A birdie asks…
My parents are coming into town this weekend, and I’d like to take them to a local vineyard for a tour/tastings. Looking for somewhere interesting, reasonably close to campus, and affordable. Ideas?
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there aren’t any vineyards in the city…so “reasonably close to campus” should put you in the Crozet/Ivy area. Check out Pollack Vineyards (25 min away). Their tasting flight is super cheap and the lake/mountain scenery is absolutely amazing. You can buy bottles there and drink them on their balcony/veranda. Bring some munchies with you, or even a full lunch spread and enjoy.
the closest vineyard now is sugarleaf, which is like 3 miles down 29, but it sucks & is more expensive than it should be & apparently their tasting room is really hot.
jefferson is good & popular & right next to monticello & ash lawn, as well as blenheim, which has a lovely tasting room. kluge is right there too, but it’s $12 for tastings now, which is too much to pay even for good wine, which they do not have.
i like delfosse’s wine & it’s an easy drive & pretty, but the woman in the tasting room the last time i went took FOREVER and gave us the smallest pours i’ve ever seen.
so i recommend jefferson, blenheim, pollak, veritas, barboursville (which is on the way to montpelier), & keswick.
Orchid–
why do you say sugarleaf sucks? i’ve heard nothing but rave reviews and their tasting fee is only $6 for almost 10 wines. good wine doesn’t come cheap from my experience…and you’re one of the first people i’ve heard bash them.
i would pay $6 for good wine. in fact, i would pay $10. sugarleaf was not good wine. especially disappointing after that long drive in the middle of nowhere–it’s very misleading to say “closest winery to cville” when it takes 20 minutes on back roads after you turn off of 29. can’t think of anything specific about the wines bc they were unmemorable–we went in the fall & they were by far not the worst wines we had that day: they were meh. as in, i’d drink it at a wine festival when i was already drunk but i wouldn’t start at that tent, & no way would i pay for it again.
echo bashes them too.
Ok orchid. Seems like you have a weird perception of good quality wine and a poor sense of direction– Sugarleaf is across from walnut creek park… 6 miles at best off 29…. You should go into the wine biz since you seem to deem yourself a critic
I personally put Sugarleaf and keswick as my favorites to visit
Different strokes for diff folks!
well i say you have a weird perception of good quality wine and i have one of the best senses of direction ever so piss off.
orchid is half-right. sugarleaf wines are way overpriced. but i wouldn’t say they’re awful. they compare nicely with a lot of wines from other markets (CA, Australia, etc.) in the $10-15 range.
they’re only making like 1500 cases a year so they’re obviously trying to foot the whole bill for their land, tasting room, and winery equipment and get out of the red ASAP. experts say most wineries don’t turn a profit until at least year 5. i know i’m not buying their wines by the case-load at 30+ per bottle, so their business model is just plain fucked. just goes to show that not all good winemakers are good business people.
Rose, sugarleaf is south of First Colony, off red mill and old lynchburg road between rt 20 and rt 29 which is like halfway to scottsville. it’s not that close. is it worth going? maybe.
Hi dr j-
Sugarleaf is actually north of kluge and first colony on 20. The other loop you recomme off 29 to Sugarleaf and over towards Blenheim is a good option too. Friends of mine were recently at Sugarleaf and they had a good Selection: Chardonnay, petit manseng, viognier, Vidal blanc, cab franc and sauv and petit verdot plus a dessert wine all for $17-$30.
As you note, sugarleaf’s wines are good and they are small but it’s only $3-4 more than other places and totally umderstandable given their winemaking technique, small production (as you note) and vineyard management is top notch. I dont think a few extra dollars will clear them out of the red that quickly nor do they need it. The owners are pretty savvy very passionate and really cool– they know their stuff.
The blind tasting party sounds like a good idea. Some critics may surprise themselves in a blind tasting!
I guess the last time i did the south albemarle/nelson loop i left sugarleaf and went back down to the road that goes across to scottsville, and then up 20 to first colony. i didn’t realize there’s a cut-off road that pops you out on 20 to the north of FC.
BTW, First Colony has some very good wines, too! they started out a little hit-or-miss about ten years ago and have really come into their own. particular favs are their cab reserve and a petit verdot. last time i was there i got a taste of a viognier/vidal blanc blend that was a perfect summertime wine. hope they’ve bottled it by now.
