081 - Jake Busching, Jake Busching Wines

Explicit content warning

09/15/17 • 85 min

Wine Work. In The Car. Dirt and Stuff With Jake.

Welcome to Episode 81, a conversation with a former goth slash punk rock frontman, a gentleman who has spent years making wines of place. Now he’s producing his own artisanal wines using the very best selection of grapes from vineyards he helped design. The results? Extraordinary. Meet Jake Busching of Jake Busching Wines.

Jake grew up in Minnesota on a farm. Singing in a band as a teenager, he made his way to Richmond, Virginia where he ended up working in food at a Holiday Inn. A huge shock to a boy from the midwest. A place where he learned the value of food and its culture. Musicians and food. A match made in heaven. So many folks on this podcast got their start this way.

How did wine appear? As with so many great stories, he met a girl, eventually landing in Charlottesville. A chance meeting with the owner of Jefferson Vineyards set him on his path. Initially, he initially took over farm management duties. Then Chris Hill, the Vineyard Manager, needed someone to fix stuff. He also needed help laying out a new vineyard. Michael Shaps happened to be the winemaker. The planets aligned back in 1997 at the birth of a new Virginia industry and a winemaker was born.

“The farm boy in me was like the seasonality of this totally makes sense to me. Grow a crop, harvest the crop, turn it into wine. Wow! From an agricultural perspective that sounded like sign me up! This is a freak show of really interesting people!”

He also found his tribe in wine, a cast of characters passionate and creative about wine without the snobby attitude. A little more rock and roll than classical symphony. Different from the early days of Napa, grape-wise, but with the same edacious feeling. Growing grapes in Virginia is never a sure thing where rain and humidity always threaten harvest. This gamble adds to that attitude of we’ll give it a shot and hope for the best. When you do get a great harvest? It’s that much sweeter. Farming Virginia grapes is also very different than in Europe where folks spend decades learning their dirt and the best grapes that grow in it, transitioning that knowledge into making wine with a team of experts including a chemist, farmer, and vineyard manager.

“In Virginia a lot of our wineries...there’s a lot of money being spent in Virginia. There’s not a lot of money being made in Virginia. The wine industry is agriculture. It’s a hard thing to do. There’s a lot of wineries for sale.”

Jake spent years learning how to grow grapes for various vineyards, including Jefferson and Horton. There’s a reason they call him The Dirt Guy. When he got the call from Pollak to design one from the ground up? Yes please! He applied his viticulture there, his wine growing skills. There’s a difference. Growing grapes means you’re trying to grow as many as possible. An agricultural crop. Growing wine means you’re growing the best bottles you can. There’s a reason he calls his business Jake Busching ARTISANAL Wines.

A journey that began as a grape grower, eventually moved to wine grower, then on to vineyard manager, and now to winemaker. Area vineyards trust Jake, allowing him to choose which rows of grapes he wants to use to make his wines. For example, at Honah Lee Vineyard, Jake selected a certain row of grapes because they lay on a gentle south-facing slope of land. A beautiful place with a great view. A perfect site for perfect fruit.

And what about those wines of his anyway? Jake currently has four in rotation, including his F8 and his Orphan which he just released with a big tasting at Tavola. He makes wines of place. Transitioning away from that, Jake wants to remain a relevant winemaker under his own artisanal label. In limited quantities, 50 cases at a time. His 2015 Viognier sold out. With good reason. It’s gorgeous. After tasting it, I went to his site and bought ALL the wine. Pair that with expert design from Watermark? You’ve got all the hallmarks of a truly great emerging wine collection.

“Legacy is weird. That’s a hard thing because I’ve been building legacy for other people for 20 years. It’s hard for me to swallow that pill and say okay it’s time to put yourself on a pedestal because that’s not something I’m comfortable with at all. And so how do I do that without losing the sense of who I really am? I really want to make wine. I love it. I absolutely love it.”

