Veritas Vineyards & Winery leading Wine Innovation in Virginia
AndesWines.com, the 7th most visited website in the world that is from South America has interviewed more than 100 winery owners and visited over 30 wineries since 2001. We have talked to the wine leaders of several wine-producing countries, most of them coming from different backgrounds that didn’t necessarily start in wine.
Since 2024, we started to expand into the US and France thanks to a global team and our first interview in Virginia for this new section will be with the owners of Veritas Vineyards & Winery, Andrew and Patricia Hodson. The Hodson’s have expanded their portfolio and own a few complementary entities.
The Vineyards and Winery has 65 acres of planted vineyard and a Winery that houses the tasting room, a Ballroom (Wedding Facility) and the winemaking cellar. The Farmhouse at Veritas is a 5 star luxury Bed and Breakfast with eight guest rooms that host visitors from all over the world.
Veritas Works is a 58,000 sq ft storage unit that houses Virginia Sparkling Wine Company, their sparkling wine production unit that produces at least 5000 cases of traditional method sparkling wine per year. It also is home to the Flying Fox wine brand and case storage for other wineries.
As with many wineries from the area, 90% of their sales are direct to consumer from the tasting room at the winery and 10 % of sales are through distribution that is mostly confined to the state of Virginia.
George Hodson, their Son, is Veritas’s CEO, President of the Virginia Wineries Association and was previously the President of the Monticello Wine Trail.
The winemaker, Emily Hodson, has a background in epidemiology and infection disease, but during a sabbatical from her graduate work, was drawn to Virginia to help her parents start their new venture, Veritas Vineyards and Winery. She fell in love with agriculture and winemaking, and completed a Master’s degree in Fermentation Science with Dr. Bruce Zoecklein at Virginia Tech, before taking over winemaking duties at Veritas in 2003. Emily and her father Andrew worked alongside each other as a team during the inception of Veritas.
Emily also created the Virginia Wine Research Exchange now funded by the Wine Board and she is Secretary of the South East division of the National Grape Research Alliance.
Now, twenty-three vintages in, Emily has become head winemaker and proud mother of two beautiful girls who have grown up on the farm and watched the winery and the vineyard grow. Emily has made wine solely in Virginia and feels very strongly that with select cultivars the future of the Virginia industry will be unstoppable. Her philosophy involves trying to achieve natural, balanced expression of the fruit by focusing on attention to detail and cultural practices, but most of all, just trying to stay out of the way as she allows the wine to show off the beauty of where the grapes were grown.
Andrew, Tell us more about your background and Patricia’s.
Patricia and I had successful professional careers in the Medical industry, I was a physician and Patricia had her own Medical Billing company. However, we were both unsettled in the “service industry” and yearned for more of a challenge in our lives and that challenge turned out to be buying a farm, planting a vineyard and building a winery. That challenge has morphed into one of the most respected Wineries in the Central Virginia region, specifically the Monticello AVA.
Our children soon realized our passion and determination and were happy to join us in our endeavors, Emily our eldest daughter is the winemaker and our son George is the Chief Operating Officer of the company.
Our youngest daughter Chloe is married to Elliot who is the manager of our Sparkling Wine operation. We are established in our own right as a family winery that has led to our success within the Virginia Wine industry.
Tell us more about the terroir, grape varieties and how many acres you have.
The terroir like most of the terroirs in Virginia is non uniform. Our vineyard has two distinct regions, the lower region at around 800 feet above sea level is mostly a mix of clay-loam. The upper region or top meadow at 1200 feet is made up of Edneytown that is primarily degenerate granite that has good water holding capacity and drains well. The upper meadow faces north -south the lower vineyards are planted east-west.
Official Website: www.veritaswines.com
Virginia Wine Research Exchange
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