RE: Sugarleaf – i think there’s quality, but it’s not head-and-shoulders above the MILLION other wines out there in the $10-20 range. Robert Parker’s not giving them 99s or anything, so they’re obvs trying to price themselves INto the premium market (not that RP is the end-all, be-all or anything, just por ejemplo). they will never compete in the larger market at that price-point. will they sell their 1500 cases a year and pay the bills to stay up and running? probably, or possibly they will, and a few thousand people a year will come through their tasting room and buy a bottle or 3.
my main concern is, is it good or bad for Virginia wine as a whole to have all these hobbyists with low production and a skewed pricing model? VA is only 5th largest in production in the U.S., and if Virginia wine as an INDUSTRY wants to prosper, winery owners need to also try a little harder to be good business owners. Distributers and importer/exporters are not going to put Sugarleaf’s $28 cab franc on a lot of shelves in a lot of markets cause it’s just going to sit there while customers pick up the $12 and $20 cabs from everywhere else. If people aren’t buying Virginia cab, they’re not drinking Virginia cab.
everyone gets into it with their heart and not their head. they want all the prestige and glamour of *owning a winery*, but they’re not looking at the big picture business-wise.
i’ve been to sugarleaf a few times and all of my friends have loved the wines and the gorgeous setting. they just expanded the patio area.. so there’s more room to sit and chill outside. definitely worth the loop of sugarleaf, kluge, blenheim and jefferson.. not sure why orchid didn’t recommend it. i don’t think you’ll be disappointed…
You can do pollack, cardinal point and king family then stop at batesville store to pick up food and head up north on 29 to Sugarleaf and then kluge, Blenheim, Jefferson and back to Cville. Probably won’t be enough time for all of those places in 1 day, but those loops are great. Enjoy!
Hortons just east of Barboursville is, by far, you’re best bet. Their wines are very reasonably priced – with most in the $10-$12 range. And aside from that, they have a stunning variety – about 40… From the very sweet to the uber-dry. Lots of white and red varietals to please any manner of wine pallettes!
hears a hoo?
horton has wretched wine. why would you go there when you pass barboursville on the way?
horton has simple, drinkable wines and they’re not all pretentious like barboursville. they have cheese out and their menu describes their wines in fun, down-to-earth terms such as “hot tub wine”, “pizza wine”, etc. and the castle is just adorable.
you like that fruity shit.
i guess so. their fruit wines are a tad too sweet for me though
only about half of the wines at horton are “that fruity shit”, orchid. if you pay attention and stick to the premium wines, your delicate sensibilities don’t have to be assaulted by the low-end stuff for the masses. try the rkatz, two styles of chard, viognier, petit manseng, and sparkling viognier on the white list. on the reds, well, there’s like 15 that are all completely dry and not at all “that fruity shit”, including pinotage, malbec, tannat, touriga, nebbiolo, syrah, norton, cab franc, a rioja style blend, a rhone style blend, and a nice portuguese blend called “voyage”.
blanket statements and broad generalities are unbefitting a serious discussion about wine.
“a serious discussion about wine”? now you sound like that guy who got all mad at us for not having a serious conversation about sex.
well it doesn’t have to be a serious discussion, but you keep making all these sweeping generalities that make me not take YOUR comments seriously. as in, you’re either making it up, you’re not knowledgeable, or both. it sounds to me like you just are not a wine drinker at all. and that’s okay. i say, drink what you like. but what you say you do and don’t like doesn’t make any sense.
and by “that fruity shit” i meant stuff shen likes. we’ve had this conversation before.
wine is made from fruit. shouldn’t it taste like fruit? you can stick to your wine that smells of leather, tobacco, manure TYVM.
i’m pretty sure orchid is biased against horton cause she tries to drink all 40 wines every time she goes there. that just doesn’t work. by number 20, you aren’t going to have a clue what you’re tasting and not remember the difference between numbers 1 through 10. sloppy, alcohol soaked palettes are not exactly the most discerning.
what wine do you actually like, orchid?
orchid is a wine snob, is all. nothing wrong with that. she obviously prefers vineyards that are very nice with fancy wines and lots of twirling and discussing of legs. other people like you and i, prefer more down-home places where it’s the family making the wine and they make simple drinkable stuff that anyone can drink.
and it’s PALATE kthxbai
yes of course it’s palate. i rely too much on spell check.
