Last Saturday’s winery visits (#112 through 116 on our 150 Wineries in 150 Days Tour) make a great “Five Faces of Virginia Wine” itinerary.
The Rustic Horse Barn
Willowcroft, the first winery to open in now-hopping Loudoun County, has a lock on our award for “coolest winery building ever.” To get to the tasting room, you walk through the center of the pre-Civil war barn and past the old horse stalls, one still bearing a plaque for a star racer of yesteryear. Nouveau rustic is the “in” look at new Virginia wineries (and we love it; who wouldn’t?), but Willowcroft’s rustic feel comes with actual history, and the wine is good, too – amazing what you can do with a few of decades of experience.
Willowcroft's fabulous horse stalls
Bill, Robert, Pam, Rick, and Dean. RICK? Who let him behind the bar?
The Multi-Generation Farm
At Zephaniah, a former dairy farm is reborn as winery. There’s no tasting bar per se—the tastings take place in what looks like the family’s living room, with photos of kids and grandparents, and books and little tchatchkes for sale. Owner and winemaker Bill Hatch stayed busy weaving through the crowd, bottle in hand, probably sending up little prayers of thanks to Bacchus for taking matters in hand. Selling wine’s gotta be more fun than peddling dairy.
Heading into Zephaniah
The hordes have arrived...
The Revolution in the Making
Hopping down to Middleburg, we made our first pilgrimage to Chrysalis. Half of D.C. was there. (The attractive, well dressed, and young-enough-to-be-carded half). At our tasting, the girl next to me asked if I was tired of tasting wines yet. Odd, I thought, since we’d only tried one or two. Then—oh, be still my heart–she said she recognized me from our blog and had been following our 150 Wineries Tour.
I thought of that line from Notting Hill, where Honey says to Julia Roberts: “Oh God, this is one of those key moments in life, when it’s possible you can be really, genuinely cool – and I’m failing 100%.”
You may have noticed that I already mentioned Our Readers in my last post, and even took a photo of Them. So, clearly, I am not genuinely cool. But you have to admit, Our Readers are quite attractive. And exceptionally intelligent.
Why everyone comes to Chrysalis. And for the Norton.
John, educating and entertaining the horde
The Old Favorite
I’d been looking forward to Piedmont since we started this Tour. When Rick and were dating, in 1999, we drove out to Piedmont more than once to buy bottles of Hunt Country Chardonnay and sit in the Adirondack chairs on the lawn. We held hands and talked weddings. Rick does not remember this. I find this an odd thing for him to not remember, don’t you?
The winery has now gone upscale, with a big new tasting building, but the Adirondacks are still there.
Piedmont, looking spiffy
The look, and the chairs, that won me over
The Perfectionist
We had to flee Piedmont after just a couple of tastes to make our 4:00 tour reservation ($20) at Boxwood. A big, white electric fence and a call box marked the entrance to the winery, but the subtlety was lost on us, and we drove the ‘hood trying to find the way in. Fortunately, we had friends on the inside waiting for us, so they relayed instructions via cell phone.
Inside, the subtlety continued, with an angles and circles theme that played out in rooms of stainless steel and glass. Every item encountered is the best available, precisely placed: A laser guides the planting of the vines to perfect symmetry; the barrels in the wine cave, arranged in meticulous concentric circles; a gleaming, top-of-the-line bottling machine, waiting to be called upon to demonstrate its 1,500 bottles-per-hour capacity. (With a production of about 2,000 cases a year, I estimate Boxwood uses their bottler less than 30 hours a year.)
Our friend remarked to our elegant tour guide, “So, the owners are kind of perfectionist, huh?” And she said, “Ohhhhhh, yes.” Nothing mars the perfection. It’s better than a yoga class; you’ll leave much calmer than when you arrive.
We whisper the password, and the castle gates open...
Spiegelau glasses. Do you know how much these babies run??
View "Itinerary: Five Faces of Northern Virginia Wine" on its own page.
Rick is very happy to meet Our Readers, Jennifer and Bryan.
