Southern and eastern wine appellations were once considered emerging. As they mature, new threats challenge their stability. Where do Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland go from here?
Putting American Wine on the World’s Map
Albemarle County, Virginia, presents a vivid portrait of US history. As the heart of the Monticello American Viticultural Area (AVA), it has preserved an architectural vernacular much of the country paved over long ago: historic manor homes, white fences tracing serpentine hills, and horses grazing in pastures. The landscape evokes a daydream of the slower, pastoral life of the country’s earliest viticulturist, Thomas Jefferson, whose failed attempts to grow grapes at Monticello have now been realized throughout the region. Wineries invite guests into the dream, with patios set for an afternoon of chilled petit manseng and the haze of the Blue Ridge Mountains painted on the horizon.
The quality of Virginia wine has never been better, and the industry has the accolades to prove it. Riding the high of awards and scores, winemakers have envisioned an ambitious future. Adding one more data point to the case, in 2024, the Bouygues family of second-growth Château Montrose in Bordeaux acquired RdV Vineyards, Virginia’s most allocated estate. They renamed their first investment outside of France Lost Mountain.
Yet, just as wines of the South and Eastern Seaboard have hit their stride, multiple storms gather on the horizon. Softening consumer demand and inflation have depressed the wine industry. But the most existential threat might be climate change.
This year, spring blew in early, waking up dormant vines with warmer weather. Buds pushed out tender shoots bearing tiny clusters of future grapes. On April 21, 2026, a hard freeze swept through parts of Virginia and Maryland. In some vineyards, temperatures fell below 20 degrees. Once temperatures drop below 29 degrees, growers can do little to protect their crop.
The next morning, winegrowers inspected their rows. At Linden Vineyards in Northern Virginia, Jim Law saw frost damage at Hardscrabble Vineyard, the hillside he first planted in 1985. It was his first significant loss to frost in four decades. His lower blocks, where cold air pools, suffered the most damage.
“It is difficult to convey the gut punch of walking the vines after a devastating event like frost or hail,” Law wrote in his newsletter afterward. “You feel physically sick and emotionally devastated.”
The freeze did not stop at state lines. In Maryland, Drew Baker of Old Westminster Winery and Burnt Hill Farm lost more than 100 tons of fruit or roughly 75,000 bottles of wine. “It was the worst frost event I’ve seen in 16 years of farming,” he says. “A single night changed the season.”
The April freeze that rocked the mid-Atlantic was not an anomaly but an emerging pattern. A frost on Mother’s Day in 2020 caused widespread losses. Many called it a once-in-a-lifetime event. “Here we are again, six years later,” says AJ Greely, winemaker for Hark Vineyards and president of the Virginia Vineyards Association. “I hate to make generalizations, but we are experiencing a shifting climate.” She points to more extreme storms, higher heat, and single-digit winter temperatures.
Current economic headwinds are only exacerbating viticultural obstacles. National wine consumption has declined, while the cost of doing business has risen. For small producers without the cushion of large-scale distribution or export markets, the pressure feels acute. Shopping local, no longer just a slogan, takes on the weight of survival.
Greely wants local restaurants and shops to support Virginia wines. “It angers me when I see restaurants claiming to be locally sourced and ‘farm-to-table’ only to open their wine list and see wines exclusively from Europe and California,” she says.
Law would like to see wineries spend less energy on hosting weddings and put more effort into growing distribution channels to collectively raise Virginia’s national profile. However, the state’s strength is also its hard-to-find, limited-production wines of character. “In today’s chain restaurant, bigbox world, it’s refreshing,” he says.
While Law lost fruit in the freeze, he also lives at the forefront of climate-adaptive grape research. He’s best known for his ethereal chardonnays, but recent success with the Italian white grape fiano has encouraged him to plant a commercial-sized vineyard. “The past,” he wrote in his newsletter, “may no longer be prologue.”
