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Pearmund Cellars
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Interviews and photographs by John T. Edge and Amy Evans Streeter.
Funding for this project was provided, in part, by North Carolina Tourism.
Pearmund Cellars
6190 Georgetown Road
Broad Run, VA 20137
(540) 347-3475
www.pearmundcellars.com
We’ve gone out of our infancy into adolescence. I think there’s been about three or four generations of wine produced in Virginia. The first generation being a lot of hybrid groups, a few vinifera, trying to understand how to grow the grape, and trying to understand how to make the wine. – Chris Pearmund
Chris Pearmund is a Renaissance man. He has enjoyed careers in the military, in marine biology, and in sporting goods. But it was working in restaurants that lighted his passion for wine. And it was after a stint as a restaurateur in Washington, DC, that he changed paths once again and decided to become a winemaker. That was 1990. In 1991 Chris started a mobile bottling line business. In 1993 he purchased Meriwether Vineyards and created Pearmund Cellars. In 1994 he was offering his services as a consultant, working with forty wineries in ten states. Fifteen years later, Chris is still consulting, and he’s still opening wineries. In 2006 he opened the Winery at La Grange, the only established winery in Prince William County. But his namesake winery is his pride and joy. Pearmund Cellars produces wines made from European varietals in a contemporary, geothermal winery situated in the hills of Fauquier County. As busy as he is, Chris is also passionately committed to Virginia’s wine industry as a whole and works hard to foster a sense of collaboration among area wineries.
What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
Subject: Chris Pearmund, owner
Date: June 17, 2008
Location: Pearmund Cellars – Broad Run, VA
Interviewer & Photographer: Amy C. Evans
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Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans on Tuesday, June 17, 2008, in Broad Run, Virginia, at Pearmund Cellars, and I’m with Mr. Chris Pearmund. And Chris, if you would please state your name and what you do for a living for the record?
Chris Pearmund: I’m Chris Pearmund, and I call myself a wine grower. I think that kind of encompasses the concept of growing grapes, making wine, and all the other attributes in running small businesses in the wine industry.
And may I also ask you to share your birth date for the record, if you don’t mind?
August 2, 1961.
Now are you a native of Virginia?
No, I was born in London, England, actually. I’m a dual-national of British and American. I find myself politically aligned as an American more than a Brit, though.
And what year did you or your family come to Virginia?
I came here as a kid about four or five—about five years old, I guess, and spent most of my childhood in the United States. As a young adult, I spent three years in England off and on—between six months and a year at a time. Actually, I came back from England three or four days ago. I go back quite often. I have four brothers and a father and grandmother still working and living in England and see them often and keep that part of my life open.
So may I ask what your college career was like and what you studied and where that was?
Disjointed. I did spend time in the US Air Force doing Microwave Radio. I went to a few colleges, never graduated—community colleges and in Virginia, Randolph Macon. I studied Psychology, Business and Marine Biology. In my first love of life I also did a lot of work in restaurants. I had worked in the restaurant industry from the age of thirteen or fourteen taking restaurant classes in California. I lived in California for a number of years, going through elementary to junior high school and much of high school. And the restaurant industry was good, and my training was appreciated. I got into Marine Biology for a number of years, as well, before coming to the wine industry.
And how did you take that turn into the wine industry?
Well, I call myself a restaurant refugee. The appreciation I have and love of food and wine, cooking in school, and, professionally, as a teenager I really loved—and worked in London, in California, and in Northern Virginia in restaurants, mostly in the kitchen—really liked it. As I became a chef and then became manager of restaurants, I always lent towards finer restaurants that had good food but also had good wine. And I really loved a lot about wine through the 1980s, working in restaurants and decided to own my own restaurant and be a chef in Washington, DC. I studied a lot about wine and thought that the best thing for me to do to make myself more marketable, more independent, was to become a winemaker. So in the late ‘80s, I really focused a lot on winemaking and wine knowledge and became a winemaker in 1990 for a local Virginia winery, thinking that if I worked here for two years, I would be able then to go back to DC and have a hat as a professional winemaker and a chef and a restaurant manager. That was something that no one else had at the time, and I would use that as a good steppingstone.