We were a winery-visiting machine this weekend. We hit all ten wineries on the schedule. We even managed to squeeze in a little snack and shared a glass of Norton at Chrysalis on Saturday.
But hands down the most exciting moment of the weekend? Meeting Jennifer and Bryan. We stood next to them during a tasting at Chrysalis, and they recognized us! Turns out they read our blog. And they seem entirely normal.
Nancy making a list. Note the empty wine bottle in the background. And the mess. We need our life back.
With 33 days and 40* wineries to go, I need to get organized. And that means: List! I need to make a list! I do love lists.
So, who’s not on here? Appointment-only wineries, and Not Open to the Public Wineries. Here’s why: First, this whole tour is about doing research for our upcoming travel guide to Virginia wine country (coming out soon – promise! – as an iPhone app). So, if a winery isn’t easily accessible to travelers, we won’t include it…yet.
Which brings me to reason #2: one hundred and fifty wineries was a nice round number to start with.
And #3: we haven’t done laundry or cleaned out the refrigerator in months. We’ve put upwards of 4,000 miles on our car, spent more than $8,000, and tasted close to 1,500 wines. The madness has got to stop.
So, here’s a list of the wineries in Virginia that we haven’t been to since early July, when we started our 150 Virginia Wineries in 150 Days Tour.
There are 48 wineries on the list below. All will be included in our travel guide, but we’ll take a break from the visits for a while after we reach 40 of these.
And then we’re going scuba diving and drinking lots of beer.
- 8 Chains North
- Aspen Dale
- Berry Hill
- Bloxom
- Bluemont
- Bodie
- Bogati Bodega
- Boxwood**
- Byrd Cellars
- Cave Ridge
- Chatham
- Chrysalis
- Cooper
- Corcoran
- Crooked Run
- Crushed Cellars
- Delaplane
- Fabbioli
- Fox Meadow
- Gray Ghost
- Grayhaven
- Greenwood
- Hartwood
- Hiddencroft
- Holly Grove
- James River
- Lake Anna
- Lost Creek
- Marterella
- Mattaponi
- Mediterranean
- Miracle Valley
- Naked Mountain
- North Mountain
- Pearmund
- Piedmont
- Saude Creek
- Shenandoah
- Spring Creek
- Twin Oaks
- Veramar
- Vino Curioso
- Weston Farm
- Willowcroft
- Wind Song
- Wolf Gap
- Woodland
- Zephaniah
*We’ve actually, physically, been to Woodland (south of Richmond) and Saude Creek (north of Williamsburg), but arrived outside operating hours (our fault) for the first, and found only vineyards at the second (tasting room now in progress). So we’re not counting those lost minutes of our lives in our total.
**Boxwood is an interesting exception. They have multiple tasting rooms in Northern Virginia, including one very near us. But the winery itself is appointment-only ($20 for a tour). It’s so different from what everyone else is doing, we need to go nose around a bit.
We have 34 days left, and 38 wineries yet to visit (well, 40, actually), and Rick and I are acting like a couple of newlyweds. We’re happy, joking, excited. I spend most of my evenings staring at The Map, and counting. Rick is 100% with me, calculating how he may be able to eke out just one more day of vacation time.
This is quite a surprise. The whole thing. That we set a big – joint – goal and appear to be in striking distance of hitting it. That I’m still a weensy bit excited every time we drive up to a new winery. That Rick and I are still talking.
After a decade of marriage, I was sure I had him pegged. He’s a fun guy, don’t get me wrong, but he likes his computer time at the end of a long day. And he’s pretty slug-alicious on the weekend. And he gets bored with stuff even quicker than I do, especially if it involves being out among the general populace. (If you haven’t yet heard him say, “Speaking as a member of the public, I can say that I don’t like them very much,” trust me: you will.)
So, I’m blown away. He doesn’t really get what all my mystification is about. He says, “I made a commitment to you. And I will honor my commitment.” Which makes it sounds like he’s dragging his reluctant yet stoic self into the car every weekend.
But he’s not. He’s up, he’s packed, he makes little jokes, drives like a maniac (but like a responsible maniac) to make it to the last winery before closing. He never has a word of complaint. He’s a true partner in this project.
