New Virginia Wine Collective to give entrepreneurs their first taste of the industry
Athena Eastwood knows all too well how difficult it is to get a winery off the ground.
When the commodities lawyer-turned-vineyard owner was first trying to plant her roots in Central Virginia’s wine country nearly a decade ago, alongside her two daughters and partner, she knew those roots would grow only an inch at a time.
“That’s a really big undertaking, and it’s pretty scary, actually,” Eastwood told The Daily Progress. “From the very beginning, we were like, ‘Gosh, I wish there was some kind of a co-op or something where we could be doing this together with other people and sharing that brain trust.’”
Today, Eastwood Farm and Winery, a few miles south of Charlottesville, has bloomed into a prosperous enterprise with more than 20 acres under vine producing award-winning merlot, petit verdot and cabernet franc. These wines and others secured the winery six medals in this year’s Governor’s Cup Competition, Virginia’s top contest for winemakers.
Eastwood’s owners aren’t resting on their laurels, however. Instead, they’re seeking to lower the barriers they once climbed for those trying to break into the industry just like they once did. This spring, they will open the Virginia Wine Collective.
A collaborative space with individual studios and shareable production equipment, the collective will allow aspiring vintners, small vineyard owners and oenophiles a chance to get their start in winemaking without assuming the “really capital-intensive” burdens.
“It’s designed to take some of the financial and logistical burden off small and aspiring winemakers by providing shared access to equipment — things like presses, harvest equipment, tanks and bottling lines — that would otherwise require a huge upfront investment,” Tracey Love, who handles sales, events and marketing for Eastwood’s neighbor, the Dave Matthews-owned Blenheim Vineyards, told The Daily Progress. “Instead of having to buy everything on their own, winemakers will be able to use shared equipment without breaking the bank.”
Eastwood is taking over the warehouse on Avon Street Extended that has served as a tasting room and bottling and storage center for Michael Shaps Wineworks since 2007. Shaps, a prominent Virginia winemaker, is consolidating his operations at his tasting room farther south, the former home of the shuttered Thatch Winery he purchased in 2022.
After moving into the warehouse on March 1, the Eastwood team plans to dedicate a few months to renovating the building’s roughly 16,000 square feet to build nine work areas for entrepreneurs to hang their winemaking licenses and experiment. Eastwood also plans to relocate its own production center to the warehouse.
Because of strict regulations set by the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority, alcohol licenses are directly tied to a certain amount of physical real estate that cannot be shared between producers. To be in compliance with the law, Eastwood said they will install nine different doorways along the warehouse’s back wall for each of the collective’s winemakers.
“I swear, we’re going have to have stickers made or something, it’s just a row of doors,” joked Eastwood.
Another important feature, and one of the more avant garde ones, of the facility is its tasting room, where customers will have the opportunity to come and sample any of the wines made by the collective’s participants.
“That’s going to be a real novelty, because usually, if you go to a winery, that’s it. You have one choice: that winery’s stuff,” said Eastwood. “This will be really an urban feel, being able to come in and say, ‘I’m going to do a flight of these four different winemakers’ wines.’ It’s cool for the winemakers, because none of them have a retail space, and that’s such a big part of selling wine.”
The tasting room, which is tentatively set to open in late spring, will be particularly valuable for those fledgling, or even veteran, winemakers who do not have a place to otherwise display or sell their wines.
This is true for Erin Robertson, who runs Dogwood & Thistle Wine Company with her husband Sandy. While the couple both have decades of experience working in top wine countries, including California’s Napa and Sonoma valleys, it was only a few years ago that they decided to start making and selling wine under their own brand “as a creative outlet.”
The company partners with small, family-owned vineyards for grapes and custom crush facilities to produce about 200 to 300 cases of wine annually, so they don’t have a place — or tasting room — to call their own. Robertson told The Daily Progress that while Dogwood & Thistle distributes to customers across the commonwealth, they haven’t had an address to direct people to when asked the question, “Can we come visit you?”
“When you’re small like us, you can’t afford equipment or need your own space,” said Robertson. “It’s going to be really exciting way for consumers to see experimentation and discover small producers. When people start planning their wine visits, they want to visit some place that’s new and something to discover that’s cool. This really provides an opportunity for that in an unique way.”
Robertson said she’s particularly excited that the collective will give entrepreneurs the opportunity to experiment, to take the risks typically only larger producers can take.
“When people are coming from within or outside the industry with fresh ideas and able to experiment with them with relatively low stakes, that experimentation will ultimately drive the industry forward,” she said. “More people will learn and learn what’s working here and what’s possible here.”
The first winemakers set to to join the collective includes a blend of seasoned vintners and industry newcomers: the Robertsons; research enologist for the Winemakers Research Exchange and 2023 “Wine Person of the Year” Joy Ting; Julie Linker, a psychologist who founded a 5-acre vineyard in Nelson County in 2022; and Tasha Durrett, a longtime wine enthusiast and founder of Black Women Who Wine LLC.
Durrett is a prime example of someone who’s able to translate their passion for wine tasting to winemaking thanks to the collective, said Eastwood. While she doesn’t own a vineyard, she plans to work alongside Ting on a sparkling red wine.
“She’s going to take it one step at a time,” said Eastwood. “Right now she’s working on her label and her business plan and that’s the true incubator piece of the business; there’s people of all different stages of their businesses.”
Jake Busching, who serves as the head winemaker for Eastwood, will also be producing his own brand of Jake Busching Wines out of the new collective space as well as mentoring some of the less-established members. A handful of other notable winemakers in the region have expressed interest in being part of a formal mentorship program at the collective, according to Eastwood.
“We’re so excited,” said Eastwood. “We’ve been working on it for, well, pretty much since we opened Eastwood. This was always part of what we wanted to do.”
Only a 10 minute drive from downtown Charlottesville, the collective will also serve as a place for locals and tourists to taste Central Virginia’s unique terroir.
Will Curley, the owner of the Wine Guild of Charlottesville, told The Daily Progress the collective will give visitors “a snapshot of what we’re doing in this area from a number of different viewpoints.”
It will give customers a chance to explore a variety of local wines in one location, closer to Charlottesville than any other vineyard or winery.
“Putting this in the city — there are populations and groups that haven’t had wine brought to them in a manner that’s understandable and enjoyable,” said Curley.
“Virginia does a good job of making wine accessible and the more stuff in the city of Charlottesville the better,” he added. “Point-blank and period.”
Emily Hemphill (540) 855-0362
@EmilyHemphill06 on X
