The distinctive mark of Williamsburg Winery in Virginia

Just to get away from the hustle and bustle of the daily routine, the wife and I decided to take a two-day trip down to Williamsburg via the northern neck wine trail – at least, via those wineries open on a dreary Monday or Tuesday in early November. As an alternate to the beltway, if you’re coming down from Baltimore you might consider the more scenic route down 5 to the 301 bridge (which crosses into VA just a few miles from Oak Crest Vineyards).

So, here are some highlights from the northern neck:

Oak Crest Vineyards & Winery: We liked some of their wines, but at the same time weren’t blown away either. Took home a bottle of the Hot Jazz, a white wine made with jalapenos. The spiciness will make that an interesting party wine alongside my favorite Hunter mead from Orchid Cellars (also featuring some jalapeno heat).

Ingleside Vineyards: Probably one of our better stops of the day. They’ve got a huge selection of wines and their reds were just fantastic despite the cool shore climate. I would recommend their cab sauv on the premium side but the blue crab red works well as an easy-drinking table wine too. There is a tasting fee, divided at “regular” and “premium” levels – I would recommend the latter if you want to get a peek at the good stuff.

The Hague Winery: Easily the best stop of the trip, finding The Hague Winery is like discovering that up-and-coming indie band you just can’t get enough of. All the vintages were young but even reds from 2009 – the petit verdot and merlot – tasted sublime. Not big, not commercial, it’s just a small operation run by a retired Navy officer out in the middle of nowhere and is totally worth the trip.

Belle Mount Vineyards: I must say that although this is one of the northern neck’s oldest vineyards I wasn’t overly impressed. Many of the wines just bull-rushed my palette with too much acidity or excessive tannins. The dessert wines were okay but as regular readers will note, those aren’t my preference.

The Williamsburg Winery: One of the largest in Virginia by volume (our pourer quoted 13% of the total state wine market), I felt a little disappointed by such a well-known brand. We only got to taste 6 out of the couple dozen wines on offer, and of those many were the “discount” varieties – not a great deal for the $10 tasting fee. Did end up taking home a bottle of the J. Andrews Merlot, though, which seemed worth the price tag (under $15 if I remember correctly).

New Kent Winery: Wow, what a place these guys have. It’s a newer winery and part of a much larger planned community outside Richmond (near Colonial Downs) called “Viniterra”. If you can get past the cheesiness of that, they do actually have  a couple nice wines, including a Meritage blend and an off-dry white merlot that also would work well at a dinner party.

An old-fashioned barrel scale on display at New Kent Winery near Richmond, VA

All in all, if you just have one weekend for a wine a adventure in Virginia I can’t say that I’d recommend the northern neck over Charlottesville or the more northern blue ridge vineyards. However, if you feel like you’ve “been there, done that” with the well-known VA wine scene, you might just find a few things you like east of I-95 too.

I’ve never had a Norton that I would buy, never even had one that I thought was very good. Hey, Norton, what gives?

Washington DC wine writer Dave McIntyre blogged about his article in the Washington Post about a book about the Norton grape called The Wild Vine by Todd Kilman. Kilman apparently paints Norton as an underdog story, repeatedly getting stamped out just as it gains traction in the wine world. McIntyre paints a favorable picture of the book, writing…

But in the hands of Kliman, the author as vintner, [Norton] makes a fascinating story, complex and with a haunting finish.

Makes it sound like a good read. I’m always fascinated by wine books. It’s a testament to the authors that they can make something so apparently innocuous and boring (A grape) and write book after book about it. Most of the books are interesting, even. McIntyre “highly recommends” this one.

Wisteria Farm & Vineyard is a small operation where our tasting room pourer was also the owner and winemaker. That’s the kind of operation I like. I was a fan of the whites and took home a bottle of Traminette and a bottle of Pinot Gris. The Pinot Gris was made as a rose, strange until you remember that Pinot Gris is pretty red for a white grape. Also learned an interesting tidbit that Viognier is relatively new to Virginia. For some reason, I was under the impresssion that Viognier had some deep rooted history in the state. Good to know.

After the tasting, the kids ran around the farm and chased sheep around in circles.

Philosophically speaking, Narmada Winery was about as far from Wisteria as one could get. Narmada is the Napa to Wistera’s Sonoma, big in every way. Inside Narmada you’ll find a large, open tasting room, a semi-public barrel room with big imposing fermentation tanks, a woman playing the harp, and a long polished tasting bar. It is a big operation, top flight all around.

The wines didn’t agree with me. I stopped writing notes after the first few because I got tired of writing the word “oak” over and over. It was like I’d take a sip of wine, then our pourer would smack me in the grill with a tree branch. However, I was in the minority among my tasting group peers. All three of them liked the wines, and The Wife declared that they were among the best Virginia wines she’d ever tasted.

Fair enough. I’m sensitive to oak and don’t like it to be featured in a wine. Many, many people don’t mind it or even prefer those sorts of notes in their glass.

