Virginia’s wine community has long tied its story to Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s “first oenophile,” who famously believed that his native region could grow world-class wine, though his own attempts at Monticello failed. The region around Charlottesville is known today as the Monticello American Viticultural Area, and the wineries market themselves as the Monticello Wine Trail. That spiritual tie to one of the authors of the Declaration of Independence was strengthened in early January when the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Monticello, acquired the nearby Jefferson Vineyards.