My latest article on Linden Vineyards is now published – and it’s the cover story of the print version of Wine & Country Life!

Sometimes I feel like my social media can be nicknamed the ‘Jim Law Fanboy Club’ because Linden wines are featured so often. As a wine writer I try to cover multiple areas, and too much fanboying on one winery makes it tougher to cover everything else.

That said, it’s tough to overstate Jim’s influence on Virginia wine. He’s idolized by his fellow winemakers and his Hardscrabble Journal blog has a wealth of information on the growing season, pruning techniques, and ‘mentor wines’.

In our interview we covered everything from how he found the Virginia wine scene to his thoughts on hybrid grapes (not precluding more but hasn’t planted anything beyond Vidal), Linden’s test vineyard (fingers crossed we may see Fiano in the future), the ‘vine-soil relationship’ (drainage is essential so you need to plant on the right soil), and why he prefers ‘wine grower’ not ‘wine maker’.

Fortunately, there’s plenty here for non-wine geeks. Not many people know how his father’s chance sampling of a Chablis wine was the starting point for his love of wine, and how he strongly considered going to Oregon but instead chose a Shenandoah winery named Tri-Mountain because he loved the idea of exploring what was (and to an extent still is) virgin terroir.