Our final winery stop was Gadino Cellars. They had a good fire going to warm us from the downright miserable weather. Wines were good but were up on the high end of the price band. My favorite was the reserve Merlot (gasp, Merlot!) but at $33 it was a no-go.

All three are recommended if you’re in an “in the area” sort of thing. Wisteria is a bit of a hike from other wineries, which the owner said is both a good and bad.

The interesting thing about this note…

Very light straw color. Cold steely nose. Spritzy and zesty palette. 74.

…was that it doesn’t sound negative at all. The score wasn’t even all that bad either (74) but somehow it all came together to inspire me to take the picture to the right. Editors note: This wine was actually from Virginia. Don’t know how it snuck into the Maryland wine post.

Elsewhere, the local wine fun continued.

Great up front. Pale straw color. Floral aromas, especially honeysuckle. Great palette with lots of steel acidity and even some rocky, gravelly mouth feel. The finish just fell apart though. Violent and unpleasant, I kept trying and hoping for improvement until I eventually gave up on it. 70.

Awarding a 70 sounds downright benevolent after that note. The funny thing is that this was a wine I’d sampled in the tasting room and liked enough to buy and bring home. Two months later, things were clearly different.

On to the good stuff, Elk Run had two of my favorites for this year:

2007 Elk Run Viognier. Nice. Springy apple and peach. Lots of acidity. 82.

Like I always say, I am nothing if not brief.

Still the leader in the clubhouse in Maryland is the 2007 Elk Run Gewurztraminer Cold Friday Vineyard

The first sniff gave me the same sort of I-don’t-know that I get in a lot of Maryland wines. I don’t quite know what it is (Old Bay?) but MD wines, both red and white, but it’s a little sulfuric, sharp… not particularly unpleasant but just distinct. The mystery aroma blew off after a few minutes. Past that, there was apple and beach, mostly round, full aromas. The wine had a Juicy Fruit, honeyed taste initially, very layered. Good acidity. The whole thing was almost a little wild. A nice, dry, light caramel finish followed. The wine changed for the better over several hours, giving out more fruit and maturing into complexity. On open, the wine was more of a New World style and after some time it developed a hint of minerality and Old World Characteristics, like something Alsacian. 88.

Eighty eight! Take that, more-well-known wine regions!

If you’re into more local stuff, go check out drinkocalwine.com and click through to some of the posts Dave McIntyre has called out this week. Happy local drinking!

A seminar, wine tasting, and cheese tasting with proceeds to benefit a cause near-and-dear, Maryland direct wine shipping. More info.

October 8 – 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Drink Local: MD & VA Wine Seminar and Tasting ($49)
Whittemore House (WNDC) – Metro: Dupont Circle
1526 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

Edit: Oops, that was today. Post scheduling fail.

Boordy Vineyards Sundays in October Oct 11, 18, 25, 1pm

Bands, food, wine, and (hopefully) nice Maryland fall weather. Always a strong play on a nice Sunday afternoon.

Link

Old Town Food and Wine Festival – October 10-11, 11am

Lots of wineries showing up for this one, as well as plenty of seminars to keep you busy.

Looks like a strong lineup as $30 gets you unlimited tastings and into all the seminars.

This wine festival will feature the best of Virginia’s wines. What’s more, the Viking Culinary Stage is packed on Saturday and Sunday with amazing programs. All are included in the price of admission. Oh, did I mention, unlimited wine tastings too!

Website

2009 Federal Hill Wine Festival – October 25, Noon

Take a good look at the poster to the right. The golden sun, the rolling hills, the picture-esque vineyard… you won’t be seeing any of that at the Federal Hill Wine Festival. Our experience was documented last year and was best described as “Slamming champagne in the middle of the street.” It was as if we paid admission simply to avoid arrest.

A fun time, recommended if you’re in the area but only if you’re down to pay $25 for 12 sampling tickets AND pay extra for the premium samples that will be gone by 2pm. Website, directions, etc…

Another problem facing owners is that the Arlington crowd has cast aside rail drinks in favor of Patron and Grey Goose. Premium liquors are great sales for restaurants who charge top-dollar for it. The problem is that for every top shelf martini they sell, they need to sell more food to keep the ratio in balance. If they don’t sling more cheeseburgers, they get fined. Good intentions fail.

Rising liquor costs have gotten small bar and restaurant owners to pester the Virgina ABC enough to start a pilot program to re-examine the issue. Washington Business Journal has the story.

To better balance the 45-to-55 food-to-liquor ratio, [Clarendon Grill owner Peter] Pflug and 11 other Virginia restaurant operators have joined ABC’s two-year pilot project to test an alternative way to calculate the ratio for mixed beverage licensees.

It gets better, wait for it…

Rather than comparing the percentage of food sales to mixed-beverage sales, the pilot is based on alcohol volume. Participating licensees can sell $350 of food per one gallon of alcohol bought from ABC. Beer and wine aren’t included in either equation.

