A Conversation with Gabriele Rausse

[On May 15, 2023, Kim and I sat down for an extended conversation with Gabriele Rausse at his winery outside of Charlottesville.  We did not electronically record the conversation.  This post is a paraphrase of the conversation using my notes of the visit, supplemented from public sources where indicated.  A full listing of references is at the end of this piece.  I have tried as much as possible to be faithful to what was said and the tone in which it was conveyed.  We are thankful to Mr. Rausse for his time and candor.]

A Conversation with Gabriele Rausse.

We met Gabriele Rausse on a cool morning on the gravel patio outside the walls of his winery.  He came dressed in a grey working sweater and working jeans like he was just coming from the fields where he has spent much of his life.  He is compact wiry man with a round face creased with many laugh lies and framed with white wispy hair.  Not much on top.  He is 78 now but don’t think for a minute that he is some doddering senior.  His eyes are lively and bright, his Italian accent strong, and his spirit for story-telling honed and sharp.  Although he claims to have forgotten much of his past, it is clear that he remembers more than most people forget in a lifetime.  This is a preeminent raconteur.

                                           

                                                               Gabriele Rausse with Trady the wine dog

Gabriele was born in 1945 in Vicenza, Italy.  His father managed the largest woolen plants in Europe.  (I believe that is the Marzotto company plant in near-by Valdagno.)  Although his father would have liked Gabriele to join in plant management, the boy decided to go his own way.  He attended the University of Milan and graduated with a degree in plant pathology.  With contacts from his father, Gabriele started working on farms in Rhodesia.  He quickly left that oppression for Australia.  He says that working 12 hours a day on the farms were among the happiest days of his life.  When a farmer’s wife made him spaghetti to keep him from being too homesick, however, the husband became jealous and the Italian had to move on.  It then developed that Gabriele had visa complications forcing him to leave Australia until they were resolved.  So, in 1974, he landed in Vietnam.  He found the farms there beautifully maintained by the women since the men were off fighting in the Mekong.  He then moved to France to work in the rose nurseries. 

It was now 1976.  To hear Gabriele tell it, Gianni Zonin, president of the Zonin Wine Company in near-by Gambellara, was becoming concerned about the survival of the company if the Communists won the election that June.  Zonin began to search out properties outside of Italy where he could retreat and came to focus on the Charlottesville area.  Zonin had an Italian contact on the faculty of the University of Virginia, a professor of Palladian architecture.  Zonin needed someone with a background in plants to help acquire the land and establish a vineyard in Virginia.  Gabriele was still waiting on his Australian visa to be cleared up, so he was recruited for the opportunity go to America and wait out the visa mess over here in the States.

Gianni and Gabriele arrived in Virginia in the Spring of 1976.  They quickly made their first purchase at Barboursville on April 13^th, coincidentally Jefferson’s birthday.  Remember the Italian election was just two months away.  The real estate agent gave them a $2.00 bill with Jefferson on it in celebration of the sale.

The state of Virginia wineries was abysmal in 1976.  Gabriele recalls visiting de Treville Lawrence at his small hobby vinifera vineyard in the Plains.  In spite of his enthusiasm for vitis vinifera grapes, Mr. Lawrence’s vines were covered in disease.  He remembers visiting Al Weed at Mountain Cove Vineyard where the non-vinifera wine was “awful,” having been made in open dairy tanks.  He recalls taking his son, probably Peter, to visit Archie Smith at Meredyth Vineyards.  Kids at that age don’t have much of a filter, and the boy spoke up to say that Meredyth was a “black winery,” by which he meant dirty.  By comparison, the kid said that his dad’s winery was “white.”  If nothing else, Mr. Rausse helped instill the need for hygiene and cleanliness in winery operations among new winemakers.  Further, most winemakers and vineyard folks back then got their marching orders from books.  There were very few experienced winemakers.  To Gabriele, there is no substitute for getting your hands dirty with soil and grape juice.  Learn by doing, not just by reading and by all means hire knowledgeable people.

