Category: Photography

Harvesting at Gray Ghost

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Yesterday we spent a good chunk of the day at Gray Ghost Vineyards helping to harvest the chardonnay grapes. This has become an annual event for us. This was my 6th year and Warren’s 8th year harvesting. We always have a good time and enjoy meeting new people.

As usual, we got up really early and met others at the winery and enjoyed some breakfast treats before heading out to the vineyards.

Al gave us a quick lesson on how to harvest the grapes.

We then headed out to the vineyards to begin harvesting the grapes.

Here’s Warren hard at work snipping the stems.

We found a small bird nest IN the vines!

A few hours later the lugs were weighed and 11 TONS (yes, tons) of chardonnay grapes had been harvested.

At the end we toasted and cheered for the record breaking harvest and what a good job we had all done! We look forward to repeating this again next year!

On The Road Again!

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After a quick visit to the Woodrow Wilson birthplace and museum in downtown Staunton Virginia, we got in the Virginia Wine Time car and headed to our first winery. Our first stop was Ox-Eye Vineyards tasting room in downtown Staunton. They have a very interesting business model. They do not have a tasting room at the vineyards, instead they have a tasting room in Staunton. We’ll write more about it in the near future.

Our second stop was Attimo Winery just east of Radford Virginia. It took us awhile to get there because of all the construction on I-81 south. They have a beautiful tasting room and an interesting way of tasting at tables and not at the tasting bar…kind of like what they do at Hillsboro. Again, we’ll be posting more about Attimo in the weeks to come. Stay tuned.

Our final stop of the day was at West Wind Vineyard and Winery located just east of I-81 in Max Meadows Virginia. We visited them once three years ago and David remembered us when we were at the Monticello tasting during the wine bloggers conference. It was good to see him and Jason. We tasted the wines and will be reporting about them soon.

We have plans to visit two more wineries tomorrow before heading to Tennessee for a family gathering on Saturday. We’ll return to the trail on Sunday. We have now visited 131 wineries in Virginia! Stay tuned! If you happen to visit any of these wineries, tell them Virginia Wine Time sent you!

Veraison

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Yesterday we started a wine trip to visit wineries in the Shenandoah AVA and in the southern part of the state. We will post about each winery in the weeks to come. On the first day we visited Cave Ridge Vineyard, CrossKeys Vineyards, Bluestone Vineyard, and Barren Ridge Vineyards. We tasted some really nice wines and enjoyed our visit to each winery. Here’s a picture from the Cave Ridge Vineyard. As you can see the grapes are almost finished with veraison. The grapes are developing nicely! We’ll post again tomorrow with the wineries we visited and maybe a few teaser pictures

Dinner at The Inn at Meander Plantation

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After the wine bloggers conference we decided to spend a few days at The Inn at Meander Plantation. You might remember we spent several days at the inn last year. The inn is not too far from Charlottesville, located in Madison County. This time we thought we’d relax after the conference and maybe go to a few local wineries during our stay. Owners Suzanne Thomas and Suzie Blanchard always remember us and make sure our stay is relaxing and enjoyable. It was great to see them and catch up with them. They invited us to join them for dinner on Monday evening.

The meals at Meander plantation are always elaborate and delicious. Even breakfast has three courses! The dinners are always special because each course is paired with a specific Virginia wine. Check out the menu for Monday night’s dinner:

Each course was a work of art. I took photos of each course. You can see what Warren selected for each course.

First Course

Second Course

Intermezzo-Blood Orange Sorbet (I ate it before taking a picture)

Entree

Dessert

The dinner was delicious! Thank you Suzanne and Suzie! We always enjoy our time at The Inn at Meander Plantation. It’s a very quiet, relaxing place to stay. We are already thinking of booking a weekend in the fall to enjoy the fall colors. If you plan a trip to The Inn at Meander Plantation, be sure to tell them Virginia Wine Time sent you!

Gathering at Jefferson Vineyards

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One of our last events (unofficial) from the Wine Bloggers Conference was to attend a small gathering of bloggers at Jefferson Vineyards. Andy Reagan explained his reason for an after conference gathering on Frank Morgan’s Drink What You Like blog:

“One of the main reasons I hosted the post conference gathering was to get some real time with individual bloggers and try to get my message across, and talk about Jefferson wines, where they’re at, the foods they need to be paired with, etc. before there is an opinion written.”

We spent a few hours socializing with other bloggers, talking with Andy about his wines, and enjoying tastings of some of this wines. We were able to taste the 2007 Viognier, 2010 Vigonier, 2007 Chardonnay Reserve, 2010 Pinot Gris, 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon, 2007 Reserve Cabernet Franc, and the 2007 Meritage. This wasn’t a time for us to review the wines so we just enjoyed what we tasted and didn’t take any notes. I will say though, that I really enjoyed the 2010 Pinot Gris. It was a hot day and this wine helped ease the heat.

Here are some photos from the event. A big thanks to Andy for inviting us and sharing his food and wine with us that afternoon. It was a great way to end the conference.

Day Three

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One of the highlights from Day Three of the Wine Bloggers Conference was the bus trip to visit some wineries in the Charlottesville area. There were several buses visiting wineries but our bus went to Pippin Hill Farm and Veritas. We had not been to Pippin Hill Farm before so this added to our number of wineries visited. We are now up to 127 wineries. Here are some photos of our visit to Pippin Hill Farm. We will be posting more about our visit to Pippin Hill Farm in a separate post. Stay tuned for that! Enjoy the photos!

Day Two

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The highlight of Day Two of the Wine Bloggers Conference was our trip to Monticello. Bloggers were able to meet winemakers and taste wines from 32 different Virginia Wineries. After a few speeches the wine tasting began. Here are some photos from the evening. It was VERY hot but the wines were cool.

Todd Haymore-Agriculture Secretary of Virginia

Keswick Vineyards

King Family Vineyards

Jefferson Vineyards

Gabriele Rausse

Glass House Winery

Cardinal Point

Annefield Veinyards

8 Chains North

Gadino Cellars

Catoctin Creek

Everything’s Great at Linden!

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On July 4th weekend we invited some friends to join us for a tasting at Linden Vineyards. We also decided to sign up for the cellar tasting. We love the cellar tastings because you get to taste wines you would normally not taste on the tasting menu. At any given time Linden has five wines on the tasting menu. These change from time to time. Every once in a while Jim Law will allow the tasting crew to open up one of the library wines to taste. We didn’t visit on such a weekend.

I first thought I’d go through and describe all the wines we tasted and then I realized we loved everything on the menu! Linden is one of the few wineries where we enjoy every wine we taste. We can’t think of one we don’t enjoy. This makes it difficult to limit our choices to one case. Warren is a case club member and needs to purchase one case a year to have access to the deck. On this visit it was time to renew the membership and purchase a case. He made some very difficult decisions but was able to fill a case. While at Linden we decided to take advantage of Warren’s membership and enjoy some lunch on the deck. Instead of describing all the wines, I will instead post several photos from our visit. Just know that anything you taste at Linden, you will enjoy. And when you do go to Linden, tell them Virginia WIne Time sent you!

Veraison

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From Wikipedia: Véraison is a viticulture (grape-growing) term meaning “the onset of ripening”. It is originally French, but has been adopted into English use. The official definition of veraison is “change of color of the grape berries.” Veraison represents the transition from berry growth to berry ripening, and many changes in berry development occur at veraison.

We were at Breaux Vineyards yesterday picking up my Cellar Club selections. While there we checked out the grapes and this is what we saw. Is this early for veraison?