Luka Paskina, a wine-maker has come from Italy with the aim to bring his mastery to Virginia 17 years ago. He has managed to frame up to the local climate and soils. He has gained a lot of success and contrasted with Thomas Jefferson, who has had a complete washout some hundreds years ago.

Paskina, the senior manager of Barboursville winery and other wine sellers have studied well what and how is working in Virginia and now some of their wines have got a merited popularity and leave behind similar wines from even older vineyards.

As a result, Virginia became an attractive place for tourists – admirers of local cuisine and wine. Earlier it attracted tourists with its history and nature, but now tourism has grown up because of the opening of the wine routes. These routes have several directions to different regions of the state – wine factories, restaurants, historical places and special events.

In the same Barbousvile tried vainly the third American president to cultivate European grape and make wine in his Monticello manor. He visited wine-making regions of France, Germany and Italy being the envoy in Paris from 1785 till1789. Having come back to the US he has been serving best wines at parties in the White House, subsidizing farmers who tried to grow grape and also has been trying to reduce the wine tax. “No one drinks too much there where wine is cheap, and no people remain sober there where the high wine prices make people to abuse strong drinks,” – he considered.

There were only several wineries in Barbousville in the year of foundation; now 120 wineries are scattered on the territory of the whole state. Virginia has become the fifth-important wine-making state in the USA. Jefferson would be proud of this.

After a wine degustation visitors may have dinner in Palladio, the Italian restaurant in the north of Barbousville. Melissa Close, its chief-cook uses solely local products, crabs and fish from Chesapeake bay for cooking. The autumn offers include several rich dishes which are being served with wines of 2005: fried quail with pumpkin, venison with liquorices and potato-mushroom pie, breast cut with fried tomatoes and new vegetables.

Paskina is sure that culinary tourism is stimulated by popularity of TV culinary shows. He can see that Americans appreciate wine more and more, especially the red wine, which was considered as “too heavy” earlier.

“People have been considering wine as a separate drink. Only now they find out how to drink it with meal, they are studying and at the same time getting pleasure”, tells Luka.

The press-secretary of tourism department in Virginia says that “for the last three years we began to pay more attention to wine-making”. A guest that choses wine routes of Virginia spends two times more than usual: $299 instead of $129, according to the local tourism department.

Some wine-makers arrange celebrations that attract even more tourists in autumn.

The wine factory in Williamsburg is planning to open a Wedm ore Place hotel with 28 luxurious rooms surrounded by vineyards.

Another wine factory Tarara keeps 560 square meters of casks for tasting new wines in its cellar.

Villa Appalacia Winery in the south of Virginia is planning to issue a new sort of red Italian wine that has been named aglianico.