At this time in 1976, Gabriele recalls there were only four wineries in the Commonwealth and those that grew vinifera grapes did so mostly as an experiment, like de Treville Lawrence.  According to one source, there were only 15 acres of vinifera grapes being grown in 1976.  Lee, page 27.  Gabriele recalls going to a fancy dinner hosted by Elizabeth Furness of Piedmont Vineyard.  Expensive French wine was flowing.  On the side, he asked: “Madame Furness, why are you not serving your own wine?”  She told him discreetly that she had only produced seven bottles.  And this was from the first recognized commercial scale winery operation to have vinifera wines.

The academics and agricultural scientists at the time strongly discouraged planting vinifera grapes.  Then there was the weight of Virginia history going back to Jefferson, teaching that the climate and the heavy clay soil were not hospitable to vinifera.  Most vineyards were growing primarily French hybrids and American hybrids to a lesser extent.  There was a significant investment in these plants even at the early stages of the Virginia wine industry.

Into this scene stepped Gabriele Rausse with the objective to establish a vinifera-only vineyard for making European style wines.  He recalls buying some root stock in Maryland in 1976 and suffered poor grafting work by the nurserymen, resulting a big loss.  In 1977, Gabriele did his own grafting so that by 1978, prospects improved.  Gabriele also pioneered the practice of deep plowing to breakup the heavy clay.  He established a virus-free cutting nursery for his grafting.  Lee page 26.  He began producing some wine in batches so small, that the bottles were traded like currency between mechanics, plumbers, electricians, and builders working at Barboursville.  Always being given as presents, but never opened. 

His early success apparently caught the attention of authorities in Richmond who summoned him to a meeting with over 20 experts.  This was November, 1978.  The experts told him unanimously that his vinifera experiment would fail drastically.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture called his efforts “stupid.”  Only one of the experts, a man from Virginia Tech, noted that the Zonin Company was spending its own funds (foolishly perhaps) on its own land and not hurting anyone else, so they should be allowed to proceed.  This carried the day.  The group warned, however, that the work at Barboursville might still get shut down if other Virginia farmers got the demented notion to spend their limited capital on this new failing crop.  Gabriele thinks that Meredyth and Piedmont wineries were behind this shock-and-awe conclave aimed directly at him their new wine competitor. 

During this time, Australian visa issues were finally resolved.  But Gabriele felt that the rough and ready Virginia wine industry was similar to Australia.  He elected to stay and work his 12-hour days here instead of “Down Under.”  He married and started a family, but the vines continued to demand his attention.  After some years, his wife grew tired of the financial strain.  She left him. 

By his count, Gabriele Rausse has worked at or assisted in starting over 74 wineries.  The number could well be higher.  These include White Hall, Afton Mountain, and Blenheim.  In 1989, he left Barboursville to work at Simeon Vineyards, now called Jefferson Vineyards.  He then became winemaker for Patricia Kluge when she established Kluge Estate Winery in 1999.  Her aim was to make the best wine in the world.  Unfortunately, she wanted to price her final product at $450.00 a bottle.  Gabriele knew that if his name were associated with the wine as her winemaker, the price would be “closer to $4.50.”  Instead, he advised Mrs. Kluge to hire the best wine consultant in the world, Bordeaux’s Michele Rolland.  A positive review from M. Rolland might then justify the high price Mrs. Kluge hoped to ask.  M. Rolland spent three days at the Kluge estate at a daily rate of $100,000.  One piece of advice that survives from M. Rolland was that Mrs. Kluge should retain her winemaker!  But the wines never sold well, and Mrs. Kluge’s estate and winery went for sale in 2009.

One of Mrs. Kluge’s friends by the name of Donald J. Trump contacted her about buying the property, to help her out of her straightened financial circumstances.  For some details behind Mr. Trump’s “assistance” to Mrs. Kluge, check out the Vanity Fair article.  Kummer.  

Mr. Trump’s appearance in Gabriele’s narrative produces three stories and one riddle:

☞ At the time of the sale, Mrs. Kluge and her third husband hosted a lavish celebration of the sale.  Mr. Trump was there. So was Gabriele Rausse.   I believe that it was Mr. Kluge who praised a friend for coming to save the estate.  Mr. Trump got out of his chair and went to each dinner guest in turn pointing to himself and saying “That was me.  That was me… .”

