very diverse) soils, the grapes that grow here (yes, it's mostly Vitis vinifera), the challenges of the business of wine in the Monticello AVA, and then I give my list of top wineries and go into some detail about what makes them great.

Monticello is an evolving story, but it only has upside. If you haven't had the wines from here or visited and you get an opportunity to do one or both, I really recommend it! It's beautiful and the wines are world class (if you stick to my recommendations, there are still people learning here…😂).

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Wine for Normal People, the podcast for people who like wine, but not the snobbery that goes with it.
0:15.8	I'm your host Elizabeth Schneider, author of the Wine for Normal People book and Certified Wine Dork.
0:21.4	It's the holidays. There's no better one-stop shop for all your wine needs than
0:25.5	Wine Access. Whether you need wines for your holiday meal or bottles of wine for friends or
0:30.8	colleagues, wine access has you covered. Go to wine access.com slash WFNP to find a curated wine selection. If you're not sure what to
0:41.0	choose, a wine access gift card will let the wine lover in your life explore and enjoy at their own pace.
0:47.1	Go to wine access.com slash WFMP and listen in the middle of the show for more details.
0:53.5	This is my last new show of the year.
0:56.5	And I'm happy that I am talking about basically my local wine area, the place that is closest
1:02.6	to me that makes very high quality wine, the Monticello, Virginia, American Viticultural
1:07.8	area.
1:08.7	And yes, it is said Monticello, not Monticello. Many of you have visited.
1:13.1	Many of you have heard of this area. And I can tell you that it is really the birthplace of American
1:18.9	wine. I'll go over the history. And I think when I start to go over everything, you're really
1:24.7	going to see that this place has had to go through a lot to get where
1:27.7	they are today. And the wines are so amazing. It's a tiny bit depressing because Washington, D.C.,
1:35.3	which is their big metro market, is largely unsupportive of the wines of this region. They don't
1:41.3	serve them. They have a really hard time getting distribution into wine
1:44.4	shops, into restaurants, which really stinks because a lot of us make it to D.C., but we can't make
1:49.0	it to wine country, and we can't even try these wines. I have to say, I'm very proud of my New York
1:54.6	heritage because they do support Long Island wines and Hudson Valley wines and Finger Lakes wines
2:00.6	in a way that D.C. does not.
	...

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