In March of 2020, all hell broke loose.
Wineries closed, opened, closed. Customers watched their cellars dwindle. Then, a spark of hope: curbside pick-up became a thing, then parking-lot pick-ups, then home deliveries. But the rules changed weekly. It was impossible to keep up.
I started a Facebook Group to help wineries and Virginia wine fans communicate. (I never wanted to run a Facebook Group.) I named it "Support Virginia Wineries During Covid," which was a very long name for a Facebook Group.
People were really missing their wineries, so they joined the Group. We shared stories about our favorite wineries, and how many we'd visited, and where we planned to go first when the insanity was over. We bought some wines we'd never tried. Wineries made lasagna so when we picked up our drive-by wine we could also pick up some dinner. Winemakers learned how to Zoom and that was extra funny and everyone loved it. Winemakers are funny people.
A year later, I really started to hate Support Virginia Wineries During Covid. The name, not the people. Coincidentally, I noticed that even though Virginia wine fans had been given every opportunity to switch over to bourbon (and who would have blamed them?), they stuck with wine. Some wineries even whispered that they were having an excellent year. Customers had really come through for them. There sure was a lotta love there. A lotta...Love. Hey.
Support Virginia Wineries During Covid was born in March 2020 as a "save the wineries!" resource in response to the chaos of Covid. In March 2021 we became Virginia Wine Love--a more fitting name for our new purpose.
Information flies through that Facebook group now, it's so busy. It flows so fast that good intel gets lost. So I launched this website to capture it. Amazing what a community can create.
In 2010 my husband, Rick Collier, and I visited 150 Virginia wineries in 150 days, researching our soon-to-be-launched Virginia Wine in My Pocket app, one of the country's first travel apps. My articles have appeared in many travel and lifestyle magazines and I've published two editions of the book, Virginia Wine Travel Journal. I'm the founder of the 18,000-member Facebook group, Virginia Wine Love, which was launched during the Covid pandemic in 2020, and which inspired me to create the Virginia Wine Love website in 2021. In 2024, along with 13 other entrepreneurial Virginia wine women, I founded the nonprofit organization, Virginia Women in Wine. and currently serve as the VWW Board President. In 2019 I was honored to receive the Atlantic Seaboard Winery Association's Birchenall Award for Wine Media.
Rick and I are still out driving around Virginia Wine Country. Those days feel to me like the best massage. Like watching art, almost, but better. There's a relief that settles me, and a quality of light that opens my heart. It's my very favorite thing, and has been for decades, since our weekend drives out to the old Piedmont Vineyards when we were dating.
Virginia Wine Country is my place of peace, and I hope the same for you.
Nancy Bauer
I'd love to hear from you at nancy@vawinelove.com. You can see more of my work here.
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