The Fizz #5: Lee Campbell and the open doors of the Virginia wine industry
In this interview, Lee Campbell and I talk about Virginia wine history, the winemaking culture in the state, and how she approaches the aspect of mentorship.
For The Fizz #5, I sat down (over a phone call) with Lee Campbell—a force in the wine industry who has been part of the wine community for over 20 years, and has mentored many of today’s wine pros. Lee is an ambassador for Virginia’s Early Mountain Vineyards, and has worked as a sommelier, a Wine Director, and a wine consultant in her career. Today, she lives in Brooklyn, NY.
We briefly chatted about Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley before we got started, which we both have in common. Lee was immediately warm and kind—her depth of experience and passion shines through this interview, where we touched on Virginia’s wine history, its winemaking story, current wine culture, and how she approaches mentoring new young winemakers, especially people of color, as they start on their journey in the wine industry.
Virginia has a deep history with wine—the first vines were planted by early colonists in the 1600s. Growing vines was mandated by the British in the colonies. In 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed Acte 12, which required every household to grow a minimum of 10 vines. Getting winemaking off the ground proved difficult, though. Colonists planted vitis vinifera vines, European vines, which had trouble taking off thanks to the phylloxera louse and the state’s difficult climate (freezing winter temperatures, humidity, Black Rot issues, etc). Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson tried growing European vines, but had little to show for it. Today, Virginia is 6th in American wine production, right behind Texas.
Margot: I’m really fascinated by the history and state of winemaking in America, and the culture of wine here. You have a ton of knowledge around US wine history, especially in Virginia. How’d you get there? Where did that interest come from?
Lee: Honestly, I’m still very much a student in the ways of Virginia and the ways of winemaking in Virginia, and I think that’s partly why I’m so very excited. You spend 20 years in hospitality and food and wine, and you feel a little tired, a little jaded, like you’ve done it all. After a period of time where I was just not feeling as engaged as I wanted to be with wine, Virginia is what brought me back to it. In a lot of ways I don’t know that I would still be involved with wine if I hadn’t discovered what was going on in Virginia, although the seeds had been planted very long ago.
My parents separated when I was a girl, and my father remarried to a woman from Richmond. Because of that marriage, I suddenly had a Southern family. My parents are both from the West Indies, both born on islands in the Caribbean—my mom is from Trinidad, my dad is Jamaican. My family structure is really based in New York, but also Canada, London, Miami. I didn’t have any experience with Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, as other African Americans do—they have families there, family groups there—sometimes for hundreds of years. It was a whole new world for me. I loved the culture itself, obviously there are some definite black marks there, but the sense of hospitality and graciousness was new to me. I just adored learning that from my step-grandparents in Richmond.
I got to a certain age where my parents asked me to participate in certain academic programs during the summers instead of just working at Dairy Queen, and I went to a summer program at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. If you had asked me when I was 16 where I was going to go to college, I certainly wasn’t thinking about the South. Through my new Southern family, I came discover all these places around the South. I ended up spending the summer going to school at UVA and I absolutely fell in love with it. I had to go to school there. I was enthralled by the history of it—it was founded by Thomas Jefferson. It was founded on these very lofty ideals, not unlike America.
By the time I graduated from UVA, there was definitely a fledgling wine industry, mostly base on the Viognier grape. I wasn’t drinking wine in the early 90s, certainly wasn’t drinking Virginia wine in the early 90s, but my time in Charlottesville very much shaped me. Fast forward 20 years, now I’ve spent all this time working in food and wine and Washington D.C. and New York. There were little blips of Virginia wine here and there, primarily through this estate called Barboursville. Quite honestly, I never took it seriously, even if I had this sort of personal historical connection to the area. A few years ago I went on sabbatical and just was looking for interesting things to be involved in, and my colleague Nicolas Mestre, who is the owner of a distributorship called Williams Corner Wine, which is based in Charlottesville, Virginia, was having an event in Madison, about 30 miles north of Charlottesville. He asked me if I wanted to come, and on a lark, I went to this event at Early Mountain. Honestly, I thought it was going to be a joke, now we’re going on two and a half years since this happened, and I was completely blown away by what was clearly a high level of knowledge from Ben Jordan and the associate winemaker Maya Hood White.