what i don’t get about orchid’s taste is that she says one place is good and another is bad, when they both have wines that are a broad range of styles and flavors – and several of them are very close to the others’. i don’t think she could discern jefferson’s viognier from horton’s in a blind test for example. i probably couldn’t either. so all these off-hand dismissals and arbitrary endorsements are just problematic.
orchid, shen, let’s sit down together and try some wine together and hash this out. i’m sure we can reach comity. or a threesome. or both.
exactly
the trick to b’ville is to do it at your own pace. step up to the bar when you’re ready for a taste, then take your glass and step back. you don’t have to rush or move down the cattle-shute at their speed if you don’t want to.
i like their wines, esp the octagon (rhymes with orange), the nebbiolo, and a couple others. they have the only pinot grigio in VA that I have enjoyed, so far. also, Luca their winemaker is very cool.
Last time I was at Bville (in May) they did not do their normal cattle chute routine. You went up to the bar and you remained stationary. You didn’t have to start at one end of the bar and work your way down.
It was also a Friday afternoon. Maybe they still do the cattle chutes on weekends.
The wine-tasting experience also depends on who is pouring. I prefer someone who is engaging and tells me about the wines, even if they are simply spitting out a memorized speech.
who’s that old guy? he’s awesome.
The OCTOGON can’t be beat, as far as VA wine goes. You can get much better (non-VA) wine at that price, though.
We had some friends visiting and opened an Octagon. After that we opened a Lovingston red blend, and they all liked Lovingston better. It’s a drive from town – about 30 miles south, but their wines are outstanding for the price. I don’t recall any being over $20 but could be wrong!
Also in Crozet – a great price on wines is Cardinal Point Winery. They have some of the best off’dry whites in the area. Even our red wine drinkers like them. Pollak is outstanding and King has great wines too. You could hit them all in an afternoon, just pick up a picnic at Greenwood Grocery Store so you can have a bit in-between tastings!
Erika
lovingston is good. and such a nice family! they used to be more expensive, but they lowered their prices recently.
maybe your Octogon wasn’t ready. What vintage?
or maybe his FRIENDS weren’t ready for the Octagon. it’s not exactly a wine for beginners.
word. I think you tend to hang on to the Octagon for awhile, too. You must work for it and you will be rewarded.
Bville’s website sayd that the 2005 Octagon will enter its best years in 2012 and can enjoy aging 5 years after that.
we had a couple of old octagons at the barboursville dinner at keswick. what were they–late ’90s? lovely.
ooh what a treat.
Yeah, I think they were ‘98 or ‘99.
i’d like to sample some octagon from 98. that was a pretty good year from other stuff i’ve had.
a lot of reds from 05-08 are likely going to be amazing when they come into their own. remember that around 2020.
It was good and ready. I can’t recall what vintage, but it was an older one. Not a new one. The Lovingston was newer, that was what was so interesting! I think their wines for the price – I don’t think any are over $20 are wonderful.
And for those who like fruit – get out and taste Pollak’s Pinot Gris – they tried something new – left it on the skins for some time and the flavor is super – they are selling it so fast they may have to restrict how many per person or they’ll run out fast!!
Erika
oh Greenwood how I ♥ you…
So if I know nothing, nothing about wine, Barboursville would be a good place to go?
I think you can go anywhere and they’d help you through it. You don’t even have to listen to the person pouring the wine. Listen to your palate, grasshopper.
I would start with Pollak and Cardinal Point in the Crozet area. You would taste everything from dry to semi sweet and find out what your taste buds like. It would give you the whole gambit with people who are not wine snobs.
Erika
if you know nothing nothing about wine, horton is a good place to go bc you can get shitfaced & don’t know how bad it is
i read the question’s “affordable” as meaning the tastings are affordable, rather than the wines.
/how many more people can repeat how much veritas costs?
no, you should not get shitfaced at horton. it’s so totally bush league to go to horton and try to drink anything and get all sloppy and obnoxious.
now, if you have a high tolerance, and you take your time, you can certainly drink *most* of the wines. but if you’re a disaster, mr. horton will call you out.
also, you are a complete tool if you go to horton, try all 40 wines, and then leave without buying even one bottle.
“try to drink *every*thing”
have you seen Mr. Horton’s ring? buh-ling buh-ling. he is pimp.
that ring is worth approximately the same as my mortgage.
you see, horton is not only a winery owner. he’s owned and sold like 5 businesses in his lifetime, including several banks, and he runs a lucrative government contracting business.
strongly recommend chatting with him sometime if you’re there on a weekend. he’s a very interesting guy. i want to ghost write his autobiography someday.
doesn’t surprise me. he sells his grapes to most of the other vineyards in the area.
it is HUGE. i spent one afternoon chatting with him and openly ogling it while purchasing some wine. he was very nice.