So why am I so surprised?
View "34 Days to Go and What Have You Done with My Husband?" on its own page.
I held off on the Cold-eeze this weekend to protect my tastebuds, and my tastebuds didn’t let me down. The last two days in the Charlottesville area may well have been – overall – the best wine tasting weekend we’ve had since we started our 150 Virginia Wineries in 150 Days Tour.
The wine was way better than the trip planning, per usual. We overshot our first stop on Saturday by about 15 miles. I assured Rick that we were right on track for Pearmund Cellars right up until the moment our navigation system landed us in the parking lot of Molon Lave Vineyards (#103). He never even comments anymore. He just goes with it. Good man.
The fireplaces were lit, the chiminea out back was peppering the air with wintery wood smoke, and life was good. Katherine Papadopoulos, of the Mediterranean Cellars Papadopoulos family just down the road, led us through the Med-influenced wines as we encouraged her to consider marrying a man also named Papadopoulos. Such a great name, so fun to say. She didn’t say no.
Jumping all the way down to Horton Vineyards (#104) in Gordonsville, we warmed to the site of the little castle in the vineyard. We hadn’t been to the popular winery triangle – Horton, Barboursville, and Burnley – for more than a decade, back when we were dating and found alcohol consumption to be a great excuse for PDAs.
Horton’s was the first Cab Franc I ever tried. And the first Norton. Maybe even the first Viognier. And they were all still there, along with Rkatsiteli, Petit Manseng, Touriga Nacional, Mourvedre, Graciano, Tannat and every other weird grape you probably never heard of. Other wineries say that, before they try something, they wait for Dennis Horton to do it first. Forty-five, count-em forty-five, wines are on the free tasting menu at Horton. We still love Horton. And PDAs.
Next door, at Barboursville (#105), the place was jamming in preparation for that night’s big bash celebrating winemaker Luca Paschina’s 20 years at Barboursville. We didn’t have the $300 (or the reservations), so after the usual impressive sips at the five-deep bar, we moved on to Burnley (#106), where we chatted with winemaker Lee Reeder just like it was 1999, and picked up a bottle of Spicy Rivanna for some holiday mulling. Mull a little wine and people think you’re Martha Stewart. No joke.
Running late. Quick look at the map – who was open till 6? We lit out for Sugarleaf Vineyards (#107), 45 minutes away. After the jouncy ride down the long, single-track gravel drive, the pretty redwood tasting room with its simple but elegant design was a surprise (Real Housewives of D.C. didn’t do it justice). The wines were dynamite. And very bittersweet. On the wall were photos of the winery’s late wine maker, the young and talented Daniel Neumeister, who was killed by a drunk driver in early October. So, so, so wrong.
Somewhere in Scottsville is one very...creative...child...
Moving on to our B&B for the night, we were delighted to hear that we were the first Groupon customers at High Meadows Vineyard Inn in Scottsville. There are 450 more on our heels, due to the incredible success of the Inn’s advertising campaign. We’ll have a full report on the Inn later (as well as all the wineries mentioned here), but for now I’ll just say: loved it! The Inn was hosting a community pumpkin-carving contest, and little ghouls were dropping off their entries as we drove up.
Sunday morning, we stopped by our second of two cider makers in the state – Albemarle Ciderworks (#108). Beautiful Arts & Crafts-style tasting room. Daringly dry ciders (or maybe it just feels daring after the abundance of sweet offerings during our Nine Day Tour of southern/southwest Virginia); a welcome addition to the state’s adult beverage choices. Rick and tasting room manager Ann Shelton talked camera lenses, while I picked up some Pippin apples that are destined to sit on my counter, hoping to be transformed into apple crisp, but finally, sadly, and slowly decomposing instead.
Rick and Fritz at Mountfair
I’d been looking forward to Mountfair (#109) for months, knowing they were reds-only, and watching the Twitterati tweet on about their popular Wooloomooloo during the Virginia Wine Taste Live event last week.
