National Wine Day A Perfect Excuse To Support Virginia Wineries

VIRGINIA — If you didn’t already have an excuse to support Virginia's wine industry, Wednesday, May 25, is a convenient one: It’s National Wine Day.

More than 4,000 acres of grapes span Virginia. Twenty-eight types of grapes are grown across 10 regions in the state, according to the Virginia Wine Board.

There is an even split between red and white grape production. The majority of vines are planted in northern and central Virginia, although high-quality wines can be found throughout the state.

The average American drank about 3.18 gallons of wine in 2021. Nationally, that added up to 1.1 billion gallons of wine, of which 879 million gallons were table wine, according to the Wine Institute.

In 2019, the last “normal year” before the pandemic, per capita wine consumption in Virginia was 0.49 gallons per person, according to an NIH study.

The Top 10 states for per capita wine consumption were:

1. District of Columbia, 1.01 gallons per capita.
2. New Hampshire, 0.82 gallon per capita.
3. Vermont, 0.75 gallon per capita.
4. Delaware, 0.71 gallon per capita.
5. (Tie) California and Massachusetts, 0.61 gallon per capita.
7. (Tie) Connecticut and Nevada, 0.60 gallon per capita.
9. Hawaii, 0.59 per capita.
10. New Jersey, 0.55 per capita.

Alcohol consumption in general appears to have gone up during the pandemic, according to a preliminary report from the National Institutes of Health, whether because of the increased stress of isolation, the easy availability of alcohol either from at-home liquor cabinets and wine cellars or from delivery services, and boredom.

The wine industry is responding to changes wrought by the COVID-19, according to the State of the US Wine Industry 2022 report written by Rob McMillan, founder of Silicon Valley Bank’s Wine Division.

Those changes included a shift to remote workplaces and a migration from cities to suburbs, and a resulting shift to where consumers buy their wine.

“The country will more than likely never fully go back to the traditional office or completely recover the amount of business travel, which impacts both restaurant and airline wine sales,” McMillan wrote. “There have also been enduring changes to online sales, with more consumers using online as an option to purchase virtually anything instead of walking into a shop in a metropolitan city.”

The number of Virginia wineries would approach 50 by the mid-1990s. In less than a decade, that number would double. Today, with more 300 wineries, according to the Virginia Wine Board Marketing Office.

The Virginia wine industry has created 8,218 jobs and generates $1.37 billion annually. In addition, Virginia’s wineries are tourist destinations, with more than 2.2 million people visiting each year, according to Virginia Wine.

The majority of Virginia's 300 wineries are located in the Blue Ridge foothills in Loudoun County, the Charlottesville area and other region. Other Virginia wineries such as Ingleside Vineyards and Williamsburg Winery have coastal climates.

Virginia Tech offers wine-growing courses and extension services, and community colleges have basic courses to train those new to the business.

Drinking wine in moderation, especially red wine, can produce positive health results, according to medical experts.

In moderation, wine may be heart-healthy. Although the links between red wine and fewer heart attacks isn’t completely understood, the polyphenol antioxidant called resveratrol may help prevent coronary artery disease, the condition that leads to heart attacks, according to Mayo Clinic.

The antioxidants in wine may prevent oral cancer, according to a study from the University of Missouri School of Dentistry.

Another study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in April 2000, found that women who drank one to three glasses of wine a day had a lower risk of developing osteoporosis, an age-related bone thinning related to calcium loss.

Yet another study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, made a similar conclusion, finding that mineral density was 12 percent to 16 percent among moderate wine and beer drinkers compared with nondrinkers. However, hard liquor seemed to have the opposite effect.

The health benefits of white wine are similar to those of red wine. It contains the same heart-health antioxidants as red wine and is generally lower in calories.

In fact, a glass of wine may help with weight loss, according to scientists at the University of Washington, who found the same antioxidants in grapes and berries that assist with heart health can convert excess white fat into calorie-burning beige fat.