Sigmon Taylor Photography
Good friend, what matter how or whence you come? Remember, good food, good wine and good company are the source of endless pleasures and discovery.
~Anonymous
Patrick Duffeler, Belgium-born founder and chairman of The Williamsburg Winery, greets the world with a profound sense of optimism and adventure, traits which made him uniquely suited to building a world-class winery mere miles from Jamestown, where courageous settlers established the first permanent English colony in America more than 400 years ago.
Perhaps Duffeler’s family mottos, one in French and one in German, inscribed on the walls of Wessex Hall at the winery, best sum up the guiding principles that have shaped him and his life’s passions: “Bien faire; laisser dire.” (Do things right; let people talk.) And, “Freiheit, Ehre, Treue, Weiter.” (Freedom, honor, loyalty, go farther.)
At the arc of a successful international business career, during which he traveled extensively across the globe, Duffeler decided to accept the challenge issued to him by his wife Peggy to “do something intelligent with your life.” So after an exhaustive search, the duo bought Wessex Hundred Farm in Williamsburg in 1983. Duffeler had felt a fondness for Williamsburg since visiting as a young man in 1961. “Williamsburg is the soul of America,” he noted. “When I walk the back streets in the winter, I hear the echoes of the past.”
In 1983, Virginia’s wine industry was considered fledgeling at best, with only about 14 wineries, many of which have since changed hands or ceased operations altogether. After a good deal of hard, sweaty labor on the part of the Duffelers, they harvested their first crop of grapes for the newly established winery in 1987. Today, there are more than 275 wineries across the state and The Williamsburg Winery is the largest. This year, Duffeler will pay tribute to the harvest that produced the winery’s first wine, Governor’s White, a 1987 vintage which won The Williamsburg Winery its first award just two weeks after its introduction — a gold medal from the Norfolk Yacht Club competition. The 1988 Chardonnay won the ultimate Governor’s Cup award in 1989. Governor’s White remains the winery’s most popular wine. Within five years, the operation had reached a sustainable production of 25,000 cases per year and topped 50,000 by the year 2000. Today, the Williamsburg Winery produces 40,000 to 45,000 cases per year — as many as 540,000 bottles of wine.
“It takes patience,” he said of his endeavor. “It’s a very stable, very forward-looking industry. And what could be more rewarding than conducting business on 300 acres of green space and fresh air?” His optimism is embodied in an industry where it can take up to eight years or more for a bottle of wine to evolve from harvest to dinner table.
In the Beginning
Some of Duffeler’s early childhood memories were of WWII Brussels, with bombs falling and his father chopping up chairs for the stove because it was “so bloody cold.” But there were plenty of happy memories later of extensive international travels with his family and schoolmates. One such journey took him to Williamsburg and sparked an enduring interest in colonial Virginia. “I was a terrible student,” Duffeler said, “but very fascinated by mechanical things.” Yet he subsequently became an avid student of history, literature, antiques and art, no doubt due to his travels and a natural curiosity and zest for life.
He was awarded a scholarship to the University of Rochester in New York, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance, while also learning a great deal about shoveling snow, he said. Duffeler began his professional career at Eastman Kodak, also in Rochester. It was there that he met his first wife Peggy, a California native whom he married in 1967. In the early 1970s, he joined the international operation of Philip Morris in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he developed the Formula 1 motor racing team, ushering the Marlboro brand into international motorsports. The Marlboro World Championship Team won two consecutive world titles, first in 1974 with Emerson Fittipaldi, and then in 1976 with James Hunt. “I was very emotionally involved,” he said of the Marlboro Formula 1 team. “We had some fun.” During these years, the Duffelers became the parents of two sons, Patrick II and Terence.
His travels took him across Europe, Latin America, the Far East, the Middle East and Africa. He became involved in the wine industry in Burgundy, France and developed relationships with Burgundian and other French producers. He developed an interest in the hospitality industry and participated in a study for the development of a country hotel in Beaune, Burgundy. “I fell in love with the wine world,” he said. “With thousands of years of history, it is a collegial, old-fashioned industry.”
In the early 1980s, Duffeler was named international president of Fragrances Selective with offices in New York, Geneva and Barcelona, thus balancing his time between two continents. “Being involved in the development of essences for a fragrance house turned out to be beneficial in the wine industry,” he said. Experts have identified about 700 aroma compounds in wine.
At this point, the Duffelers began considering a new direction for their future. During a vacation in Guadeloupe, stranded in a rainstorm on a little island outpost, Peggy posed the question: “What are we going to do next?” This simple question was the beginning of some serious soul searching about a daring new journey. “Let’s do something very different,” she had said, “like buying a farm in a place that has a good climate; you should quit your corporate rat race business involvement, and we can raise Patrick II and Terence on a farm that breathes freedom and independence.” As Duffeler explains, “That was the beginning of the adventure that would bring us to settle next to Jamestown Island, some 376 years after the first British settlement in the New World.”
The pair had scoured the Virginia countryside by the time they finally decided on the Wessex Hundred property in 1983. Their other choice locations, Argentina and New Zealand, were ultimately deemed “too distant.” Before they closed the deal on the purchase, they had agreed on starting a genuine agricultural business — a winery. Duffeler said that the agent looked at them skeptically “as if we had just come down from the moon or anywhere else in outer space. ‘A winery? A place where you make wine by stomping on grapes and sell it?’” Exactly.
