Tackling a Legacy: World-Class Vintner

Son of Former Redskins Owner Creating Bordeaux Worth $45 a Bottle

John Kent Cooke for years devoted himself to the red burgundy of his beloved Washington Redskins, of which he was president under his father and team owner, legendary entrepreneur Jack Kent Cooke.

But these days a new shade of red has a claim on John Cooke's heart: the red Bordeaux-style wine produced at his new Boxwood Winery in the Virginia horse country.

Cooke, 66, has poured millions of dollars into Boxwood, which occupies a corner of his sloping, 150-acre Middleburg farm. He hired a top local architect to design the four buildings at the state-of-the-art winery, which is made from glass, concrete, stainless steel and Virginia fieldstone. He paid the French government a royalty for certified grape vines. He bought an expensive, high-tech bottling machine from Italy and hired an up-and-coming winemaker to oversee everything from the growing of grapes to the blending of wine.

To lure wine lovers, Boxwood opened a wine bar in downtown Middleburg, complete with a machine that allows wine to stay open for days without spoiling.

"Everything has been done first class, and not a penny has been spared," Cooke said. "French Bordeaux is my favorite, and that's why we are trying to make the same stuff. It's all the best."

While Cooke minds the business side, his stepdaughter Rachel E. Martin, 36, oversees the wine production and marketing.

The plan is to produce 5,000 cases a year, or 60,000 bottles, of high-end Bordeaux-style wines for sale to exclusive restaurants, hotels and well-heeled oenophiles. The bottles will retail for around $45, but could sell in restaurants for around $60, Martin said.

Martin said the winery's first homegrown wine, known as estate wine, will be a 2006 vintage and will be bottled this February. Boxwood is now selling wine from grapes that it purchased elsewhere because its own vines took a couple of years to mature.

"We are using the highest-quality grapes that we could find on the market," Martin said. "I kept it as a boutique winery so we can be able to control the quality. That's all that really matters for us. It's manageable. We want to be something special. We don't want to be enormous and have to compete with Gallo."

Keeping it small will add to the challenge. Gerhard von Finck, owner of the nearby Piedmont Vineyards and Winery, said it will be difficult to earn much of a profit without producing larger quantities of wine and bringing in more people for tours and tastings to take advantage of economies of scale.

Von Finck said Piedmont has 13,000 paying customers a year, many of whom will spend no more than $20 for a bottle of wine.

"Once you get over $30, it's going to get really difficult to sell Virginia wine," said von Finck. "There are a lot of California wines, Oregon, Washington and Australia, and they are a lot cheaper. Who is going to pay these very high prices?"