Hey, that’s some help. While I doubt that Virginia will pass legislation that will effectively legalize “bars” as the rest of the country knows it, it looks like the grip might come loose just a little. Leaving wine sales out of the food-to-liquor calculation allows an establishment to serve a few glasses of wine to a customer without having to push a chain-restaurant menu full of overpriced Chicken Fingers (I like mine with buffalo sauce). Before you know it, Virginians, you may have a wine bar opening up down the street.

Link to Washington Business Journal article.

The ’06 Viognier Reserve is a spectacular wine. What’s really strange is that it’s an all-stainless steel wine, yet I really got the flavors of tropical fruit… on a Danish.

Side note, when I started this blog, I pictured it to be very similar to the stuff that Swirl, Sip, Snark is putting out. I’d visit wineries every weekend, introduce myself, chat with the owner and winemaker. Write up glowing (but fair) reviews in my blog which would become the bellwether for Virginia’s burgeoning wine industry. I’d sit on panels and say interesting things about the late weather in 2007 and its effect on the Cab Franc harvest in Charlottesville. The audience would nod, because they don’t know any better. Wine samples and invites to events would pour through my mailbox causing my UPS delivery person to crumble under the weight of my awesomeness.

Things didn’t quite bounce that way, evidently. I still like visiting wineries, but I realized a few things since I started:

1) Virginia is far, and anything involving travel on 495/66 should be forgotten. You may as well take a flight from BWI to Dulles and rent a car.
2) Most wineries are the same. There hasn’t been a lot of impetus to get off the couch and drive down there to taste.

Snark that!

A true Meritage (blend) of Bordeaux varietals create this full, big bodied wine with a smooth, velvety finish.

Prince Michel is a Charlottesville winery with whom I am not familiar, this was my first wine of theirs. The wine is 48% Merlot, and that is apparent with its middle-of-the-road feel. This is big and bold without being too dominant. The 22 months of aging in oak comes through big time. My note…

Glassy ruby red. Big oak nose with some grassy aromas hidden in there. Lots of oak on the palette along with dark fruit and cherry. Big and bold, then departs quickly on the finish.

Link to product page.

I’m way behind on this one, but news came from across the Atlantic some weeks ago that the British wine trade was impressed by Virginia wines, specifically White Hall Vineyards’ Cuvee des Champs, during the 2009 London International Wine Fair. Dezel from Myvinespot.com has some details and a video reaction from the fair. The Washington Post wrote a nice piece on the lavish praise being pumped toward Virginia.

“That is really impressive,” said Cristina Proietti, who works in sales for British wine seller Majestic, as she swirled a red, the Cuvee des Champs of White Hall Vineyards, in her glass. After several rounds of sipping, spitting and considering the wine from the Blue Ridge, she declared it “more approachable than a Bordeaux.”

Nice to hear the Virginia wines are geting some recognition on an International stage. A lot of the chatter centered around the Virginia’s Viognier’s, a topic I brushed past recently. The versatile white grape is really doing well in Virginia and appears ready to be paired against top Viogniers domestically and perhaps even internationally.

Creative Commons licensed image from Flickr user law_keven

Virginia turned out 7,000 tons of grapes in 2008, a 25% bump over 2007′s number. Acreage, though, only went up three percent. More gapes from the same amount of land? Better harvest? Fewer deer munching on Merlot hanging on the vine? No word on how this affected pricing. My guess is: not at all… especially since demand is up and now that Virginia is an international star, it’s off to the moon!

Link to terse blurb on Biz Journals.

April 26, 2009, 1 – 6 pm Highlandtown Wine Festival, Baltimore, MD. $20 in advance gets you goats, bocce, and some of the best homebrew wines this side of Italy. I’ll be there working and pouring some wines.
Info

April 25-26, 2009, 12 – 6 pm Great Grapes! Wine, Arts and Food Reston Town Center, Reston, VA
Info

April 2-3, 2009, 12 – 6 pm Great Grapes! Wine, Arts and Food Anne Arundel Fairgrounds, Annapolis, MD
Info

May 16-17, 2009, 12 – 6pm Wine in the Woods
Symphony Woods, Columbia, Howard Co.
Info

Worth going to if the weather is nice. Bring chairs and be prepared to relax and listen to some tunes. You can read my writeup on last year’s Wine In The Woods Festival.

May 30-31, 2009, 12 – 6pm Chesapeake Bay Wine Festival
Terrapin Nature Area, Stevensville, Queen Anne’s Co.
Info

May 30, 2009, 11 – 6pm Vintage Virginia Festival
Bull Run Regional Park, 7700 Bull Run Drive, Centreville, VA 20101
Info

June 13-14, 2009, 12 – 6 pm Great Grapes! Wine, Arts and Food Festival
Oregon Ridge Park, Cockeysville, Baltimore Co.
Info

Any that I missed? Let me know in the comments. Virginia Wine Events and Maryland Wine are good sources for planning your trips to wine festivals.