Oh my god, it's a tomato!

My brain unlocks a new aroma and I make a big stink about it.

I’ve had this bottle twice before. It’s a sparkling Sangiovese the color of Dorothy’s slippers and in Leicester, North Carolina, it’s as far from it’s Tuscan home as can be.

I don’t think I’ve ever met a person serious about wine who doesn’t love our dear Sangie. There’s Brunello di Montalcino, Morellino di Scansano, Sangieveto, Prugnolo Gentile, Chianti, and don’t forget Nielluciu, it’s Corsican pseudonym. This grape is an artifact of wine and human history and each time I return to it I unlock new aromas.

But this bottle, named Crown & Plough, sings an Appalachian tune. It was made by Matt Duerstock in his third season at Addison Farms Winery in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a region the rest of the wine world pays no mind to. But I’ve become fascinated with the fact that there are thriving, bustling wine regions that their respective hospitality scenes pretend don’t exist, and I’ve moved to the western part of my homestate to wonder what is so lovable about a wine nobody cares about.

I’m on round three with the stuff, sitting in the leather chair of my sublet watching Sister Wives after a long day of writing. My mind, distracted by the goings on of a polygamist family, suddenly registers something. I’ve smelled that before…what is it?

If you devote your life’s work to smelling wine, you might develop a visual as you connect the dots: perhaps your brain yanks its long-as-hell filing cabinet of “Smells You Know” out and rifles through it like a maniac—quick, before it fades. Or maybe yours is more of a beep boop of dial-up, signing on, signing on. This time, I’m a mouse in a maze. My brain goes left, hits a dead end. It’s not herbs. Turns around and BAM! Runs straight into a tomato. Falls on it’s back—little birds drift up towards the ceiling. 

Tomato! I’ve heard you uttered from the mouths of Sangiovese holders plenty! In incantations, your leaves and fruit are animated and re-defined. Nodding along, I wondered why my brain didn’t know you. But here in the Blue Ridge Mountains, you are full frontal and unapologetic— there’s no place like home. 

Realizing I’m suddenly standing—alone in my living room—I sit back down in my leather chair. My dog peers up at me, tracking my movement. It’s just us (and the cat, of course) in an overpriced apartment from where I’m attempting to live in wine country on a wine writer’s income.

This sparkling wine actually had a hand in bringing me here. It was a year ago that it appeared in the style of I Dream Of Jeanie to the wine bar I was working, three hours east in Charlotte. My manager poured me a glass from the labelless, cardinal bottle. 

The only thing more baffling than a wine label is a bottle with no label at all. To be poured a taste from these show-don’t-tells is to be invited backstage, a heavy velvet curtain pulled to the side. With a sip of this wine, everything I’d been told about my homestate came flopping down—embarrassing. This was a world away from the sweet, lifeless muscadine I’d been told not to bother with. It was a carrier pigeon with a message: we’re trying something different here.

Left wondering what to do with my newfound embarrassment of having perpetuated an un-truth about my home, I retreated to the mountains for a time out. I’d spend my time thinking about what I’d done, and more importantly, I’d see for myself what was happening here. And eventually, I’d head butt a tomato. Just like in the movies.

In wine, “tomato” and “tomato leaf” are often used interchangeably, at the speakers discretion. They often point to an earthy or vegetal character that can come from the grapes being picked at their earlier stages of ripeness. Shruthi Dhoopati, Duerstock’s predeccesor and the first winemaker to dare a bubbly Sangiovese at the winery, says that unlike the other red grapes planted on site, Sangiovese has the perfect chemistry and flavor profile early on. “Varieties like Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc, when not ripe taste like bell pepper,” Dhoopati told me. “That doesn’t taste good in sparkling wine. Sangiovese has the right Brixx, low pH, really neutral flavor, and balanced acidity.” She validated my aromatic breakthrough by pointing out that Chianti’s classic pairing is pasta with tomato sauce, after all.

Duerstock agrees with Dhoopati’s early-to-rise approach to Appalachian Sangiovese, adding that it’s necessary to avoid rot. “When you look at what North Carolina can grow, you know, we’re light,” he told me. “We have a shorter growing season. Our climate is cool, plus we have a ton of rain. So you pull your grapes early and then you have this high acidity, with lower sugar. And I think that translates very well to sparkling.”

What this tells me is that the flavor profile of this particular bottle is a direct response to the needs of the place. To compare the Crown & Plough to the wines of Tuscany would be to do it a complete disservice. The earliest record of Chianti is from the 13th century, but it wasn’t for another 600 years that it was agreed that Sangiovese should be the frontrunner of the iconic blend. North Carolina, on the other hand, still has that new baby smell. Savor the newness: today it smells like tomatoes. 

Duerstock, who admittedly sees the world through bubble-tinted glasses, tells me that the Crown & Plough was originally intended to be a still rosé. “The depth of color it pulled was very surprising,” he told me, “and I started letting my invasive thoughts of bubbles occur and entertained them. I did some samples, then some test bottles and it was so, so fun.” The fun for me is being pulled out of my reality TV binge to the reality of a tomato sitting directly in my wineglass, like a watchful adult in a kiddie pool. Maybe this pool isn’t made for me, it says, but I have good reason to be here.