'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.