Jake sells his wine as an independent winemaker. Without a vineyard or a tasting room or a winery. He’s a winemaker with a need for a creative outlet. So he does it for other people. His career as a consultant began when Michael Shaps stepped in to help Pollak. Now they make wine for 16 area wineries. They also consult with wineries from everything from dirt to vineyard design. ...

Wine Work. In The Car. Dirt and Stuff With Jake.

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080 - Ian Glomski, Vitae Spirits

September is Virginia Spirits Month! Celebrate with all of your favorites. Preferably while listening to this episode.

Spirit Work. With Community Changes. Welcome to Episode 80 and the very first recorded after the events of August 12th. Meet Ian Glomski of Vitae Spirits, a former UVA professor of microbiology who decided to take his knowledge and apply it to the science of distilling. With fabulous results.

Edacious is about community, so we begin with how August 12th affected Charlottesville, including disturbing events that happened right next door the day after. The fact this happened in summer, the slowest season for business, didn't help. At all. What then? We talk about it, as well as the challenges faced by our community as all sorts of changes, good and bad, happen when the town you live in has its moment in the national spotlight. We're used to being named the Prettiest Little Town That Ever Existed. How do we handle this new label? How do we move forward consciously, with awareness and compassion? And how do we embrace revitalization when the very concept looks different depending on your perspective?

Ian's love of microbes began early, college in fact, when he discovered while he couldn't legally drink beer, he did have the ingredients to make it. A microbiology class improved his technique. A Ph.D. followed soon after. Eventually Ian became a professor at the UVA School of Medicine, but his passion for fermentation never waivered. Pair that with a family background in wine and a job which no longer fed him emotionally and you've got the perfect equation for a new life path. A boutique distillery focusing on making the best possible spirits money can buy.

"There's a certain level of scientist in me where I try to control variables as much as possible, but you can only control so many things and there's a certain amount of intuition that I've developed...in the three-plus decades that I've been doing fermentation."

Vitae Spirits was founded in 2015 and in only two years has made a name for itself, winning medals for its Modern Gin and Platinum Rum. Their tasting room is sleek, modern, yet insanely comfortable. A place right in town to tuck in and enjoy some tastings, maybe even a cocktail. Right next door to an awesome barbecue spot. But it's off the beaten path in the burgeoning neighborhood of Rose Hill. What are Ian and his team doing to get folks there? How are his mission and vision different from those of corporate distillers?

"This was in my business plan...we want to maintain authenticity as best as possible...my ideal way of growth is essentially word of mouth. That has to be promoted in a lot of different ways...I'll never be buying an NFL football spot even if I could afford it because...I want it to feel like a garage band situation where people recognize us as their own private, personal thing. That means we have to keep in touch with our customers."

One method is using story. When Ian pours you a tasting of Golden Rum, you are being served by the man who made it. When he travels to festivals and restaurants selling his wares you are looking in the eyes of the man who spent hours developing the nectar in your mojito. He oversees every step of the process from fermentation to bottling. That's huge. That use of story is elemental to good business growth. Incorporating a good logo by Convoy and beautiful bottle artwork by Lara Call Gastinger continues the story, sealing the deal.

“There’s a really long history of alcohol being associated as a medicine or with a medicine...the distillation process was discovered by Muslim alchemists...the alchemists were looking for an elixir of life...they put wine in an alembic still, a colorless liquid came out...they put a pear in it and the pear never rotted...they interpreted that as that liquid was infusing life force.”

The process of distilling rum, gin, and liqueurs is very different from creating bourbon or whisky. We discuss the ingredients as well as the process. Like those spirits, you have to jump through the same state and federal bureaucratic hoops. It's an incredibly long and challenging series of events. We talk about it, as well as some of the ways our Commonwealth is making it a bit easier which should result in a spirits boom similar to the ones we've seen with wine and beer.

"For our rums we use the highest grade molasses..it's more like an evaporated sugar cane juice...sometimes referred to as sugarcane honey...it's super sweet and flavorful in the positive s...

