and Leisure named Zephaniah as one of the top twenty-five wineries in the US. Husband and wife owners Bill Hatch and Bonnie Archer consistently take home awards for their wines. In 2020 they were among several Governor’ s Cup Gold Medalist winners. That their wine is some of the finest in Virginia is a given. But their story is more about a sense of place, the land, and what one family was called to create over four generations.
Bill Hatch was a year and a half old when his father purchased the Leesburg dairy farm in 1949. Bill’ s dad, Captain William N. Hatch, had never known his own father who died in the pandemic of 1918 after soldiering in WWI. He spent a good deal of time with his grandfather on the family farm in Stockton, California. Enriched by those formative years, Captain Hatch determined to raise his kids on a farm.“ He had a magical connection with his grandfather and the farm... and a real connection with the land,” recalls Bill.
The middle child of five, Bill remembers having free reign as kids gallivanting everywhere in a full throttle discovery mode. Nature was their playground.“ We’ d ride ponies back into the woods and be out until dinner when our mom would ring a bell to get us in. That bell was from my great grandfather’ s steamship, S. S. Monticello, and you could hear it all over the farm,” Bill remembers.
Of course, there was work to do, too.“ Summers seemed like they lasted most of the year,” Bill recounts.“ We’ d all go up and follow a sled that was being pulled after the field had been disked. Our job was to pick up rocks and throw them on the sled. Later we’ d toss them into areas on the farm that needed filling in. It was hot and very dusty, and when we came back to the house, our mother would throw us in the shower. The water coming off us and circling down the drain was orange from the clay dirt.” Daily farm chores were part of growing up from a young age.“ We’ d carry milk buckets from the dairy barn to the milk cows and do our best to lift the full bucket of milk up while standing on a cinder block, to be high enough to pour it into a filter and then the cooler.”
Dairy farming was good for a number of years. In the early 1980s however, the handwriting was on the wall. Due to mechanized breakthroughs there was too much milk and not enough demand. Some farm operations started cashing out as land prices rose, and as is too often the case, the plight of farmers struggling to keep their land became overwhelming. Some farmers found new ways to survive. Bill’ s family was no different; with milk production up, demand down and debt mounting, they quickly expanded their small beef cattle operation. It saved the farm.
Then two events occurred decades apart that propelled Bill and family into the grape growing business.“ Back in 1980s my mother went to visit her mother in Wytheville, Virginia, and on the way saw a sign for Shenandoah Vineyards,” Bill recalls.“ She stopped by, bought some wine and brought it home. We were both really impressed. I had never tasted Virginia wine before and it surprised me.” At the time Shenandoah Vineyards was only the second winery licensed in Virginia. That stuck with Bill.
Then in the early 2000s another bit of serendipity took place. By this time Bonnie and Bill had twin girls, Emily and Meredith, and son Tremain. Emily was in college doing a semester in the Italian Alps, ensconced in a 1200-year-old castle with a vineyard on the property. It was a visit from father Bill and his alpine wine tasting that brought about an epiphany of sorts.“ I remember tasting that wine— the students made it as part of their studies, and they were making wine the same way winemakers did 1200 years ago! It was amazing, and I began to think maybe I could do it, too.” So Bill sat down with Emily’ s professor and suggested that perhaps he could grow wine in Virginia, but“ maybe that’ s beyond me,” he confessed.“ Bill, it’ s farming... just plant the damn grapes,” was the professor’ s reply!“ That really rang true for me... I’ d been farming all my life! Maybe I should try it.”
And so they did. The family got busy. That spring
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