From Infancy to Adulthood
After they enthusiastically jumped in to their new endeavor, the Duffelers found themselves dealing with the twin challenges of making the property habitable for their family and establishing their brand new vineyard. “History tells us that the early settlers experienced some difficulties, particularly in winter. Well, they were not the only ones,” Duffeler said. What followed were years of labor-intensive clean-up, renovations, construction, project development, frustrations, planting, growing, harvesting and producing. Success was hard won.
They planted their first vines in 1985. By early 1987, Duffeler had left his corporate career and was able to devote all his time and energy to the winery. From the first planting of three acres and the first harvest in ’87, the vineyards have grown steadily to more than 40 acres of eight grape varietals. From the first intense renovation of the main residence, construction proceeded to include the viticulture house, the winery and cellars, event space, barns, sheds, a guest house and a greenhouse. Following the initial triumph of the 1988 Governor’s White, the Williamsburg Winery soon reached the profitable threshold of 25,000 cases. Early on, the little winery had made a name for itself by becoming popular enough to begin running out of inventory. In the meantime, while working their 300-acre property, the Duffelers had seen the unearthing of early American artifacts, salvaged seven wrecked cars and numerous old appliances from a ravine on the property, demolished the remains of three unstable silos by shooting them down with an abundance of personal firearms and the help of friends and neighbors, planted 50,000 trees, and overseen the protection of a cypress bog.
In 2004, Peggy Duffeler, always a driving force in the winery’s journey, passed away before seeing the full measure of her efforts on behalf of her family and the farm. Nevertheless, her spirit lives on throughout Wessex Hundred. “She has been the spiritual mother of the entire winery project,” Duffeler said.
In 2007 Duffeler opened a boutique, European-style country hotel within walking distance of the winery. Wedmore Place is the result of 10 years of planning and three years of construction. The design is based on ideas picked up on Duffeler’s travels. Also that year, he married Francoise, a native of France. She was an inspiration for the hotel’s decor. Each of the hotel’s 28 rooms is named after a province in Europe and is decorated to reflect the region. “We wanted to convey the differences between different cultures,” he said. “We have 15th-century to 19th-century themes, from rustic to sumptuous.” The winery also has two dining options — Gabriel Archer Tavern, located adjacent to Wessex Hall, and Café Provencal in Wedmore Place.
He compares the development of the winery to the passage of a person from infancy to adulthood. In the beginning there is birth and growth, in the middle there is progress and enrichment, and finally there is maturity and esteem. The winery has received more than 250 industry awards. It has won seven annual awards from Decanter Magazine. The winery’s Acte 12 Chardonnay was rated “One of the Best Wines in the World” in the magazine’s world wine awards in 2007 and 2008. Robert Parker, a leading U.S. wine critic with an international influence, named the Williamsburg Winery an “excellent producer,” and since 2014, five of its wines have garnered 90+ point ratings. Its 2010 Adagio won the prestigious Virginia Governor’s Cup in the 2014 competition.
Well into its third decade of operations, the company has “passed the test of becoming an adult,” Duffeler said. He recounts a memory of meeting Marchese Antinori of the 600-year-old Italian wine company, the tenth-oldest family owned company in the world. Duffeler spoke to him about the challenges facing the winery and Antinori noted, “The next 100 years will be a lot easier.”
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Looking forward to 2025 and beyond, Duffeler envisions the winery in its maturity — quality over quantity, strong assets, stable and steady growth, and the development of the winery into a culinary destination. “What is success?” he muses. “Success is anybody who is passionate about his work and does things to the best of his abilities,” he said. “Success comes one day at a time and good people are important. We have assembled an evolutionary team, a team that has belief.”
Duffeler’s son Patrick Duffeler II, who has been involved with the winery since the beginning, serves as president and CEO. Matthew Meyer is vice president and winemaker, Kristen Duffeler is vice president and in-house counsel, Simon Smith is vice president of food and beverage, and Michael Kimball is assistant vice president of marketing. Terrence Duffeler maintains close ties with his family and the winery and works as an executive director at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
“The Williamsburg Winery, while taking great pride in the significance of the place it occupies in the wine-making history of Virginia, will never stop looking towards the future,” Duffeler wrote in his 2002 book, The Art & Science of Viticulture and Winemaking at the Williamsburg Winery. “The architects of the winery’s success are its people and their love of wine, of Virginia, and of the hospitality for which our state is famous,” he wrote.
“Enjoy life,” is the frequent parting advice he gives when signing off on his letters, emails and blog posts. But the saying most often heard at the Williamsburg Winery is, “The best is yet to come.”
Wine rejoices the heart of man, and joy is the mother of all virtue.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Perhaps Duffeler’s family mottos inscribed on the walls of Wessex Hall at the winery, best sum up the guiding principles that have shaped him and his life’s passions:“Bien faire; laisser dire.” (Do things right; let people talk.) And, “Freiheit, Ehre, Treue, Weiter.” (Freedom, honor, loyalty, go farther.)