For Valentine's Day Ken and I decided to treat ourselves to a trip to Charlottesville. Usually on Valentine's we stay home, one of us cooks dinner and the other makes dessert (feel free to gag at any time). However, to celebrate our first Valentine's as a married couple we decided some sort of trip was in order. And one of our favorite Charlottesville wineries just happened to be having a wine dinner so it made the decision easy.
Here is a sampling of some of the best places we visited, in no particular order:
Keswick- This was one of our first stops on our way to Charlottesville. Keswick won the Virginia Governor's Cup last year for their 2007 Cabernet Savigion , so we were hopeful that it would be worth the stop. Thankfully, it was. They have a lovely tasting room with something I don't think I've ever seen before: bar stools. What an excellent idea! Though I will say they should add a few more. The wines were solid throughout the tasting. I personally enjoyed the unoaked and oaked Viogniers and the reds were also very tasty. I'm please to see that winemakers are really playing with Norton to take away some of the over-riding jaminess and making it more approachable. It's becoming one of my favorite wines.
Blenheim- This is one of the newer wineries in the Charlottesville area-and they have a female wine maker! Not something you see very often in the industry. Their tasting room is beautiful and I wished it was spring so we could have had our picnic on their lovely balcony. Overall: the wines were good. You can tell they have a young winemaker but their wines showed lots of promise. We actually bought a Merlot which is pretty rare for us so kudos to them. If you visit: they are sort of on Kluge's property. Kluge is a huge winery and IMHO is overpriced and too snobby for their own good. But, if you really like champagne it might be worth your time.
Del Fosse- I probably can't say enough about this winery. First of all, it's beautiful. Second, the wines are amazing. Third, repeat. We had our Valentine's Day dinner here and it was lovely, though we didn't do a standard tasting. However, I did try the new Petite Verdot and it was fab. Claude (the owner) is always there and you always have an opportunity to chat with him. Their most "famous" wine is the Reserve D'Oriane (when Claude hired his wine maker he gave him the task of making three blended wines to be named after his three children) It's a white blend that is so unique it's almost no wonder why it has received so much attention.
King Family: OK, I'll be the first to admit when I saw the sign saying "Wine and Polo Matches" I almost turned around. I've been to enough wineries to spot a snobby one a mile away. However, much to my surprise (and relief) they were not as snobby as the sign would indicate. You can bring your own food! You can sit on their grounds! Surprisingly, these are The lovely thing about visiting wineries in the winter is that they are less busy. We were able to enjoy their fireplace, a glass of wine, three games of checkers, oh and of course the views. King family is nestled in a cute little valley surrounded by mountains. They have expanded their wine selection since we last visited and I was pleasantly surprised by their Chardonnay/Viognier blend.
Jefferson: Thomas Jefferson was an avid believer in Virginia Wine. He was convinced that Virginia could produce wines that rivaled France's. He never saw that come true but someone did see the advantage in putting a winery right by Monticello (which is great fun to visit) so lo and behold Jefferson Winery. This winery has also expanded its wine selection and they now have a fair extensive tasting. Surprisingly enough, we enjoyed the whites here more than the reds. Look for the Pinot Gris it's a great food friendly wine. While Jefferson may be on one of Thomas Jefferson's original vineyard sites its not much to look at. From the outside it looks a bit like a trailer. So, I would suggest checking out their website to get excited about visiting.
White Hall: Another beautiful property, with some fairly unique wines. First, the one we were most excited for: Touriga. A Portuguese varietal most commonly found in ports in the US. A few Virginia wineries use it in red blends with fairly good results. This single varietal is very ambitious and I was concerned it would be too "dirty" but this was well cleaned up and had a great berry quality. Probably would go best with lamb or venison. They also have a Syrah which is also very ambitious, especially for Virginia where Syrah and Pinot Noir are almost guaranteed to fail. However, the Syrah here was not bad, definitely much much lighter than anything to come out of Australia. Would probably need to sit for a few years to really develop.
So that concludes the quickest round up ever of Charlottesville wineries. Sorry for not using all of my own pictures but the camera was dying and I forgot the cord. I wish I could have finished this post sooner but its been an interesting 4 weeks to say the least. But, I missed hauling the camera into the kitchen with me the past few weeks so I'll get back into this blogging thing. I do have a few iphone photos but Ill have to upload them to see how well they turned out. So stay tuned! I do have more coming!
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