Time in a bottle: trading chips for sips, an ex-CEO finds growing grapes and making wine can be more complex than creating software.

• Author: Bailey, David
• Position: COVER STORY

Max Lloyd stands atop a ridge in northeastern Guilford County. A steady breeze from the nearby Haw River combs his hair as he surveys long rows of neatly espaliered chardonel vines. It's high noon in the dead of summer, and an unsparing sun beats down on the surrounding clover, its leaves seared to the color of burnt umber. It hasn't rained in 15 days, and unlike other farmers around him, Lloyd is loving it. While nearby corn withers, Grove Winery grapes load up on sugar and minerals, foreshadowing what winemakers call a vintage year. Rain would change the equation, especially late in the summer when the state often gets so much. Why? "Never allow anyone," as one winemaker says, "to put a quart of water in your spaghetti sauce at the very end."

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Lloyd, 46, hopes that the ridge above the river where he planted his eight acres of vines will provide the sort of microclimate that has made the Loire, Rhone, Sonoma and Napa valleys internationally famous. It was only last year that the Haw River Valley--868 square miles in Alamance, Caswell, Chatham, Guilford, Orange and Rockingham counties--became North Carolina's third American Viticultural Area, federal recognition of its potential to produce distinctive wines. It has a longer growing season, Lloyd says, than the Yadkin Valley and Swan Creek AVAs, giving late-season reds--cabernet sauvignon, sangiovese and cabernet franc--time to reach full flavor. Plus, he says, sifting large particles of river sand and gravel through his hands, the valley's soil is perfect for grapes: "This unique soil is not only mineral-rich but also allows excess rainfall to be quickly taken away from the grapevine's roots, generating lush, intense flavors," he explains.

But nobody knows whether any of the state's AVAs will produce wines to compete or compare with those of the West Coast or even Virginia. "The entire state of North Carolina is still one big experiment, specifically for French vinifera wines," says Lenna Hobson, who, with her husband, Frank, has been making Ragapple Lassie wines in Booneville for nearly a decade. "Which varietal, which root stock and which clone has been largely a crap shoot. This is why most vineyards end up pulling up vines and replanting them as part of their hunt for the right choices."

The uninitiated might think the reason Europe and California produce the best and most expensive wines on the planet comes from terroir, the combination of their climate and geography. But superb wines are produced not merely because terroir is ideal but because people in those places have been making wine for generations, even millennia, and know what to do under less than ideal circumstances--after a rainy summer, for instance. Asked if he thinks North Carolina has what it takes to compete with world-class wine regions, Jerry Douglas, who has been at Biltmore Estate's winery in Asheville 25 years and is senior vice president of marketing and sales, says, "I do. I believe we are still searching for the right expression of grapes in each area, but it will take time and commitment. This is a business that takes multiple generations to establish."

"I disagree," Lloyd says. "Ravenswood in Sonoma and Sullivan in Napa and Barboursville, Horton and Linden in Virginia made an international name for themselves in less than two decades. After a decade of harvests, you should have a pretty good statistical sample of what a vineyard block can do in different types of years." Whoever is right, the reputation of North Carolina's wine industry is up for grabs. And as its 80-plus wineries lurch awkwardly into adolescence, some think that reputation is in peril, Lloyd included. "I think it's important that people's early experience with North Carolina wines be good."

"Absolutely revolting," opines New York critic Nick Passmore after sampling one of five bottles BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA sent him from a medium-size, established Tar Heel winery. "Totally artificial floral flavor, not unlike those air fresheners one buys in gas stations." Of another, BusinessWeek.com's wine columnist says, "Muddy and undrinkable. Even the color's wrong--dull, faded and lifeless." In his tasting notes, he writes: "What are these people doing?"

"The next 10 years could be a painful and expensive 10 years trying to reacquire customers whose first experiences are...