After becoming a winemaker in 1990, I really loved it. First, you had evenings off, which were pretty cool, but the whole concept of agriculture and, like, cooking where you work from raw ingredients, working forward. You do have a lot of control in the vineyard and in the cellar as you do in the kitchen, from sourcing your products to cooking them. And in a kitchen you buy a chicken on Tuesday, cook it on Wednesday, and do it again on Thursday, and by the weekend you have it right. And that can get boring and can get repetitious. In the wine industry, you’re harvesting grapes once per year; you’re making wine once per year. So to change the philosophy, change the direction or a deal takes several years to do and there’s a lot of intricacies in winemaking and grape growing as there is in cooking, but they just work at a much slower and much more intellectual scale. So your margin for error is greatly diminished. Your ability to focus and not make mistakes and plan is increased. Restaurants rarely think one month further out than today. Wineries need to think two or three years out from today, so the ability to keep my unstable mind active was, I think—it really suits the wine industry.
How did you get in on the ground level and make those strides so soon?
[In] the late ‘80s, I went to all the different wineries in Virginia—in 1985 and ’86 and ’87—and visited every winery and made my notes, and one of the local wineries I liked a lot. I thought they made the best wine [Naked Mountain]. And I offered to work there, and they said, “Sure, you can work here on the weekends.” A six-bucks-an-hour kind of job in the tasting room, and I worked with them for a while and asked a lot of questions and shared my knowledge, and I guess I did well. And I said, “I really want to work here full time. I don’t need any decision making power, but I do want the ability to do everything. So you tell me what button to push when, and you tell me what hose to drag where, and I’ll do it for a badge of having done it and understanding it better.” I said, “I’ll give you a two-year commitment. I don’t care how much money I make.” I had sold a previous business [a chain of sporting goods stores] and didn’t have any major financial concerns. And they said, “Fine.” And I worked there for six months, and they actually then gave me a very good job and with good responsibility and good pay. And I was going to maintain my two-year ability.
In 1991, we started a business as a mobile bottling line so—bottling equipment is very specialized, very expensive and in the larger wine areas of the world, Australia and California, there are tractor-trailers that have expensive custom-made bottling equipment that will bottle wineries’ wines. We started the first one on the East Coast in 1991, and I ran that from ’91 to ’96. In 1993, I purchased the vineyard that we’re sitting in here. In 1994, I was working for forty wineries in ten states. In 1995, I was voted President of the Virginia Vineyards Association, and it just kind of got out of control from there.
It was because, I think, I had a lot of passion and drive for the industry but more importantly, it was just the timing. It was a new industry with few wineries making some good wine, a lot of wineries really not knowing the product, the world, the industry, and I came from the foodie side, and I had good retail experience in the wine industry, too. That was just good timing…And, to date, I’ve helped open eleven wineries, and number twelve we’re breaking ground on soon.
I’ve read recently, too, that you are an advocate for Virginia wine, of course, but also you really promote this collaboration between wineries and that Virginia as a wine-growing area and wine-producing area cannot thrive and gain recognition that it deserves without this cooperation.
Absolutely. Of all the wine sold in Virginia, four-percent is Virginia wine. That’s basically one out of every twenty-five bottles purchased in Virginia is a Virginia wine product, so we feel, we feel, as an industry this four-percent is an individual entity, and we’re kind of competing against the rest of the wine world, the vast majority from California, a lot of imported wines and other places as well. So if we can communicate well to share our knowledge to reduce problems, to learn from other people’s mistakes, to cooperatively share equipment where possible, to cooperatively use our purchasing power as a single entity, whether we’re sharing barrels or corks or equipment, the label gentleman, as you saw today, I’ve gotten him a dozen accounts, and now he is a Virginia wine guy, making sure that Virginia wineries are treated well. Our cork suppliers, we use the same cork supplier that has a large selection, so we don’t always use the same cork, but by using the same supplier, we get the same price as Kendall Jackson. We get the best price out there. With our barrels, we cooperatively purchase barrels from a consortium of barrel producers to where we get better prices and better freight and ship direct from France, so our barrel prices are less expensive than California wineries paying, who buy a lot more barrels because of how we’re organized…So I think part of this working together is a really good way to help reduce any negativity in our industry. And—and I think that’s invaluable…
…In Virginia, presently, there’s about 150 wineries. And twenty years ago, fifteen years ago, Virginia wine was Virginia wine. And it was all under one umbrella. About six or seven years ago—or less than that, maybe five years ago—we had a breakaway of regional wine trails. Think of it this way. California’s California wine was that thirty years ago. Now it’s not California wine; it’s Napa Valley, it’s Sonoma, it’s Monterey, it’s Central Coast, it’s Amador County, so you have the regions that have picked up a lot of the market strength and individuality. So Virginia is kind of taking the same hit.
