Virginia’s Early Mountain Vineyards’ Petit Manseng Starts in a Very Special Barrel

If you haven’t noticed, Virginia wine is on wine lovers’ minds these days. In May, The New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov declared that Virginia Is Finally for Wine Lovers. Last month, James Suckling staff writer Brian Freedman brought focus to the region with this headline: Stepping Up to the World Wine Stage, Virginia Finds its Footing. Make no mistake, though. These recent headlines full of praise don’t mean that Virginia wine is an overnight sensation. 

The history of wine in the Old Dominion state goes back to the 1600s, and much, of course, has been written about Thomas Jefferson’s viticultural failures at Monticello a century later. Its modern success is due to decades of hard work by winemakers and viticulturists determining what works well in the vineyard and the cellar throughout various parts of the state. Grapes such as Cabernet Franc, Viognier, Chardonnay, and Merlot are now well established throughout, but Virginia’s winemakers continue to seek out what else may shine in their bottles. 

One of the grapes they’re increasingly turning to is Petit Manseng, where the state’s “heat, humidity, heavy rainfall, and soil (primarily composed of granite-based clay) are prime growing conditions for the wet-weather grape.” The grape originated in South West France, where it’s still a prominent variety, frequently vinified into sweet wine. In Virginia, however, it’s most often a dry wine grape that’s on the rise. One of the state’s fastest-growing varieties, it currently occupies about 200 acres of the state’s vineyards. This year, two of the top 12 wines in the Virginia Governor’s Cup Case, the highest scorers from over 600 wines entered in the competition, were produced from Petit Manseng.

In Madison, about 45 minutes north of where Jefferson had his doomed vines planted, Early Mountain Vineyards produces a Petit Manseng that’s similar in style to those top-scoring wines, but does it differently than other local wineries – maybe differently than any winery anywhere.

The Perpetual Lees Barrel

“There’s a finite number of new things,” says Maya Hood White, winemaker and viticulturalist at Early Mountain. “Somewhere, someone has to be doing something like this.”

By “this,” Hood is referring to aging some of each vintage’s Petit Manseng in one very big barrel in Early Mountain’s cellar. When the juice hits that barrel, it’s not alone in there. It joins the ghosts of vintages past – in the form of lees.

She refers to that big barrel as the “perpetual lees barrel,” and there are lees in the barrel from every vintage dating back to 2017. In 2018, when Hood removed the 2017 vintage from one barrel, she didn’t do the usual cleaning that would have removed the lees. Rather, she immediately added juice from the 2018 vintage into the barrel. In 2019, she sized up, moving the process to a 1,000-liter barrel. Today, in that barrel, there are the lees from nine vintages of Petit Manseng working their magic on the 2024 vintage. 

Hood readily admits that this is not her original idea, although she doesn’t know of any other winery currently doing this with Petit Manseng. The idea came from a 2018 visit to Bellwether Hard Cider and Wine in the Finger Lakes, where she discovered the winemaker had put Riesling in a tank with old lees, although Hood doesn’t believe the winery makes that wine anymore.

“The Riesling was so fresh and delicious, you wouldn’t know it was old lees,” says Hood, who was assistant winemaker at Early Mountain at the time. She convinced her boss to allow her to try it with one barrel of Petit Manseng. The experiment was a success, and she’s open to others borrowing her idea, as she did from the Finger Lakes winery.

“I sometimes worry I talk about it too much, but I’m hoping if I do, someone else will tell me they’re doing it,” Hood says. 

How It Works

Lees, the yeast cells that have done their work converting the sugars in grape juice into alcohol, are frequently referred to as “spent” or “dead,” but it’s not always as cut and dried as that.

“From a strictly microbial standpoint, the lees aren’t dead,” says Hood. “With our Petit Manseng, we do nothing when our wine is finished. We don’t add sulfur to inhibit microbial activity.”

Without inhibiting microbial activity, yeast can live on for a long time, even if it’s not actively fermenting. 

“We are introducing juice that has a lot of microbial life to it to an already nutrient-rich environment that’s constantly producing more nutrients from the breakdown of historic lees. Because there are new microbes in the juice, there’s enough nutrition and fuel to generate new yeast. It’s kind of self-feeding because you have a breakdown of other microbes from newly introduced yeast and bacteria,” explains Hood.

“Naturally, a whole other ecosystem is going on in there,” she says. 

As the spent yeast continuously breaks down over the 12 months, the liquid comes into contact with them in the barrel as they release nano proteins. This gives the wine in the barrel additional characteristics even after it’s fully fermented.

She’s very protective of her perpetual lees barrel, sterilizing after every sampling to make sure she introduces nothing new into the barrel that could disturb what’s already going on inside. 

Only about 10 to 12% of the Petit Manseng juice from a vintage goes into the perpetual lees barrel. After the wine is removed from the barrel, Hood blends it with the rest of the Petit Manseng from the same vintage before moving it to stainless steel for an additional 12 months. Then, it’s bottled with a smidge of Sauvignon Blanc, just two percent. 

The Difference

“I love the way Petit Manseng ages,” says Hood. 

The addition of the wine from the perpetual lees barrel gives it the savory notes of aging, but earlier in the aging process than if it had not been in the special barrel. She also believes this method gives the wine more ageability once bottled, allowing the wine to drink well for five to ten years. 

“You get so much more autolytic texture, a bready brioche character that I don’t believe would exist without [the addition of the wine from the perpetual lees barrel],” she says.

The end result is something “a little more savory with a little more spicy wild character to the finished wine,” she believes. Those savory and spicy notes join the fruity characteristics, such as pineapple and citrus, that are associated with Petit Manseng. 

“More than any other wine, our dry Petit Manseng represents our winegrowing philosophy at Early Mountain – constantly learning and adapting our techniques to meet our sites,” Hood writes in her online tasting notes. The wine has become one of Early Mountain’s flagship wines, and just recently garnered an accolade that is an indication Hood is really on to something here. At the 2025 Decanter World Wine Awards, the 2022 Petit Manseng earned Gold, ranking it in the top 5% of global wines tasted.

The judges’ tasting notes ended with one word, “Fabulous!” Perhaps that praise will give Hood one of the things she’s hoping for: other winemakers to give the perpetual lees barrel method a try.