We went into the vines and I saw what they were doing. I asked them questions, they answered the way I’d like them to. We went into the winery, they showed me how they made the wines, and I was very impressed. I tasted the wines, and I went “wow”. There’s something here that I missed—something I stepped over. In the 20 years that I'd had my back turned, Virginia had obviously become a contender. I will say there are approximately 300 wineries in Virginia now and not everyone works at this level. Not everybody wants to work at this level—everyone has a different model for how they want to work in this industry. Some people are more touristic, some people are more event-based. Most wineries have to be sort of a blend of a few different models, as we do. There is a small contingent of people who take winemaking very very seriously, Early Mountain among them. I couldn’t be surrounded by smarter, more brilliant people.
I realized I could continue to work in wine in an entirely new region, with an entirely new point of reference, and continue my wine education. For me, I’m really inspired by the constant learning that wine has always demanded from me, and I think there was a part of me that felt like I had learned everything I had wanted to in this other space. Now I had to almost start anew in Virginia. There were people I could learn from that I really respected, Lucie Morton, for example is a viticulturist who does enormous work down there for foundation laying, how to plant, what sites to focus on, what grape varieties to focus on—she’s become a friend in addition to the winemakers I work with and the ones I’m meeting out there. It’s really exciting. It’s a very warm, welcoming, unassuming, low-ego community.
M: That must be so refreshing.
L: It is refreshing, but I don’t want to lie—it still takes a lot of money to start a vineyard, an estate, a winery in Virginia, but it probably takes less money than some domestic regions. I’d still like to see more entry points for young winemakers without endless means. I’d like to see more entry points for people of color, specifically African Americans to learn about winemaking and production. My bosses at Early Mountain and other winemakers I speak to are interested in trying to get that going. I do think there’s a disconnect between the agricultural legacy African Americans have participated in and contributed to and built up in places like Virginia, and Virginia having so little contribution and engagement with African Americans in production—that’s a problem. We need to address it.
But, having said all of that, there is a high proportion of women making wine in Virginia and it feels like a very open industry that’s not this, without calling anybody specifically out, high flying auction culture, or fancy sommelier culture, you know? Even though there are fantastic restaurants in Charlottesville particularly and other places in Virginia, it doesn’t get caught up in itself in that way. Even if people are trying to create beautiful hospitality spaces, they try really hard not to be elitist.
M: Can you give me a sense of all that you do at Early Mountain?
L: My job is sort of an ambassador—kind of a nebulous term. In the before times, a huge part of my job was just going and doing tastings for buyers, sort of using the relationships I’ve made in New York to build credibility for a type of wine that people didn’t know anything about, didn’t necessarily trust, and weren’t necessarily motivated by. That was fun. It was scary and fun, I kind of like that. I felt so confident about the quality of wine that I work with, and to pour these wines for people who were surprised, amazed, inspired, they want to go down now, what’s going on down there? It’s so exciting. That was pretty fabulous.
Now, I continue to do the same sort of work although more virtually. We’ve done a lot of online tastings and events during the last year. I actually did host some buyers down there a few months ago for a very safe trip down to the vineyards while the weather was still really gorgeous and we could do everything outside. I’ll continue to do that, to lay that foundation. We’re in the middle of planning some interesting events both virtually and in-person for the summer. I’ll continue to be a mouthpiece for them wherever I can.
M: You mentioned that you had to kind of start over in your knowledge when you started focusing on Virginia. Can you talk more about that?
L: Well, Virginia doesn’t have a strong foundation in natural winemaking. It’s kind of an insular community and they have been making wines in more of a conventional manner for a long time. Partially owed to the climate, which is very humid. Because of that, I think there are certain approaches that have worked really well, especially when making a certain style of classic wine, that people don’t really push back on as much as I would like to see them push back on or be more questioning about. It’s like, okay when you come into the wine industry, you learn about the basics of conventional winemaking, and then you find your niche, like I did, which was more geared toward über traditional natural winemaking. In some ways you have to let go of some of that, let go of the dogma around natural vinification and viticulture and reframe it in a new space.