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082 - Sara Adduci, Cheesemonger at Feast!

"Cheese wins. Always." ---Sara Adduci, Feast!

Cheese Work. With Extra Cheese Please. Welcome to Episode 82 and my conversation with cheesemonger Sara Adduci of Feast! Sara worked front of house at various restaurants for 26 years. At a certain point she was moonlighting as a photographer. It was during a shoot for the wedding of a wine and cheese shop owner that her new career was born. She began working at Julia Battaglini's Secco Wine Bar in Richmond, spending all her earnings on cheese. It was an edacious romance with an extra aged gouda that set her on the path to learning everything there is to know about fermented milk.

How did she educate herself? Tasting! Taking notes afterward. Reading books. Sara just returned from a 6-week whirlwind cheese tour through Europe. An educational summer abroad began with a 2-week internship at L'Amuse Fromagerie in Amsterdam. She even spent time on an island of sheep! An island where Dutch folks bring livestock to graze and people and cars are forbidden. From there she traveled to Sicily, Spain, and France, including a visit to a comté producer. Sara got to see the caves where hundreds of wheels sit quietly aging, gathering the nutty, buttery flavors that good comté is known for. Sara got to hand-select a wheel to bring back to Feast!, the shop in Main Street Market where she plies her wares. They even carved her name into it. It's at the shop now. Go get you some before it sells out!

Her education shows. Sara has competed in The Cheesemonger Invitational multiple times, winning a bronze medal in 2016. What are some of the paces the judges put her through? We talk about it. At Feast! Sara is given carte blanche to order whatever cheese she thinks will sell, a balancing act of educating folks on new and strange cheeses but also catering to their tastes by including old favorites. There are some cheeses Sara loves that folks just don't like. Price is also a factor with some cheeses just being too expensive to offer on a regular basis.

"There are some things that are a little obscure, a little different, but that's part of the joy of being a cheesemonger is really being able to introduce people to things they aren't familiar with. Explaining where it came from, how it was made, who made it, why it's so good, what you can do with it. That really is for me the best part of doing what I do."

Cheesemaking is a 24-7 job just like farming. Folks who do it are not in it for the money but for the love of the craft.

"If you ever spend 24 hours on a working cheesemaking farm, you will understand completely why cheeses cost what they do. It's a job that never ends. They do it because they love it not because they're making a huge amount of money."

"I'd rather spend $5 on a small piece of cheese made by people that you know about and you know how they raised their animals and you know how they make their cheese and you know how much they care about it as opposed to a $5 huge piece of cheese from a supermarket that's made in a commercial factory with milk that's pooled from who knows where?"

Exactly. One of the goals of Sara's summer abroad was to learn how smaller producers can stay successful, creating artisanal products without the danger of going out of business. Is it community support? Agritourism? What is the magic formula for success in cheese? How do all the components come together so you can create cheese the right way? Every single time? The culture of cheese is different in Europe as well. People eat more of it for one thing. It's rare to sit down at a meal where you don't find a little bit of cheese to nibble. How do we translate that culture to American tastes?

Caring for good cheese is vital as well because it can easily pick up flavors in your fridge. Make sure you slice off a tiny piece of the outside before serving so you have a "clean face". Wrap it in parchment, not plastic. Cheese needs to breathe. It's also important to serve it at the right temperature. Luckily, a good cheesemonger like Sara can walk you through everything and it never has to be an intimidating experience. Just talk to her! Tell her about your event even if the event is Tuesday Night. Tell her what you like to eat and she can direct you to a new favorite or a better version of an old one.

Are there cheesemongers who are lactose intolerant? What cheeses are best for those suffering from this condition? What cheese can you throw into the rice cooker to infuse it with flavor? How do you ship a giant wheel of cheese from Europe anyway? How do American cheesemakers dance through the many regulations placed on cheese production? What are the Cheesemonger Feats of Strength? Listen to find out!

I've followed Sara's photography on Instagram for years. First met her