Meredyth

The F4U, Oxford and a Middleburg Winery

A former mentor to whom several Virginia winemakers owe much, brought a dusty bottle of wine to the local farm market where I often took lunch. I had several happy, productive harvests with him as intern, and years later was recruited as a winemaker to a winery where he was consulting.

It was back then that I learned what a 620 ton harvest was like, on a visceral scale, for a crew of five. About 120 tons per man.

It would not stretch credibility to mention that wine consulting firm as the best in Virginia. Unlike those who know them by reputation only, I had the privilege of working with them for several harvests.

I knew staff at the market from frequently catching a bite to eat when work allowed. Some viewed them as a cult, but their family franchise involving similar markets around the world, was no different from far more corporate businesses.

They were viewed with suspicion, and boycotted by some, for professing their Christianity.

There were friends just down the road who ran a winery, whose prior owners I also knew, and with whom I had worked several of the fifteen harvests that constitute my career as vintner.

Hospitality was not my entre’: but as a former hard-science academic, technology was.

Although I once viewed it as amusing long ago, my lunch friend with his dusty bottle had once suggested we might meet again somewhere along the wine trail when I finished my last internship harvest with him. When I had trouble finding short-term intern housing near Gordonsville that year, he arranged a room with his in-laws.

The first night at Mad Maggie’s began like a Hitchcock thriller.

The family spent weekends in their Carytown house in Richmond, and were at the farm only weekends.

There was another guest who was supposed to show the first night in the deserted farm house, a wine writer whose name I later learned.

Lana Bortolot.

* * *

For a number of reasons, Meredyth, the now-defunct vineyard, offered a peek into the Virginia wine industry and its early practitioners.

Anyone who knows me, would not be surprised at my delight when I learned that Maj. Archibald M. Smith, II, USMC (1920-1998) founder of Meredyth Winery, was a Marine combat pilot (F4U Corsair) in the Southwest Pacific during 1945.

He had been shot down near Guadalcanal in the Battle of Okinawa, and rescued days later after finding safety among the local freedom fighters. The usual fate of American pilots who fell into Japanese hands, was beheading.

What was of deeper interest was that Smith’s son, Archie M. Smith, III, a chemistry major (University of Virginia) turned philosopher, was that he was talented enough to land a faculty job at Oxford University when he completed graduate studies there.

When the father had sectioned off a small plot to grow grapes near Middleburg, he sent word to Oxford to recruit his son as winemaker.

My mentor had, early in his career, known and worked with Archie III (1946-2009), before Archie succumbed to throat cancer at age 63.

Dr. Smith had won several Virginia Governor’s Cup awards and had been president of the Virginia Wine Board. Most significantly, he was a driving force of the 1980 Farm Act that opened wine sales to farm wineries when previously, wine was exclusively marketed through ABC stores in Virginia.

There remain details of this epic saga yet to be disclosed or uncovered about the curious career of Dr. Archibald Magill Smith, III….