Page 54 - The Hunt - Fall 2021

After years of working as a writer in the film industry, the University of Delaware grad and his wife, Karen (now a teacher), opened Va La Vineyards on the family farm, with
the first wines coming from the 2001
and 2000 vintages. About the same time
the winery was opened, the Vietris had
a daughter, Sofia, now a student at Elon University in North Carolina.
During those almost 20 years, Va La has gained a strong following of fans, including restaurant owners and sommeliers at some of the Philadelphia regions’s best dining spots. They’re eager to purchase his cases of red, white and rosato blends. Vietri makes
His meeting over, Vietri goes back outside and opens another door, puts on a tool belt and knee pads, and sharpens his pruning shears. By 7:15 a.m., he’s ready to begin a new row of pruning. In the adjacent row he’d worked the previous day, there are small piles of vine clippings that will eventually be removed. “The first thing I look for is praying mantis nests, which I take off and then put back out in the spring,” he says.
In addition to that beneficial insect, he also looks for an unwelcome one—the spotted lanternfly, a recent arrival from China that has quickly spread from Berks County, where it was first noticed a few years ago attacking a variety
Although Vietri seldom strays from Avondale and what he calls “the little vineyard,” he has vast professional contacts around the world.
less than a thousand cases annually from almost seven acres of severely cropped
vines. Philadelphia Inquirer critic Craig LaBan calls Vietri’s wines “some of the most unconventional and refined bottles of East Coast vino that I’ve tasted.” According to cookbook author and former Saveur editor Colman Andrews, “Anthony Vietri is one of the more original winemakers in America.”
Unlike many of the lush, fruit-forward wines of California, Vietri’s are more in
the Italian or French style, with elegant, intense, restrained fruitiness, a disciplined textural structure, and a long, crisp finish with sufficient but not overwhelming acidity. They’re the kind of wines that, for centuries, have been made to take to the dinner table.
Alberto Acuña, Vietri’s assistant of several years, comes into the winery a few minutes after Vietri, and the two go over the day’s plan. Acuña will work on pruning the more forgiving pinot grigio vines, while Vietri
will focus on the pride of the winery—the truculent yet rewarding nebbiolo. “They’re in their 23rd leaf (years of growth),” Vietri says. “These old guys take longer to prune, so I have to give them four minutes a vine.”
If it seems like Vietri is being fastidious with his minutes, he is. “I have a goal date of when
I first have to weed the vine rows in the spring so I don’t have to use a herbicide,” he says.
of regional crops. Those nests are destroyed. Vietri addresses the first vine. “I’m looking
for two canes—one to tie down on the
wire and the other to grow straight up,” he explains, glancing at the dormant branches. “An early frost would kill the one closer to the ground, but probably not the one growing straight up. That one is my insurance policy.”
Vietri is through in under four minutes, and the 23-year-old vine looks like it’s just received a winter shave and a haircut.
I
52 THE HUNT MAGAZINE fall 2021
n some ways, being a winemaker is not that dissimilar from being a football coach. After
the season is over, each first assesses what went wrong the previous year. For a winemaker, it’s frost, diseases, and predators large and small. During a pause in October 2020’s harvest,
I joined Vietri as he cataloged an array of problems that resulted in too few grapes for that vintage. Regardless, a locally assembled picking crew would be coming through later that October morning to find what they could.
Like other businesses in 2020, Vietri had to cut back the hours guests could enjoy wine on Va La’s back patio and lawn at widely separated tables. The tasting room closed when the pandemic hit in March. “The birds this year have just been ravenous,” noted Vietri as he walked through the rows of vines, some with only a few grapes left per bunch.
In some ways, being a winemaker is not that dissimilar from being
a football coach. After the season is over,
each first assesses what went wrong the previous year. For a winemaker, it’s frost, diseases, and predators large and small.
A pause in the process for a taste test.