But gone! Gone! It was already gone! (At least, from the winery, though still reportedly available at some markets around Charlottesville.) Winemaker and part owner Fritz Repich gamely poured the three wines they did have, assuring me that they would not run out of wine any time soon. I ran the numbers in my head: small case lots x excellent wines = better hurry on down there.
At Keswick (#110), more wonderful wine. While we sipped, Kat Schornberg filled us in on how the winery came to be, as a carpe diem decision after her father and his wife, the winery owners, were in a near-fatal plane crash. Then we pried out the romantic scoop about how Kat met winemaker and husband of one year, Stephen Barnard, when he’d just begun at Keswick and was expecting to split his time between harvests in his native South Africa and Virginia. Then he met Kat, and, well, Kat was all that. And there Rick and I were, perking up as Kat, dressed as Alice, told us tales and the winemaker himself sped by in a towering Mad Hatter get-up. The wonderland of Keswick. We took three bottles to go, once again exceeding our “one bottle max per winery” limit.
With thirty minutes before the 6:00 Sunday last call, we slipped in to Vint Hill Craft Winery (#111) and asked Richard Talomie to show us what Vint Hill was all about. He did, we learned, we tasted a flight of Cabernet Sauvignons from Virginia, California, and Washington.
All the way home, we said the times they are a changing for Virginia wine. Wee! Wee! Wee!
And then we went for Chinese.
Third (and final) trip to Charlottesville during the 150 Wineries in 150 Days Tour
Photographed at High Meadows Vineyard Inn today. Tomorrow…after a good night’s sleep…an actual recap of this weekend’s wineries #103 through 111 on the “150 Day Tour.” With words and everything.
Rick and Peacock scope out hidey holes as Cat counts it down...three, two, one, go!
But Cat and Peacock have tricked poor Rick, who has taken off for his super-secret hiding place
...but then cagey Rick doubles back and surprises Peacock...
"Uh, oh"
"...don't tell me..."
"Crap! How do I hide THIS?"
Cat reports back to Rick, "The plan worked, Big Human."
Rick deploys the secret scratch, and Cat goes off to find even more fun...
View "Hide ‘n Go Seek: Survival of the fittest" on its own page.
Oh, ugh. What happened?
Yesterday, we were both psyched to be getting back on the road tomorrow, heading to Charlottesville to check off the last seven Albemarle County wineries on our quest. Then tonight, we hit the wall. Rick had a long, nasty week at work, not to mention a highly, uh, personal, physical yesterday. And I’ve got the touchies, as my sister used to say, and a sinus blockade so dug in that bashing my face on the desk would be a nice diversion. And my application to Super Model school was turned down. Again.
Then we watched The Blind Side tonight – that movie where Sandra Bullock and her family take in a guy named Big Mike, who goes on to play in the NFL. We weeped. Then Rick went into a little riff about the difference between what Sandra Bullock’s character had dedicated herself to (helping others) vs. what he and I have dedicated ourselves to (visiting wineries, so that people with expensive iPhones can more easily navigate their BMWs down the scenic country lanes to buy overpriced wine, for god’s sake).
So, this is what total lack of motivation feels like, huh? Ugh.
We’ve had about a week and a half to recover from our Nine Days of Virginia Wine tour, so last night, with great trepidation, I compared calendar to checklist and realized, with no small amount of stress, that we had nine available days to cover 48 wineries before our self-imposed deadline of December 7. December 7 allows us to claim, forever after, that we visited 150 Virginia wineries in 150 days.
So lyrical. So impressive. So much better than “150 Wineries in 157 Days.” Or, as Rick suggested, “150 Wineries in 150 Days (plus 3 days).” Although that last one is kind of cute, I admit.
Though we once managed to traverse seven-count-em-seven wineries in one memorable and godforsaken day in Albemarle County, our preference is to shoot for five. We averaged four a day on our Nine Days tour, but that included 3 1/2 hours a day of driving, so there’s only so much you can do with a schedule like that. Now, if the wineries would stay open until 9 or 10PM, then we could really cook, but they seem to think that 7 or 8 tasting room hours a day seven days a week 52 weeks a year is enough. Slackers.