Not only is Virginia a very specific region with certain pressures and certain positives that other regions don’t have, but also they have their own history and how they decided to make wine. I think what I almost had to relearn—you know this intrinsically but you have to keep reminding yourself—what works in Tuscany doesn’t work in Virginia. What works in the Loire does not work in Virginia, it’s very different. It’s a region that was really trying to define who they want to be, what grapes they want to focus on, what grapes they shouldn’t focus on. Some winemakers are starting to realize the mistakes they made just ten, fifteen years ago, how things may need to be re-approached. It’s like you jump on a rollercoaster with them as they’re learning this stuff. You have your own prejudices and your own strong feelings, but they sort of get punched back a bit, or [laughs] punched down, no pun intended.
You’ve just got to let go of the dogma. Certain people have non-negotiables about winemaking and I get that because I come from that, but for me it’s more important to be part of telling a domestic story that hasn’t been told before. For that reason, I’m willing to let go of some of my precious dogma, as long as I can continue to engage a conversation in certain spaces down there, and that’s okay for me.
I understand that dogma is privilege, and I don’t even like the word privilege, I’m so tired of it. But it’s very easy to talk about all the things you should be doing if you have always had entrée into this field. It’s very easy to talk about all the things you should be doing if your family has owned this land for a hundred years, or if people who look like you have always been making the wine. Even though I agree with so much about regenerative agriculture and natural farming and low intervention winemaking—I believe in those things because that makes the best wine, takes care of people and the Earth in the best ways, I’m not letting go of that, but I’m also willing to compromise so we can hear some new voices, new approaches, so we can have some new regions. I do believe that the two will come together.
I’m not really interested in getting so caught up in dogma that I can’t allow Virginia in, or winemakers of color who don’t have the same resources or the same access. “Oh you carry this nice rosé but because it’s not organic I’m not going to put it on my list". That's not where I'm at. I think there’s space to say “I like where this person is going. I like where this person would like to go. I like the conversation I’m having with this person, and I feel that that’s real”. We just have to make some space, but that doesn’t mean you’re not moving forward.
M: Absolutely. I think it’s really easy to say oh is there sulfur in this wine? But the folks saying that are not the ones responsible for feeding those winemakers’ families.
L: Yeah! And you can make an un-sulfured wine that’s just bad or doesn’t last or it’s shipped back, or it can re-ferment, or whatever. People are able to take risks in different ways and I want to allow for that. But I do think there is also pleasure to be derived from things that aren’t absolutist.
M: You mentioned a bit about Virginia’s winemaking history. What’s exciting for you around that history? How can winemakers honor that history but also move forward in their own way?
L: One of the grapes that people will associate with Virginia winemaking, for better or for worse, is a grape called Norton. The Norton grape was really big in the 19th century—it won all these wine awards, including the Vienna World’s Fair [in 1873]. There was a real history and pride around this Norton grape, which is actually largely an indigenous grape. I think that even though people associate it with being an American grape, it does actually have, Lucie was telling me, some vinifera in there. A lot of these things are still being decided, though, and established. There are still some estates working with the Norton grape. I think that because there’s this storied history of working with indigenous grapes in Virginia, in some ways that is one of the biggest contributions we make to domestic winemaking. The idea that we can be proud of grapes that aren’t wholly vinifera is an interesting story to tell. Clearly we’re starting to become very vocal about working with hybrid grapes at Early Mountain. I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to Norton, we’ll see.
[The Norton grape was created by Dr. Daniel Norton of Richmond in 1817. It’s a hybrid grape, a cross between a European vinifera variety and a native vitis aestivalis grape variety (we don’t know which ones yet, although Cynthiana seems to be a mutation of the Norton grape). During Prohibition, almost all Norton was ripped out, and few winemakers are using it in Virginia today. It is used widely in Missouri and Ohio.]
Now we’re working with some other hybrid grape varieties—Vidal, Chambourcin, Chardonnel. I think that is one of the most important things we’re contributing in Virginia, to continue to seek out vinifera that are appropriate to our climate. We’re excited about Petit Manseng, even though it’s a grape that people hardly know even in France, because it’s appropriate for our climate. There’s always space for us to work with more classic grape varieties like Cab Franc and Merlot, two varieties that are better known in the United States that we have a lot of success with and are appropriate for our terroir, but then to say okay we’re actually going to double down on Petit Manseng, we’re going to start experimenting with Albariño and Blaufrankisch, because that’s appropriate for where we are, and we need people to be open to that. Virginia is interesting in that, even in its kind of classical and traditional approach, somewhat conservative approach to the types of wines they put out, it's also this unique region that has a long history working with hybrids and indigenous grape varieties, and you can’t really shake that.