Challenging the Norms
What the freeze threatened was decades in the making, and not only in Virginia. For years, consumers viewed American wine through the lens of Pacific Coast vineyards. The wines of the South and mid-Atlantic, when considered at all, fell into the regional specialty trap: sweet and simple curiosities, made by retirees or hobbyists, to pour at local fairs.
That paradigm has shifted. For example, Texan winemakers now command one of the most valuable industries in the country. Texas counts more than 600 wine producers and 2.64 million annual winery visits, generating $24.4 billion in total economic activity. The Hill Country, centered on Fredericksburg, has become one of the nation’s most-visited wine regions.
Like elsewhere, Texas has its share of challenges, but they’re unique to the state’s geography. “Customers and trade assume that heat is the dominant factor in what we grow,” says David Kuhlken, owner and executive winemaker of Pedernales Cellars, but “freeze, hail, drought, and heavy rains all play a role.” To hedge against wild weather and vintage variation, Kuhlken sources from three different regions, including the Hill Country, High Plains, and Dell City.
“Texas farmers and winemakers can count on continually being nimble and innovative,” says Kuhlken, since “unpredictable conditions have always been part of farming in the state.” With agility baked into the model, the state’s industry has ballooned thanks to robust tourism, which allows wineries to sell directly to consumers.
Ron Yates is proof of that. With his breezy, affable presence, underscored by long brown hair and beard, Yates, owner of Spicewood Vineyards and Ron Yates Wines, plays the consummate host. Though he makes serious wines, Yates recently debuted a new, expansive tasting room to double down on hospitality.
On weekends, women in sundresses sporting cowboy boots and felt hats gather around the bar to sip glasses of graciano or tempranillo. During college, Yates worked a harvest in Spain, where he encountered Spanish varieties. “These grapes love our climate,” he says, describing the ripe red and black fruit notes found in tempranillo, the grape common to Rioja. He likes that graciano holds onto its acidity, a problem for certain varieties in warmer growing regions.
Yates carries that practical streak to his business, tackling inflation fatigue with The Get Together, a 3-liter Bordeaux-style blend in a box. “At first, I was worried about how people would react and if it would cheapen my brands,” he says. People loved it from the get-go. “They appreciated its convenience and sustainability, but even more so in this economic climate, they appreciated the price point and value,” he says.
While Texas occupies a promising position in the American wine hierarchy, small production and lack of distribution hold it back. “We need to prove to other parts of the country, and not just our own citizens, that we make great wine,” says Yates.
Changing Perceptions
Heath Little of Stone Ashe Vineyard feels the same way about his state. Perception around North Carolina has long been driven by tourism or shadowed by the legacy of muscadine, a native grape known for its sweet, viscous profile—the kind of wine you’d taste in the summer growing up, sitting on your grandparents’ porch.
Today’s industry has developed into a far more sophisticated offer. With seven AVAs and a range of climates and elevations, growers plant Vitis vinifera, classic European wine grapes, alongside hardier hybrids bred for disease, pest, and climate resilience. North Carolina has the raw materials for serious winemaking, and winemakers and investors took note. The state’s wine industry has achieved impressive growth, with its economic impact climbing roughly a quarter in three years, from $6.1 billion to $7.69 billion.
“North Carolina is in a much stronger position than most people realize,” Little says. “We do not need to become California to be taken seriously. We need to become a more defined version of ourselves.”
For Little, matching terroir—soil, aspect, elevation— to variety will help unlock the state’s potential. Based in the Crest of the Blue Ridge AVA, his vineyards sit on a steep and rocky site above 2,200 feet. Little’s mountain chalet-style tasting room, with a terrace facing the Blue Ridge Mountains, draws wine drinkers up the hill. They may or may not be aware of the seriousness of the project.
“Hendersonville shares some meaningful temperature similarities with Bordeaux,” says Little, a statement that might land with skepticism until tasting his Bordeaux-inspired white and red blends. But making wine in humid, wet conditions creates a relentless fight against pests and diseases. Compound that with increasingly erratic weather, and the opportunities to evolve look Sisyphean.
