Vintage Virginians

The Wild Vine

A Forgotten Grape
and the Untold Story
of American Wine
by Todd Kliman
Clarkson Potter, 288 pp., $25

My favorite Dilbert cartoon starts with Dilbert trying to impress a date at a fancy restaurant. Holding his goblet aloft, he begins to wax poetically about bouquet, finish, and undertones .  .  . until the waiter says, “That’s your water glass, sir.” That’s what I feel like saying when I read most articles about wine—not because I think I know more than your average suburbanite staring vacantly at shelves of Chardonnay while trying to pick one, but because I have a sneaking suspicion that the writer doesn’t, either.  Or if he does, it’s unlikely that a rube would get past the pedantry to learn at the master’s feet. 

Todd Kliman is not that kind of writer. And this debut book is not all about wine. He describes it as “part travelogue, part biography, part memoir, and part history.” It’s also part mystery, all somehow woven together seamlessly into a story that’s hard to put down.

It began at a candlelit dinner party during Hurricane Isabel, the deadly 2003 storm that left hundreds of thousands of homes along the Eastern seaboard without electricity for days. That night, Kliman’s host poured a Virginia wine made from what he called the only American grape to produce drinkable wine: the Norton. If you’ve never heard of it, don’t feel too bad; neither had Kliman, and he was an award-winning food writer. But that first taste left an impression. He made a mental note of the bottle’s source: Chrysalis Vineyards, near Middleburg, which has the largest single planting of Norton grapes in the world. Later, he tracked down the vineyard’s owner, one Jenni McCloud. A self-described “Nortonian,” McCloud transmitted her enthusiasm for the obscure grape and served as muse when Kliman set out to unravel the story behind it.