About

Ben fell in love with wine through the influence of a few good mentors while working retail wine sales in New York. He moved to California and worked his first vintage at C Donatiello Winery in Healdsburg, California in 2008. After experiences in the lab and cellar in the Russian River Valley and Dry Creek Valley in California, Ben returned to Virginia in 2012 to become the winemaker at Michael Shaps Wineworks. He moved to Early Mountain Vineyards in the summer of 2015 where he served as winemaker as well as crafting the Midland wines from his family's Mount Airy vineyard and the Lightwell Survey Wines. In Summer of 2022, Ben co-founded Common Wealth Crush Co, where he is currently winemaking and running operations.

Ben views the WRE as a way to help push innovation so that Virginia wine can find its place when viewed in light of wines of the world. Ben has adapted techniques of whole cluster fermentation in Petit Verdot first tasted through the WRE and admits to using the WRE as a workshop on his own Petit Manseng journey.

Emily has a background in epidemiology and infection disease, but during a sabbatical from her graduate work, was wooed to Virginia to help her parents start their new venture, Veritas Vineyard and Winery. She fell in love with agriculture and winemaking, completed a Master's degree in Fermentation Science with Dr. Bruce Zoecklein at Virginia Tech, before taking over winemaking duties at Veritas in 2001.

Emily wrote the first grant for WRE funding and has served as a liaison between the Virginia Wine Board and WRE ever since. She is also a prolific experimenter, using WRE trials to help her understand the effects of bentonite fining on her aromatic wines, leading to different management decisions.

Kirsty's path to the winery began in an old truck driving to Culpeper with Virginia wine pioneer Gabrielle Rausse to look at old equipment. Kirsty was acting as the tasting room manager for a yet-to-be built tasting room at the time. During the drive, Gabrielle discovered Kirsty had a degree in microbiology and experience in laboratory research, after which he declared she would be the winemaker for the new winery. After a few years of apprenticeship working under Gabrielle Rausse, Kirsty left Virginia to earn her Master's Degree in Viticulture and Enology from UC Davis. She then worked in New Zealand and Burgundy before returning to Virginia to take the helm at Blenheim Vineyards, where she has served as winemaker since 2008.

Kirsty appreciates the WRE as a venue where discussion centers on honest open dialogue toward improvement, not just sharing successes, and values the accountability that comes with doing structured experimentation. Through a series of experiments in 2018-2020, Kirsty has changed the way she uses SO₂ post fermentation, a series of experiments that has had broad impact among other winemakers as well.

Lee Hartman has worked in the Virginia wine industry for the last 16 years as a grape grower and winemaker for his family's farm, Bluestone Vineyard. Formerly the President of the Virginia Wine Council, he has always taken interest in the industry beyond his own vineyard, and is currently the President of the Shenandoah Valley Winegrowers Association. In a way of expanding the industry beyond his family's farm, he also helps neighbors with vineyard management and custom crush programs. In 2023, Lee opened Rootstock Wine Bar in Downtown Harrisonburg, as a way to not only bring his wine into a vibrant culinary scene, but as a way to bring his friends' wines along too.

Matthieu grew up in the French winemaking region of Crozes-Hermitage in a family that grew grapes and loved wine. He studied viticulture and enology in school in Burgundy, followed by training in France (the Rhone Valley, Bordeaux, Provence and Jura) as well as Italy and South Africa before settling in Virginia in 2003. He has worked at Afton Mountain Vineyards and Potomac Point Vineyard before taking over at King Family Vineyards in 2007.

Matthieu loves to experiment in the winery and values the feedback of others when evaluating the results, a practice that the WRE helps to facilitate. He feels that experimentation through the WRE allows him to take risks in small increments, ultimately allowing for better informed decisions when pushing the envelope of winemaking in Virginia, an approach he has applied to topics such as low SO₂ winemaking, whole cluster fermentations, and many more.

