'French wine' from Virginia enjoying spirited growth

Crozet, Virginia

WHEN Matthieu Finot moved to Virginia, he planned to stay for only a year. That was a decade ago. He is now among a growing number of French winemakers setting up shop in the US state, where former president and Francophile Thomas Jefferson struggled to produce grapes two centuries ago.

The 40-year-old Mr Finot grew up in the Crozes-Hermitage wine region in south-eastern France on the banks of the Rhone River before travelling here, to the foot of the Appalachian Mountains.

"We all came here a little bit by chance," said Mr Finot, who works at the vast King Family Vineyards, which sprawls across 12 hectares in the town of Crozet. "I don't think any one of us had intended to stay over the long…