Piedmont Pit Stops: How North Carolina's wine industry emerged from the ashes of Big Tobacco

Behind wrought iron gates just off Highway 268 in Dobson, a winding road weaves through a lush, hilly landscape dotted with vines. It looks more like a European countryside than rural North Carolina. Ethan Brown, the winemaker here on Shelton Vineyards, says that’s not an unfair comparison. 

“So if you look overall at the climate as a whole, latitude-wise we're more similar to Bordeaux,” he says. “And then soil-wise, we're more similar to northern Italy.”

He points to the vines surrounding a clearing in the center of the field. 

“So in front, we have some cabernet sauvignon, to my right, merlot, some chardonnay, some sauvignon blanc,” he says. “We have a lot of riesling. riesling is our largest individual variety that we grow.”

Just a few decades ago, none of this existed. When developer Charlie Shelton and his brother Ed purchased it in 1999, it was just empty fields. But Charlie’s son Chip says they immediately saw its potential. They had spent several family vacations touring vineyards in Europe, and thought: "Why not here?"

“We had some consultants do some testing here to see, you know, how good a wine can you make here. How would the grapes react to this climate, this soil?” Shelton says. “All the tests came back glowing. So what was going to be a 3-or-4-acre little hobby turned into a huge business.” 

The vineyard has grown to 83 acres, among the largest on the East Coast. Shelton says his father had bigger plans than just building his own business though. 

“They wanted to kind of start, hopefully, a new trend with the vines, and starting a vineyard here was to really promote it, and hope that others would start vineyards which they have,” he says. “And just as a replacement crop for tobacco, because this was huge tobacco country.”

Tobacco dominated the Yadkin Valley for generations. But it wasn’t the only thriving industry in the area.

“North Carolina was the largest producer of wine prior to Prohibition,” says Dan McLaughlin, with the nonprofit Fines Wines of North Carolina.

Winemakers at that time mostly relied on muscadine grapes, which grew wild in many areas. 

“When Prohibition came in, all that had to be destroyed,” he says. “They had to take out all the vines and the grapes, because there was no point in growing something that you couldn't sell.”

They pivoted to profitable tobacco. But, after a major settlement in the late 90s, the Golden LEAF Foundation was established, in part to help tobacco farmers transition to other crops. Aided by grants from the nonprofit, Mclaughlin says wineries started reappearing in the Yadkin Valley — this time though, farmers tried planting traditionally European varieties, not just muscadine. 

“You had little tiny ones opening up, or people starting to grow grapes, thinking, ‘Okay, this is something I want to try, too,’” he says. “And then in 2000 the Shelton brothers came in and said, ‘Hey, this is a crop that we can get behind. This is, you know, going to help people in our area. It's going to provide jobs.’”

But in order to fill those jobs, they needed qualified candidates. That’s where Surry Community College came in. The Sheltons helped establish the school’s viticulture and enology program, where students can get hands-on training in grape-growing and wine-making. 

At the school’s Shelton-Badgett Center in Dobson, wine bottles adorned with medals are displayed in a trophy case in the entryway. Wine glasses are stacked on shelves in classrooms just a few steps from the production facility at the back of the building. 

The place is basically a big garage, with huge shiny metal tanks lining the sides. Enology instructor David Bower is standing next to one with the lid off. As you get closer to the tanks, the heady smell of white wine fills the air. 

“I'm just taking this spoon just to churn it up and make sure everything's mixed up really well before we bottle it,” he explains. “It's obviously given off a little bit of sparkle for you there.”

Bower calls this giant vat of sparkling wine a special project– at 30 cases,  it’s smaller than their typical lot. Many more cases of red are aging in the barrel room in the back of the facility. The students are behind it all, from growing the grapes in the school’s 5-acre vineyard to harvesting and bottling.  

“We have a viticulture certificate, we have an enology or winemaking certificate, we have a marketing certificate. And we also have a tasting room operations certificate,” he says. “We're trying to train folks in each one of these four categories to skill up.”

Bower says most of the people trained here are from the Yadkin Valley, and stay in the area to work at local wineries. 

“There's been a lot more wineries that have opened up and of course, a lot of them — I will say 90% of them — have come through this program,” he says. “So I would say the industry was built on Surry Community College, absolutely.”

Many of the wines produced here go on to win awards at the North Carolina Fine Wines Competition. It’s become increasingly competitive as the industry has grown — nearly 200 North Carolina wines were submitted in the last contest. 

When the first gala was held in 2017, wine represented a $1.9 billion impact on the state’s economy. Now, it’s $6 billion.  

“It's like the economic engine of these rural areas,” says Dan McLaughlin. “So they start out, and you put the vineyard in, and you have a winery. And then people come and they want to have their wine there. And then afterwards, they want to start having lunch or dinner there. Then there's all the other ancillary things that are coming in to support that industry. And that's what's really created such a huge growth in North Carolina.”

The state now has six designated American Viticultural Areas — the Yadkin Valley was the first.

McLaughlin says as the industry has matured, so has the wine. The sweet wines that dominated offerings in the beginning are no longer the only option. And winemakers have learned techniques to improve overall quality. But, they’re still facing a perception problem. 

“When you go to hear a five-year-old at a piano recital, 20 years later, it's a whole different tune. And that's what's happening right now in the industry,” he says. “I mean, people go, ‘I tried North Carolina wine back in 1995 and it was terrible.’ It's like, well, compared to now, yeah, it probably was, but it's not the same.”

McLaughlin says last year he was asked to send North Carolina wines to be reviewed by renowned wine critic James Suckling – several scored 90 points or higher. 

“It's just that good now,” he says. “It's not just good for North Carolina. They are good wines, period.”

You can find a full list of North Carolina wineries at NCwine.org.