We have regional identity under the larger umbrella of Virginia wines, and they all have kind of evolved a little bit differently. Excuse me. In Charlottesville for example, the two main people or three main people down there—Chris Hill, who has been growing grapes for forever; Michael Schapps is a winemaker and—and Brad McCarthy and a few other people down there have been involved with many wineries and have kind of shared their ideals of growing grapes, making wine, marketing wine, and what varieties to grow. In northern Virginia, I’ve been one of the leaders up here to help kind of design that so there’s a—if you were to distill—maybe that’s the wrong word—blend some of the wineries we’ve been involved with in northern Virginia, versus the wineries in central Virginia, you’ll see a difference in winemaking style. And I—I think that’s really cool to have a regional identity—and even within that regional identity of Virginia, to have some sub-regional identities.
On a larger scale, if you compared Virginia to California and France geographically, it’s 3,000 miles either way. But I think wine-style-wise, we’re in the center, as well. We’re not the big California over-oaked, over-extracted, high alcohol fruit balms, which California is sometimes known for, nor are we the French wines that sometimes French is known for—the higher acid, thinner, lower alcohol, non-oaked or lightly oaked wines. I think Virginia, stylistically, is very much in the middle between the two broad-brushed strokes of what California and France represent, so we’re politically aligned there, or I think socially, in many ways. I think wine-growing and grape—wine—and our wine product is—is aligned there, too, in the center between these two states. Which is kind of fun. It took Virginia a long time to come up with a concept of how to have Virginia wines as a regionally identified product. If you took all of the Cabernet Francs in California to one pot and all the Virginia Cabernet Francs into one pot and all the French into one and tasted them, you would see a lot of synergistic regional identities there, and I think that’s really important. And I think growing that forward to how Virginia grows grapes, how Virginia makes wines, is important to maintain and develop further this regional identity for respect.
There are some great California wines at five and eight bucks a bottle. There’s some great California wines at fifty, eighty, 100 bucks a bottle. As in France, some great inexpensive and great very expensive wines; Virginia has not been able to compete in that marketplace. But when you compare Virginia’s wines at twenty-five—at fifteen to twenty-five dollars per bottle of the same varietal, to other grape growers of the area—of the—of the world, I think we compete head-to-head. And that’s, right now, where our market is and where our respect has been gained in the international marketplace.
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You were talking about varietals and I wonder…if that’s been a challenge to educate the public and consumer in what you’re making here? Not only is it just a Virginia wine that you want them to be recognized for, but that you’re producing these varietals that maybe some people haven't been as educated about.
Great question. Let me answer it a couple different ways. One, Robert Mondovi recently died, a wonderful—great man in our industry—really brought Sauvignon Blanc to the forefront in the ‘70s from California. It was not a well-respected grape, and it certainly has gained a lot of respect the last couple of decades. Many consumers are looking for more knowledge in what they eat, what they drink, where they spend their pastime, and where they find their intricacies of quality. If you’re into art, into cars, into food, you want that knowledge, and wine knowledge in this country has expanded dramatically the last thirty years. And I could write a dissertation on that. The knowledge and desire, the thirst, if you will, [Laughs] of having people want to know more about grape varieties and want to know more than just a cheeseburger or pizza and how to cook a different pork loin fifteen different ways, I think ties into the wine as a consumerism hobby, if you will. So people are hungry for different ideas; people are hungry for sharing their knowledge.
