interesting read. good history of VA's wine industry included

[acroyear]

Fairfax County Project Highlights Tension Between Winemakers and Local Officials - washingtonpost.com:

Grapes have already bloomed on the vines growing in tidy, picturesque rows on the grounds of what could become Fairfax County's first winery.

But a legal tangle involving the owners, the county and the state threatens to kill the venture before its second harvest.

Paradise Springs Winery began as the project of a mother and son searching for ways to pay inheritance taxes on a historic farm. Its owners expect to hear any day whether the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board will grant them a license to make and sell wine in Clifton, a corner of southern Fairfax filled with horse farms and sprawling five-acre lots. But even if the state grants a license, the county is likely to fight the winery, arguing that it is more of a factory than a farm and therefore inconsistent with zoning laws.

Besides rehashing frictions that exist between Richmond and Northern Virginia, the conflict demonstrates the tensions that have grown between local governments and increasingly powerful winemakers and their friends in the General Assembly.

Virginia's wine industry remains tiny compared with California's, but the state has made great strides in the quality and quantity of its wines. Thirty years ago, the idea that Virginia could produce a quality table wine was enough to draw gasps.