So over spring break, I decided to do my first tour of a winery. I have been to a vineyard/winery before but it was for a wedding so it wasn't the true experience. I decided on Paradise springs due to its location and assortment of wines. During the tour, I learned that they only grow a few varieties of grapes and in fact make a lot of their wine using grapes from other wineries (mostly from Virginia). This winery was also very cool since they decided to open it up for a lot of events. I actually think a bridal shower was going on when I was on the tour.
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| This is me by the sign that you walk by as you walk to the facilities they have. |
The first thing we did on the tour was head to an old house of the property that the cellar (for storing some of their finished wines) is on top of. Once in the old style house, we were given samples of all the white wines the winery makes. This included the wineries take on Chardonnay, Viognier, Sommet Blanc, and Petite Manseng. To be completely honest I was not terribly impressed with the Chardonnay besides the oaky creamy finish which I really enjoyed. I really loved the Viognier as I believe it had a lot of fruit forward flavors. I also really enjoyed the acidity of the wine. The rest of the wines were pretty "meh" in my opinion. I think this winery only started really shining until we got to the red wines (as we will get to later in this post).
While we were going through the white wine example the tour guide gave us some history lessons the establishment. Pretty much covered the founders, the challenge to make this land into a winery/vineyard (explained how Virginia was not a big fan of wineries back then). To be completely honest (and I hate to say it) I was too busy focuses on defining the wine I was tasting. As a "wine student" I am not at the point where I can truly taste a wine enough to describe it while listening to talking in a conversational manner.
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| Tour host pouring a sample of their Vidal Blanc |
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| Me drinking a sample |
The next step after visiting the house was to go downstairs into the mini cellar they have. My dumbass forgot to take pictures of this part (good news is that its the only part I missed). Basically, all we did down here was continue a tad bit more history but this time more focused on the wine. The tour guide showed us the first bottle the winery produced (I believe it was a Cabernet Franc). After that, we were given red wine samples for every wine except for 1 (that was left till the end of the tour). These wines were paradise springs Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Melange, Meritage, and Norton. I really like the tobacco aftertaste with the Franc. The Melange had a strange yet really interesting spice flavor in the back of the palate. The Meritage was really interesting as well because they said they were trying to "create the wine red for everyone". It was good young but could be aged, raspberry and vanilla undertones, and it was pretty damn well balanced. I really liked it.
I found a lot of interest with the Norton wine since its a grape that was first used in Richmond in 1830. I imagine because of that its probably the grape of Virginia. What I noticed right away is that this wine is really acid/tannin based with a sweet blackberry flavor. Apparently, this wine has more antioxidants than any wine and I find that pretty cool. I really liked the wine, it was so cool actually tasting a wine made from a native Virginian grape.
After tasting the reds we walked upstairs from the cellar and went to the actual vineyard. While damn nothing is growing in March in northern Virginia it was still pretty cool. Just seeing the vines in person after learning so much about the winemaking process in class was so cool. We pretty much covered the soil (which they claimed added tobacco flavoring to the wine) and temperature that the winery and vines are susceptible to throughout the growing season.
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| From this picture, you can't really tell but the vineyard portion was not that big. |
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| Decided to use this picture because it shows a really young new vine next to a more experienced vine (around 5 years) I found it really interesting that they don't separate vines by age, not sure if they do it like that everywhere. |
The next part of the tour is what I like to call the lab. This is when we pretty much walked through where do the fermentation process for the wine.
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| closer view of the machines |
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| me looking at the machines |
The last part of the poor was visiting the barrel room. Here we tried out last wine (a port they had) which was my favorite wine of the bunch. This was my first port and damn did it set the bar up high. I really liked the sweetness of this wine. It is definitely something I see myself coming back to.
The barrel room itself was cool. I saw different barrels for different wines. For example, I believe they had American/Californian barrels for the chardonnay and decided to use barrels from France for the Franc and Sauvignon. I guess those two examples make perfect sense. It was cool seeing the barrel room up close. Something I never noticed they did was actually spray a water mist every few minutes (like you would see in a grocery store) to make sure the barrels stay moisturized and to prevent them from cracking. I honestly had no idea they did this to be completely honest. I just assumed that the wine in the barrel would "soak" into the wood and that would keep it moisturized.
The tour guide also mentioned how they sometimes burn the insides of the barrel a little before filling it with wine in order to get more smokey attributes to the flavor of whatever wine they are making. I knew they did this but it is still pretty cool to see the inside of the empty barrels.
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| barrel room |
All in all, I really enjoyed this experience. I will definitely be doing more winery visits in the future. I also regret not buying a bottle of that port I really liked while I was there. Guess I will have to pick it up when I back in NOVA.