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I wonder what your experience and your knowledge from Meriwether [Vineyards], where you, you know, came before, and they started in ’76—did they think they were jumping off a cliff, or they were visionaries or what did they think the future of Virginia wine was twenty years ago?
Well back then, I guess, to be funny, European wines were quality. California was not well respected and had just started gaining respect for the first time. I think people were drinking French wines and thinking they could do this in Virginia. The Farm Wineries Act basically allowed—legally—wine to be produced for the first time since 1920, when Prohibition started and laws allowed—it was a whole set of laws that allowed this to happen.
The people doing it were normally larger farm owners, landowners, had cows and had corn or had tobacco or whatever they had and would put some acreage into growing grapes and dedicate part of a barn to making wine as a professional hobby, if you will, to see if it would work. And it took years—six or seven years to get to the first six wineries that made at best tolerable wine.
From those infant days, we’ve gone out of our infancy into adolescence. I think there’s been about three or four generations of wine produced in Virginia. The first generation being a lot of hybrid groups, a few vinifera, trying to understand how to grow the grape, and trying to understand how to make the wine. If the grapes were picked too early, they were just not—not very decent. As the right grape variety on the right spot was chosen, as good wine—better winemaking practices were incorporated, as investment into equipment was made, as professionally trained and experienced winemakers came to Virginia, we came into the next generation of wine that was making some good quality wines. As the next generation passed, that, I think, were the people I think like Dennis Horton [of Horton Vineyards], who really stretched the envelope, as to what great varieties could be grown with a lot of grapes from France and Spain and Portugal—of varietals that are not known to the American public, but are known to the wine world as producing great wines, and then has evolved, more specifically, to how can you make the best wine from that grape with technology?
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Well tell me, if you would, the grapes that you grow and the wines that you make, if that’s not asking too much.
No, that’s fine. Pearmund Cellars is based on the Bordeaux varietal of reds. The five classics, which are Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot, and Malbec. Our whites are the traditional European whites of Chardonnay, Riesling, Viognier, or, I guess, Nouveau Modern Viognier, and we do a late-harvest wine, as well, which has traditionally been Vidal or—Viognier for us.
Our wines here are kind of a hybrid between Old World and New World. Like California, we kind of push higher PH levels, higher alcohol levels, but like France, we’re trying to show as much terroir as possible and trying to really respect the Bordeaux and Bordelaise winemaking techniques and flavor components with an aged wine. So when you get a five-year-old wine, you’re really looking for a lot of those, you know, not just fruit-driven but a lot of the barnyard characteristics and a lot of what a good Bordeaux is about is our goal there.
Other wineries we’re affiliated with, really, we’re trying to develop a benchmark style to go for. With the Winery at La Grange, developing more European flavor profiles, not pushing alcohol limits, more Old World varietals, a lot of Liberian-type of varietals, the Spanish and Portuguese things. Barrel Oak Winery has a lot of leanness in its whites, kind of like Loire Valley wines and California, not pushing big alcohol, intentionally going to lower alcohol wines, so we can stylistically kind of tweak around. I guess an analogy would be if you were to help with several different restaurants and every restaurant is not a McDonald’s and not cookie-cutter; they’re all individualistic—that were going to develop menus and profiles and flavor components that are consistent in class but individualistic to the winery.
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Do you think that part of where Virginia is right now in the wine industry and people like you bringing such innovation to the craft of winemaking but also being a Virginia winemaker on the national and international scene, do you think that that has helped Virginia in a way? That it is a latecomer on the scene?