Hospitality With a Point of View
Survival belongs to the growers who can pivot while giving people a reason to care about wine. In Maryland, that journey has taken one family through more than weather.
In 2010, Drew Baker and his sisters, Ashli Johnson and Lisa Hinton, converted their Maryland family farm into Old Westminster Winery, focusing on European grapes like cabernet franc. In 2016, they launched a second, ambitious project: Burnt Hill Farm. Atop a 117-acre canvas, they built a regenerative polyculture estate with vineyards, minimalist guest cabins, and a contemporary restaurant overlooking the Appalachian Mountains.
After the freeze, a new strategy emerged. “That kind of event changes how you think,” says Baker. “The question becomes, why keep replanting the same thing and hoping the next 30 years are easier?”
Rather than replant chardonnay, Baker pivoted to buckwheat. It would feed pollinators, then be harvested for bread flour. Climate-resilient varieties will go in the ground come spring.
“We’re not trying to become ideological,” he says. “We’re trying to be practical and stay ahead of the curve.”
The practicality of regenerative systems extended to harvesting the farm’s ash trees. Casualties of the invasive emerald ash borer beetle, the dying trunks found new purpose as wine barrels. “Fermenting fruit from the hillside in wood grown on the same farm,” he says, “feels honest to the place.”
Baker knows the hardships of rebuilding. In 2022, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer with a five-year survival rate below 30 percent. Through the worst of it, he held tightly to his family. “We have three kids,” he says. “I don’t want to miss their life.” His sisters each donated bone marrow. “I literally have both of my sisters’ DNA,” he says. “And if not for it, I’d be dead.”
Despite Baker’s touch-and-go recovery, Burnt Hill opened as the full expression of its promise. A threehour visit gently crescendos into moments around communion and place. Chef Tae Strain cooks what the farm raises and grows, from sourdough focaccia to Mangalitsa pork to garden greens. The wines carry the same fingerprint. “To survive here, a farm or wine region needs humility, direct relationships with customers, and a compelling narrative,” says Baker.
This is the part that scores and awards miss: the soul of a place and the family who built it. It’s the same reckoning facing every grower from the Hill Country to the Blue Ridge who strives to hold on when the conditions that built their region have turned. “You don’t always choose the hardship,” Baker says. “You do choose how you respond.”
Buy The Bottle
North Carolina
Stone Ashe Vineyards, Davenport Red Blend, 2022
$49; Black plum, blackberry, and shaved cocoa shape the nose, followed by a velvety, medium-bodied palate that finishes on a lovely rose petal note
Stone Ashe Vineyards, Wayfinder Chardonnay, 2023
$54; Fragrant with lemon curd, white flowers, and Marcona almond, this creamy but bright, medium-bodied white layers peach and citrus oil across the long finish.
Texas
Ron Yates, Friesen Tempranillo, 2021
$50; Aromas of blackberry, cassis, and dark cherry open into a full-bodied palate with firm tannins, supple texture, and a savory, spice-edged finish.
Pedernales, Texas Tempranillo Reserve 2022
$55; With notes of black cherry, plum, and cassis, this full-bodied red delivers ripe, rich tannins and a long finish gently framed in oak.
Maryland
Old Westminster, Cabernet Franc, 2021
$55; Soft raspberry, red plum, and cocoa lead this medium-bodied cabernet franc, with silky tannins and touches of baking spice and cedar on the finish.
Old Westminster, Albariño, 2025
$36; Lime peel and magnolia blossom on the nose; zesty and linear on the palate, with Meyer lemon, apricot, and a brisk, clean finish.
Virginia
Linden Vineyards, Village Chardonnay, 2022
$32; Lime zest, green apple, and crushed stone on the nose, followed by a lean, taut palate with bright acidity and a stony finish.
Hark Vineyards, Cabernet Franc, 2023
$38; Dark cherry, white pepper, and anise drive this medium-bodied cabernet franc, with a lightly grained texture and a savory finish shaped by concrete and neutral oak.
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