Joy's first job in the wine industry came after a fateful dinner with Michael Shaps in 2013. A teacher at the time, she inquired how things were going at the winery and Michael replied that he needed a lab tech before the next harvest. Six months later, her adventure began. While at Wineworks she had the opportunity to train under several noted Virginia winemakers including Michael Shaps, Ben Jordan and Jake Busching before taking on the role herself in 2016. While at Wineworks, Joy participated in WRE by attending tastings and doing experiments in flotation and micro-oxygenation. In 2018, the opportunity arose to combine her love of teaching, background in research science (she earned a PhD in applied biology from Georgia Tech) and desire to expand her winemaking knowledge by joining the staff of the WRE. Since then, Joy has worked with winemakers from around the Commonwealth to craft and execute experiments and share those results with the larger community of wine producers. As the Research Enologist, Joy gets an in depth view of all the innovative approaches being tested. Though it is impossible to choose a favorite, most recently, the Blenheim SO₂ management experiments and the King Family chapitalization work have changed her decision making for her own wine projects.

Rebecca's first vintage was 2011 in her AP Biology classroom making plum wine in the lab. While the experiment was technically successful (read: drinkable at best), it piqued a lifelong interest in the art of fermentation. It wasn't until graduating from UVA with a degree in Biology and a slight existential crisis that she had a real opportunity to dive into the Virginia wine industry via the tasting room at Veritas. While there, she fell in love with the sensory aspects of wine and learning how larger scale winemaking works. By 2019, she had passed the 3rd level of the WSET and started to seriously contemplate a career in wine, which is when she stumbled upon a listing for harvest help at King Family Vineyards. Two weeks in and about 160 hours under her belt - she knew she'd found her calling in winemaking. A couple months later, she was interning at Kim Crawford in New Zealand and preparing to move to Sonoma, CA for a cellar hand position.

Rebecca returned to winemaking in central Virginia in 2021, and, while appreciative of all the experience from her travels, realized her true passion was rooted in Virginia wine. Throughout her career, Rebecca utilized WRE for everything from troubleshooting to continuing education and was always happy for any opportunity to work on projects with them. One of her favorite contributions to a WRE experiment was using Saccharomyces uvarum to naturally add acid in barrel fermented Viognier. She was ecstatic when she had the chance to join the WRE full time as the exchange coordinator and provide support to the myriad of good the organization does for the wine and cider community. Mostly, she is excited to continue learning about (and tasting!) Virginia wines as the wine industry continues to pioneer its place in modern winemaking.

You can reach her at wrevault@gmail.com or rebecca.wrex@gmail.com

Jocelyn's exposure to wine making started at a very young age in Allentown, Pennsylvania where gathering seasonal fruit to preserve and ferment was built into her everyday life. In fact, Jocelyn's father even converted a portion of their basement to ferment wine! Despite having had early exposure, it wasn't until Jocelyn graduated from Virginia Tech with a Biochemistry degree, that she attended her first wine festival and realized that perhaps she could make a career out of traveling the world learning about and making wine. In 2003 Jocelyn jumped right into vineyard and cellar work at Villa Appalachia Winery. She then went on to spend the next 3 years working in vineyards and cellars in Virginia and Europe and decided to obtain an M.S. in Enology at the University of Adelaide, in South Australia from 2006 to 2008. Upon returning to Virginia, Jocelyn started a consulting business for small producers and had her first cider specific client, Diane Flynt at Foggy Ridge Cider. It was through this experience that she found that there were many similarities between wine and cider. In 2010, while consulting, Jocelyn began making cider. Till today, researching cider, cider apples, tasting commercial products from around the world and learning from academics, growers, and producers remain one of Jocelyn's favorite ways to "work".

Jocelyn is excited and honored to listen and provide a respectful and open space for Virginia cidermakers' ideas and questions through her work with the WRE. She hopes to help expand the boundaries of the conversation around commercial Virginia cider production, while also providing the technical resources and support cidermakers need. Jocelyn believes this is an exciting time for cider producers in Virginia and she is thrilled to be a part of this resource that is now available to the growing Virginia cider community.