Oh, very much so. Technology and spray material and laws, you know, allowed Virginia wines to develop and now flourish. And I travel a great deal and go into South Africa or New Zealand or California, France, and Spain—people know about Virginia wine. It’s really cool. I went to Portugal and met with David Fonseca Guimaraens and introduced myself. He said, “Great, did you bring any Tinta Cao or Touriga Nacional for me? I know Dennis Horton is growing some, you know. I really want to try his wines.” Or you know going to other wineries where people know. They’re reading about Virginia, and it’s really cool, and it does help. Our industry, no matter where you go, is very encompassing. If you’re in the wine industry and go to just about any other winery, they’re going to spoil you and want to spend time with you, pick your brain, you pick their brain. It’s a very family camaraderie thing. It’s very few industries share this love and passion for the product that supersedes any perception of competition. If any winery owner comes here, and we’ve had many visit, or I go to any other winery, and I’ve visited many, and you have any particular question on—from a yeast you use or how you do this or how you do that or what’s your philosophy, how did you learn to do this, how can I take something back that you’ve done, and I’m going to cut to the chase and not duplicate mistakes and I need you to help me—they’re fine, you know. People are very happy to share, and I think people are very happy to share, in general, in the industry and as consumers, to have a wider breadth of selection of regional products.
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You were talking earlier when you first started working at [Naked Mountain] you were just learning about the industry and you said that the timing was right, that it was kind of a perfect storm of being in the right place, the right time, right people, right everything. And that’s what I’m hearing you say about Virginia. And if we take the long view back to Virginia history and there being vines in Jamestown in 1607 and 400 years, really, in the long view of Virginia's history with wine and Thomas Jefferson and wine and this very rich history but, again, Virginia being a latecomer on the international scene and how you kind of reconcile that as a winemaker or how you use that history to bolster marketing or your building the image of Virginia and wine. Does that figure into what you do also?
A little bit. And you’re right, Virginia has now a 400-year history or coming up on a 400-year history of winemaking, even though most of it wasn’t very good. Jamestown failed as winemaking; Jefferson failed as a winemaker. And the late 1800s, there were many wineries in Virginia, and some of them did produce actually very good wines and got recognition at international world fairs, and the Norton Grape did very well in Virginia and some other wineries have done well 100 years ago. But for the most part, all this is modern news of Virginia’s success, I think, and our best success has certainly been the most recent.
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So what would you say is the future of Virginia wine?
We’ve maintained about four-percent market share in the last ten years—even though the number of wineries have doubled, acreage has nearly doubled. But also, the consumption rate of Virginians has doubled. My long-term goal is to maintain this four-percent and grow it to five or six percent. I don’t think we’re ever going to be eight or ten percent. Our agriculture doesn’t allow it. Our weather conditions—it’s expensive to grow. We don’t have the ability of large-scale production of vineyards, not like the rest of the world can produce. But I think to maintain in the higher tier of wines of modern dollar—fifteen to twenty-five, thirty dollar bottle of wine, not the cheap and cheerfuls and not the most expensive—to gain respect and to have more wineries pay more attention to what they’re doing, to have them spend their extra ten cents, twenty cents, thirty cents a bottle of production, to really pay attention to the quality standards and to not have Virginia wineries put out an inferior quality product. The top twenty percent of Virginia wineries are putting out a phenomenal wine and there’s many out there, and I’m so proud to be a part of it. To have the bottom fifty percent of Virginia wineries that are hobbyists, not focused, making mistakes has really been—is continuing to do a disservice to our potential as an industry. And bringing up the floor is probably the most important thing for our industry. The leaders are going to lead. It’s everybody else right now that’s not helping our industry reach its potential. I’m trying to say that as politically correctly as possible because a lot of these people are my friends. [Laughs]
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Is there a final thought you’d like to add or something that we didn’t touch on that you want to make sure to offer to the record here?
No, I appreciate the conversation and interest, and we’re out here having fun and fighting hard, and I think you can do both at the same time. You know, a lot of people say I work too many hours in a day. My argument is, there’s not enough hours in a day to do what I love. It’s the compliance and paperwork that kill me, and that’s where the work is. And also, I’ve been very fortunate to have good staff. We’ve got really good people here working with us and people have come and people have gone as employees and friends and all, but this industry in Virginia, this industry in general—the wine industry is about friendship. It’s about good food, good wine. It’s about passion and appreciation of nuances and always with respect, I think, and that’s fundamental.
To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
