Dennis Horton with a bottle of Norton wine.
Grapes on the vine at Chrysalis Vineyard.
ennis Horton, owner of Horton Vineyards in Gordonsville, chuckles dismissively and says “no” when asked if he was originally drawn to the Norton grape because of the distinctive marketing opportunity created by the rhyme of winery and wine.
“Can I get some of that Horton Norton, please?”
He insists that it had more to do with the fact that the grape “makes a nice bottle of red wine,” it’s easy to grow, and it’s a Virginia native.
“A lot of people think I named it, but I had nothing to do with it,” he says.
Nearly 20 years ago, however, he did reintroduce Norton to the Old Dominion after a seven-decade absence. And it’s fitting that an avowed tinkerer like Horton—by last count, his pioneering operation is selling wines crafted from more than 20 different varietals—was the man to do it. After all, it was an experimental horticulturist, Richmond’s own Daniel Norborne Norton, who discovered the grape in the 1820s.
Norton is often referred to as “Virginia’s grape” or even “America’s grape.” And its story reads like a redemptive screenplay, of which the final act is only now being written.
For the first act, we rewind to the antebellum period. Daniel Norton was born in Williamsburg in 1794 and resided in Richmond. After his wife died young in 1821, he threw himself into his scientific work. In a letter unearthed by Rebecca and Clifford Ambers for the American Wine Society Journal, he told an associate that his goal for his “little farm” was to produce “grapes that will compare with those of France or Italy.”
His success was nearly immediate. By 1830, William Prince, owner of the ground-breaking Linnean Botanic Garden in Flushing, New York, was referring in print to “Norton’s Virginia Seedling.”
Prince’s opinion of the grape’s parentage, however, has been disputed ever since he published it. Norton left no definitive record revealing which two plants may have been hybridized to produce Norton (if he even knew himself ), and oenologists still debate the question today. What isn’t much disputed is that the Norton grape is a member of the native species vitis aestivalis, as opposed to Europe’s vitis vinifera, the species that includes cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, and the other familiar grapes.
Apart from being one of the only grapes native to America that produces a palatable wine, Norton also discovered a remarkable botanical specimen. “It’s probably the most forgiving grape in the vineyard,” said Horton. “If I planted my chardonnay where I have my Norton, I’d never have any chardonnay. It’s in kind of a cool spot.” (He and other state growers have actually ripped up chardonnay vines to plant Norton.)
Noting that he only sprays it three times per year, as compared to 16 times for some other grapes, he enthuses that it’s “as close to absolutely organic as you can get.”
The grape will accept rainfall at harvest time without adverse effect, resists rot, and stands up to frost and drought alike. Growers all say they can leave it on the vine late in the year and pick it after they’ve taken care of more finicky grapes.
Scott Elliff has been growing two-plus acres of Norton for six years on his DuCard Vineyards in Madison. He sells much of the fruit to Rappahannock Cellars, and has just begun a boutique bottling under his own DuCard label.
“I’ve been delighted with it, with how well it grows,” he said.
“I consider it to be the lowest-risk variety. Even if it didn’t make as good a wine, it deserves a place in a diversified vineyard.”
So what kind of a wine does it make? A big one, for starters. The mammoth mouth feel and hugely extracted fruit of Norton rivals that of the biggest California cabernets or zinfandels. Its nose shows earth and spice in abundance.
On the palette, Norton is perfectly distinct. Even 5 percent blended into another varietal will show up on the palate. It shows huge black fruit flavors and high acid that stands up to the richest, fattiest meals. Yes, there can be a hint of grapey-ness not evident in the Old World varietals, but surprisingly to some who have been scared off by native American varietals like Concord, Norton exhibits none of the “foxy” character that mars those grapes. (Foxy is a wine snob’s term for an unpleasant aroma of jammy sweetness and a pronounced animal-fur quality.)
With age in the bottle, Nortons tend to turn from plummy black to red in color. They lose some of their pronounced fruit, yielding to an aged Bordeaux character.
Not that the grape isn’t without its demands. It needs a lot of sunlight in the fruit zone, something normally solved by double trellising the vines. Its high acid levels also present some challenges in fermentation and barrel aging.
Jennifer McCloud, proprietor of Chrysalis Vineyards in Middleburg, notes that it “takes longer to get started with the grape; when you take cuttings, it doesn’t develop” as well as other varietals. And it takes that much longer for new vines to produce bottle-quality fruit.
This, McCloud speculates, may be one reason why growers were slow to return to Norton after Prohibition. Most experts agree that shortly after 1916 (which is when the Commonwealth outlawed alcohol, four years before the 18th Amendment, with some towns and cities going dry as much as 10 years earlier) the grape died in Virginia. It may have died altogether had it not been for some enterprising Missourians in the previous century.
