From Uruguay to Virginia, Tannat Takes Off

Loudoun County and Monticello vintners are evolving their winemaking styles to fully harness Tannat’s nuance and potential. [...] Read More... The post From Uruguay to Virginia, Tannat Takes Off appeared first on Wine Enthusiast.

Apr 18, 2025 - 22:14

Known for its big tannins, high acid and ageability, Tannat is widely considered Uruguay’s national grape.

Recently, the grape is taking off elsewhere: Virginia. Thanks to a growing number of producers planting and working with Tannat, as well as a winemakers exchange program with Uruguay, Virginia vintners are evolving their winemaking styles to fully harness Tannat’s nuance and potential.

“Tannat is a variety that is increasingly highly regarded in Virginia,” says Ben Sedlins, vineyard manager at Walsh Family Wine in Northern Virginia. “Vinologically, it holds its acid really well, and it can get very ripe even in a year when it might struggle to ripen. It also tends to yield fairly well.”

When Sedlins started at Walsh Family Wine in 2018, he had just returned from working his second harvest with winemaker Francisco Carrau at Bodega Cerro Chapeu in Uruguay, where about half of the vineyard’s 100 acres are devoted to Tannat.

“Because [Tannat] is so widely grown in Uruguay, you can basically find it in every single style you’d make a wine,” says Sedlins. “They have rosés; they have Port-style Tannats; they have big, chewy reds with tons of oak; they have much more finessed, softer reds.”

He adds, “But a lot of people, including Francisco, are going generally for a little bit more finesse and a little bit more softness, specifically on the tannin side. Because it is very easy for that grape to present very boldly.”

Tannat Vineyard at Walsh Family Wine / Image Courtesy of Walsh Family Wine

Virginia-Style Tannat, 2.0

Until recently, Sedlins says, the Virginia style of Tannat leaned bolder—winemakers played off the grape’s nice acid, strong tannins and rich color, often opting for new or newer oak. The result? “A tannin bomb, or something that’s really ageworthy, really food-friendly, but really chewy and kind of large,” he says.

This wasn’t what Walsh Family Wine wanted. So, with input from Sedlins and winemaker Kent Arendt, the team harnessed Tannat’s softer side. This “more balanced approach” involves relying on colder fermentations and macerations to slow down the extraction, utilizing more neutral oak and relying on a longer barrel- and bottle-age.

Learning from Uruguayan winemakers has become increasingly important to Loudoun County winemakers producing Tannat. So much so that Visit Loudoun (a k a D.C.’s wine country, where Walsh Family Wine is located) has helped fund a winemakers exchange program with its sister county: Canelones, Uruguay.

“Both are upcoming regions on the wine stage,” Sedlins says. “Their soils are not the same as ours. But from a climate standpoint, they do get rain and humidity in a way that is familiar to a Virginia grower.”

In July 2024, Loudoun County sent its first cohort to Canelones. The group included WildKind winemaker Cameron Bane, who is planning to apply the winemaking techniques he learned at Bodega Familia Deicas to produce two styles of Tannat. The first is Joven de Tannat, a young Tannat that employs an extended maceration period to achieve a smoother, lighter, jammier red and is barrel-aged for roughly a year. He’ll also make Liqueur de Tannat, a higher-ABV, Port-style dessert wine, with the aim of maximizing the grape’s red fruit expression, ranging from dark raspberries to black cherries.

“Tannat is a very beautiful varietal to work with,” says Bane. “You can harvest it at different points to express the different underlying value of the grape itself. Whether you want a more dark red or prune expression from the fruit, you can deliver both of those from Tannat.”

Bane and his father, a certified nutrient management planner in Virginia, are particularly interested in soil composition and pH levels. While the soils in Loudoun County and Canelones are different, they share similarly high pH levels, and both regions are set on rolling hills.

Grape Vines at Zephaniah Farm Vineyard / Photography by Aboud Dweck

Two Regions, Two Styles, One Grape

Maya Hood White, head winemaker at Early Mountain Vineyards in Madison, part of the Monticello AVA, gained Tannat intel from her own trip to Uruguay two years ago.

Learning about the two regions’ comparably high soil pH gave her the confidence to plant an additional four acres of Tannat at the vineyard’s Quaker Run mountain site.

“This soil seems an exceptionally good fit for Tannat because it has higher pH,” she says. “There’s little clay there, but it has these unique attributes that we’re sometimes glossing over”—like high rock and mineral diversity.

Tannat is one of Hood White’s favorite grapes to work with, though it has taken some time to learn the varietal’s quirks.

“Tannat can easily accumulate sugar quite quickly, but it’s really finding that balance between the tannin and general vinological ripeness—the sugar,” she says. Because of Tannat’s large clusters, Hood White tends to bring them down early to preserve their aromatics.

“During fermentation, it actually smells like guava,” she says. “You get tropical notes up front, then you get deep, dark red fruit characteristics.”

Bouza winery's Tannat vineyard in Melilla, during harvest on March 13, 2023 — Bouza winery’s Tannat vineyard in Melilla, during harvest on March 13, 2023 / Photography by PABLO PORCIUNCULA / AFP via Getty Images

Hood White has used Tannat to make Early Mountain Red blends, including Novum, where the grape’s big fruit and high tannin work harmoniously with Cabernet Franc.

“As it ages, it does lose some of the fresh, primary notes, but it develops into this more red, black, blue stone fruit, heavy berries,” she says.

The recently released 2021 Quaker Run Tannat is made with whole cluster inclusion (around 25%, including stems). This method, along with aging it nearly two years in bottle, helped to achieve more nuanced aromas.

“We keep it bottle-aged a little bit longer to allow things to mellow and allow it to be a bit more expressive—less monolithic like it can be on the front end,” says Hood White.

Even the challenges of navigating Virginia’s weather events pique her interest in working with Tannat.

“Even in a substantial frost year like 2020, when the state saw widespread frost damage, we still had a Tannat that—while maybe a lighter expression than what I’m used to—is still really compelling,” says Hood White. “Being able to experience this variety in variability in vintage gives me even more excitement to see wider-spread plantings and where the future of variety is.”