M: That’s so exciting. More and more folks are turning to hybrids and indigenous grapes in the United States, which is so wonderful—it’s something that’s just our own.
L: Yeah. The jury is out on how complex hybrid grape varieties can be, but I think we’ll see. It’s early for Virginia, it’s early for America. We’re not making Grand Crus Pinot Noir planted by monks hundreds of years ago. It’s just early.
M: Yeah, I think, we’re not France, we’re not Italy. It’s okay to not try and be that. It’s okay for us to do our own thing in the way we want to do it.
L: As long as we can still afford to import European wines, then yeah! [laugh]
M: You have a history with politics—you lived in DC, you interned on the Hill. Does your interest in wine and your interest in politics merge at all? Is wine political?
L: It’s all political. It’s hard for me to keep things separate. If I hadn’t come to food through a very political sensibility, I probably would have never discovered the restaurant industry. I found food as an industry because I came to it through a restaurant family that had very distinct ideas about what it means to procure food they were going to work with. I worked for Restaurant Nora, which was the first certified organic restaurant in the United States in Washington D.C. They were very adamant about food being political, it’s a choice how you get your food. I know this comes from a place of privilege, but this is how they operated, and people got on board with it. If I wasn’t able to find that venn diagram of politics and food, I don’t think I would have felt comfortable entering food because it just wouldn’t be meaningful to tell you the truth.
I come from an immigrant family that if you told them you were going to go work at a restaurant or in the food industry, that definitely wasn’t a very happy moment for them. I think that food always had to be political for me to get involved, and I doubled down on natural wine for the same reason. We can make a difference through the way people are drinking. It’s not just drinking for pleasure, although that’s definitely part of it and should be part of it, but each decision we make can make a difference. It’s not only political through the lens of the environment, it’s also political through the lens of access and resources.
M: You mentioned you’d like to see younger people and specifically African Americans have more of a road into winemaking. Can you talk about the kinds of opportunities you work on, or that you’ve seen, bring folks together around wine and make it more accessible?
L: One thing I have to say about myself, and you can tell this by my my general lack of engagement on social media, to know me is to know I love putting on a party and creating an atmosphere and hosting people. That’s definitely who I am. I want to do that in a small bubble. I don’t really need a huge mouthpiece. New York is a huge pond to do it in, but I don’t necessarily need to do it in every pond in America. I like my pond—I like having my community of people in New York, and I really appreciate the platform I have here. For me, the platform is really connected to the work of service and hospitality. I’m a little less concerned with being an influencer. It’s just not how I’m built. Because I’m so tied to hospitality and service, that’s how I connect with people. I’m very much about the one to one and most people I’ve mentored know that. I try to make sure that my connections are meaningful, that I’m contributing to people’s lives, and I’m going to do it in these smaller ways.
That’s how I feel about what I’d like to see happen in Virginia. We’re in talks with different potential partner programs around what the best way is to bring people of color into production in Virginia. My personal feeling is by finding one or two people that really want to do this and making sure they have all the support they need to learn. That’s what worked for me. My example has brought a lot of people into this industry, my example of being a person of color who has been successful in wine, has inspired people to come to this industry. I had some fantastic mentors that put a lot into me and really supported me. That’s the model I’d like to put forth out there. There are other people who are gong to create some really dynamic and huge mentoring programs, and I think that’s great. The project I’d personally like to work on is find a couple of people that really want to do this, and make sure they do it.
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Non-profit pairing: Lee supports Teens of Color Abroad (TOCA), an organization dedicated to addressing disparities in foreign language acquisition and study abroad opportunities. You can support this important organization here.
Learn more about Lee Campbell on the Domestique blog and in Bon Appetit. You can stay up to date with what she’s up to on her Instagram. Check out the wines from Early Mountain Vineyards here.
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I was so excited to see this interview! I grew up in Richmond and went to UVA, so the nearby vineyards were a popular place to visit. While working in restaurants after college, "wine snob" types always gave me the impression that VA wine was trash. It's so great to hear about what's happening in my home state.