            ☞ As recounted in the Vanity Fair article, and repeated by Gabriele to us, some time later, a tanker truck pulled into the gravel parking lot at Gabriele Rausse Winery.  The truck driver was lost.  “I have 15,000 gallons of wine I need to bring to Trump… .”  One of the sons gave the driver directions and got him on his way.  Still, one has to wonder about the provenance of wine and attention to wine-making detail in this case.  (His comments in the Vanity Fair article made him persona non grata at Trump Winery, a distinction that doesn’t seem to trouble Gabriele in the slightest.) 

          ☞ In 2019, after the harvest was completed, Trump Winery fired at least seven undocumented workers, some of whom had worked there for more than a decade.  Partlow.  As Gabriele put it, after Trump Winery “fired all of its Mexican staff,” he helped to put them up until they could get their footing. 

☞ Mr. Rausse even has a riddle: How did a MAGA hat end up in his car? 

Mr. Rausse has more lately been connected with Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, planting vines on land tilled in the 1770’s by Jefferson’s farm hands and by fellow Italian, Philip Mazzi.  Yet he feels his current title of “Director of Viticulture and Farming” is a step-down from his former duties in charge of all Monticello gardens and grounds.  Some of his ideas are not implemented – like increasing the viticulture budget and stocking the gift shop with wine from Chateau Grillet, one of the still-existing French wineries that Mr. Jefferson visited in his tour of France.  Instead, without consulting him, Monticello acquired Jefferson Vineyard in January 2023 for $12 Million. 

The “father of the Virginia wine industry” still has a fondness for the vines and the hard work needed to make them produce quality fruit.  To this day, it is fair to say that Gabriele believes in the primacy of quality grapes above the winemaker’s art.  Didas.  He tells a story of a friend from Milan days.  The friend put down Gabriele’s desire to go into agricultural sciences and instead went on to a very successful career in finance and politics.  But ultimately he was abandoned by his colleagues.  Years later, the two resumed their friendship with the Italian financier admitting that Gabriele had chosen the wiser path because “plants can never betray you.” 

He also realizes that he is 78.  He no longer teaches oenology at Piedmont Community College, claiming that he is too forgetful.  That was a marvelous legacy.  He has cut out red meat, doesn’t like cheese, and favors fish.  “The body tells you what it wants,” he says.  [By the way, he recommends three restaurants in Charlottesville: The Ivy Inn, where he first ate in 1976 and is virtually unchanged, the C&O Restaurant, and Bizou, a French restaurant downtown].  Day-to-day, the sons are running the winery and managing the vines.  A daughter-in-law has connections to French wineries whose wine is sold here.  The next generation has started their own wine making projects (please see our separate post on Gabriele Rausse Winery).  Gabriele has a younger accomplished girlfriend, which we suspect is one reason for the gleam in his eyes. 

And over the many other cities in his travels, he still dreams of Venice.

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References:

Jenny Didas, “An Interview with Gabriele Rausse: Up Close and Personal,” Virginia Wine Gazette, May 1, 2020.  https://www.gabrieleraussewinery.com/s/stories/an-interview-with-gabriele-rausseup-close-and-personal  accessed May 29, 2023.

Corby Kummer, “Welch’s Grape Jelly with  Alcohol”: How Trumps Horrific Wine Became the Ultimate Metaphor for His Presidency, Vanity Fair, February 2018.  https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/12/donald-trump-wines  accessed May 17, 2023. 

H.G. Lee and A.E. Lee, Virginia Wine Country Revisited, Hildesigns Press, 1993.

Joshua Partlow and David A. Fahrenthold, “Trump Organization fires more undocumented workers — a year after its use of illegal labor was revealed,” Washington Post, December 31, 2019.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-organization-fires-more-undocumented-workers--a-year-after-its-use-of-illegal-labor-was-revealed/2019/12/31/1f03685a-2b7c-11ea-be79-83e793dbcaef_story.html  accessed May 30, 2023.