New year, new beginnings. New to wine? If so, it’s time to bone up on what makes a wine what it is.

RICHMOND — What do you get when you combine water, American persimmons and hops, and ferment it with yeast? A beer based on a 300-year-old recipe scribbled in a cookbook kept by Virginia’s prominent Randolph family.

t’s a nice day in the Napa Valley and the sun that turns the region’s plump grapes into prized cabernet sauvignon is shining down on the Odette Estate winery.