With celebrity winemakers running rampant in today’s vineyards, its high time someone asked-what would Bacchus do?

From Grateful Dead Red to Elvis Presley’s Blue Suede Chardonnay, an outcropping of golfers, musicians, actors, and one hit wonders now offer some form of celebrity-branded vino.

Here in Virginia we’re in luck, as the Old Dominion State emerges as the fifth largest wine producer, one celebrity standout is offering quality booze without much ballyhoo. Enter C-ville’s famed boogie rocker, Dave Matthews-the Grammy winning-musician with not only a bionic eyebrow, but a heck of a good wine palette.
 
As one of Forbe’s “Top Ten Music Money-Makers,“ Matthews slapped a few of his greens down for 1,260-acres of picturesque farmland just outside of Charlottesville. A Farm Aid standout, Matthews is known for his keen taste for organic growing standards and has made no bones about mass farming poisoning the land. Along with cultivating an organic 30-acre market garden, Matthews hatched Blenheim Vineyards on four tiny acres now overflowing with vinifera vines.

Enlisting the help of one time bar buddy Brad McCarthy, Blenheim’s managing partner and winemaker, Matthews has created a state-of-the-art winery designed by artisanal builders. With McCarthy performing the real magic, Blenheim Vineyards now offers a “Star Label” Chardonnay, Blenheim Farm Chardonnay, Viognier, King Family Merlot, and “Star Label” Cabernet Franc.

“The thing about what they’re doing is that it’s really all about the earth,“ says Christine Iezzi, of The Country Vintner, Blenheim’s wholesale distributor. “They know what works for the land.“

As a native Virginian, McCarthy is driven by the State’s unique viticultural climates, and though young he has quickly become known in wine circles for painstaking attention to the ecological conditions of the vineyard. Fueling McCarthy’s eye for detail, Matthews has supplied the cash and passion to erect a winery building that is designed to have minimal impact on their wine during production. Using gravity to transport the grapes from the bins to the press (and to move the juice from the press to the tanks); the impressive facility limits the use of pumps in the winemaking process all together.
“A lot of famous people are now making wine, and you’ll find a lot of people scoffing at it,“ says Henry Reidy, of Richmond’s Strawberry Street Vineyard in the Fan. “Yet that’s exactly what you want-chances are celebrities are going to make some pretty good wine. A winemaker is looking at a long term commitment before he ever sees a dime…it’s not a poor man’s game.“
 
Over in Carytown, Peter Neff, wine buyer for River City Cellars, agrees and says that public demand speaks for itself. “A lot of people are asking for Blenheim,“ he confirms, explaining that his digs can special order a bottle at the ready.
In the Southside, Joel Parfitt, co-owner of Seven Hills Market, stocks Blenheim in-house and often recommends the wine to customers looking for something closer to home.

Christine Iezzi, of Country Vintner, now predicts that it’s only a matter of time that this nearby earth-friendly vineyard begins lining the shelves of wine shops throughout the country.

And as the brand grows, Iezzi insists, “It will about the wine, not Dave, in the long run it has to be about the wine.“