So here we sit, with 9 days and 48 wineries left to visit. We both work full-time on actual paying jobs, so we’re only able to winery on weekends, and we used up all our available vacation time on the Nine Day Tour. So, something has to go. Will it be Florida for Thanksgiving with Rick’s dad? Or Saturday’s rally on the Mall with Nancy’s family? Parents or siblings? Turkey or sanity?
Turkey, as you well know, takes it.
So off to Charlottesville for the third time this Saturday. Fortunately we were able to snag this great Groupon lodging deal. And it has both a fireplace AND a big claw-foot tub. We batted zero on both during the Nine Day tour. Maybe our luck’s about to change.
The Nine Day Haul
Before we head out for our next foray into Virginia Wine Country—to begin ticking off those remaining 42 wineries before December 7—I thought I’d close this Nine Days of Virginia Wine chapter with a few statistics, and the final schedule, just in case someone out there wants to give it a whirl. I’m happy to loan out my Post-It Note map, if you need it.
- Days on the road: 9
- Total car time: 32 hours (average 3 ½ hours/day)
- Miles driven: 1,620
- Wineries visited: 34
- Wines tasted: about 350
- Wineries where owner/winemaker manned the tasting bar: 24
- Winery dogs met: 20 (Winery dogs scratched: 16)
- Other winery animals encountered: Sheep, chickens, horses, cats, cows, llamas, stink bugs
- Total tasting fees: $70 (very inexpensive, compared to NoVa – loved it!)
- Purchases: 52 bottles of wine (including 2 bottles of ginger wine from Sans Soucy), 1 skein of yarn and 1 bag of chestnuts (Wisteria Winery), 6 tins of Chocolate Lovers chocolate, 2 MountainRose “From Mines to Wines” t-shirts, 1 Smoky Harvest Chowder soup mix, 2 jars of peanuts
- Total logo’d wine glasses for our growing collection: 6 (no tasting fees = no free glasses)
- B&B’s slept in: 6, plus one motel (Details to come!)
- Restaurant experiences: 9
- Favorite meal: bull branch, Lynchburg. Or maybe the Martha Washington Hotel, Abingdon. Though it could be the restaurant at Chateau Morrisette, Floyd. (Details to come!)
- Words most often uttered: “What a view!” “Was that our turn?” (and/or “Can this be right?”) “Is that the winery?”
- Photos taken by Rick: I’m guessing somewhere around 5,000. Rick can confirm when he gets his head out of his computer.
Just roll us on home. All that's left after nine straight days of drive, taste, eat, sleep.
The Final Nine Day Tour Schedule
100 Virginia Wineries in 3 months...we were much younger when we started
The Nine Days of Virginia Wine mini-tour last week was so fast and furious that we forgot to mention one really big milestone: we hit the one hundred winery mark! (Yay! Crowd goes wild! High fives and toasts all ‘round!)
We are not the first: Paul and Warren at Virginia Wine Time passed that mark a while back and have now made it to 111 Virginia wineries, and Swirl, Sip, Snark checked the century box recently as well.
Depending on how you count it, we turned 100 at either Lexington Valley Vineyard in Lexington, or two stops later at the lovely Wisteria Winery in Stanley.
We had a command and control problem one long weekend near Richmond and Williamsburg a while back, which had us show up an hour before opening at Woodland Vineyard, and then stand on a pile of dirt scratching our heads at the lack of a tasting room at Saudé Creek Vineyards. So, we sorta count them (knowing we need to go back and complete our mission), but we sorta don’t.
We’ll have full posts on Lexington Valley and Wisteria soon, but for now, a couple pix will have to do.
Thanks for the cheers and toasts and all, but now we’ve got to skeedaddle – we either have 48 or 50 more wineries to visit before December 7 to make our 150 Virginia Wineries in 150 Days goal.
Piece of cake.
Cheers! (And enjoy the rest of Virginia Wine Month – go get yourself some!)
Wisteria was our last stop on the Nine Day Mini-Tour of 35 wineries...
View "We’re in the century club! 100 Virginia wineries visited! Or maybe 102…" on its own page.
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