BTW, i think Horton won awards for their Viognier
their Norton gets a lot of press, too.
Horton has good port. Reds are ready to go and easy to drink. They kind of all taste like each other. Skip the whites.
actually I think they have a sparkling vioniger that is interesting.
the sparkling viognier is fun
can’t buy any bottles if they all suck.
yeah they make 35,000 cases of wine a year by sucking. that makes a lot of sense.
people have bad taste. e.g., crocs.
LOL, YOU’re a “croc”.
Tim Horton’s?
/god, Timbits sound so good right now.
Pollak was going to be my suggestion too. I think their tasting flight is $5, maybe $10. If you’re going to go as far as Horton, skip it and go to Barboursville instead. Cardinal Point is always a good choice too.
If youre going to do pollack, you should just do that ring.. pollack, veritas, afton mountain vineyards is now under new ownership- I hear they are looking to do some cool stuff out there
afton does or used to have a 100% cab sauv. You don’t see much of that around here. Everything is blended.
that’s because cab sauv is a bitch to grow in VA. it buds late so it can fry in the hot june sun, the clusters are super tight so too much rain will burst the berries, and it ripens super late so it can rot if we have a soggy september/october. afton can grow it with some (limited) success because of their altitude over 1,000 feet. it cools off at night early in the season and gets plenty of sun to get good brix by harvest, and they probably end up picking it the same time as their cab franc.
a good cab sauv in VA is at least 98% luck, and 2% blending. i’m looking at you, keswick.
There are more good wines at Barboursville — Barbera, Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, Viognier, stainless Chardonnay –
than at many of these other vineyards combined.
Well palate is palate, but that’s my call.
hang on to your B-ville souvenir glass and future tastings are FREE.
it’s not campus, it’s grounds. omgggggggggg get with it.
they meant PVCC
Every time my friends and I do the wine tasting thing, we always try to grab two in one day… One is too quick! With that in mind…
Barboursville was quite good, and you can hit (less good) Horton while you’re out there… but it’s a fairly long drive. Interesting and affordable ($5 to taste I think? And Horton might be free…) but not close.
If close is more a priority, I’d do Jefferson — and, as Orchid says, Kluge is close to that too. I think we combined Jefferson with First Colony, but FC is only in the same general direction and not terribly close to anything, as I recall.
Let’s be real. If you want to get drunk for free go to Horton.
Tasting are still free, right?
we did delfosse, first colony, blenheim, & jefferson in an afternoon. first colony was fine bc it was on the way, but i would have been disappointed if i’d made the trip out.
if you want to get drunk for free and then throw up 7 times the next morning bc you got food poisoning from the free cheese go to horton. FTFY.
Veritas (Afton) has good wines, and (at least last time I was there) is free. And the tasting room/overall setting can’t be beat. IMHO.
If you want good wine though, B-ville can’t be beat. Also IMHO.
not free. $5 for whites, $5 for reds, waived if you buy.
The tastings at Veritas are $5 now.
No way is Veritas Free. They charge one price for white and one price for red. I believe $5 or so. If you taste all the wines it is $10
Erika
NEW FFA
/spamalicious…
NEW FFA
this is fun
He’s too busy pulling the hat off his purple Pope.
If you can get nice weather, a day spent at King Family is a day well spent. Really nice scenery, and you may catch a polo game. Fine wine taboot.
my suggestions for multiple wineries in one afternoon:
south of town on 29/ and through Nelson county: go straight down 29 to delfosse, then back up north on rt 6 toward 151 and wintergreen to do Wintergreen, Cardinal Point, Afton, and Veritas. then dinner at Blue Mountain Brewery adn back home to cville via 250/I-64
south of town 29/ through monticello: go straight down 29 to delfosse, then go across red mill road to sugarleaf, and then to route 20 heading back north hit first colony, then Kluge, and blenheim. and then if you have time, go up the hill past monticello and hit Jefferson.
through crozet: go west to crozet and hit King Family, Pollack, and then you can easily head out further to Afton and Veritas, and/or cardinal point. also, stop at starr hill and/or blue mountain brewery on the way.
north of town you can go to barboursville, then over to horton (which is only 2 MILES past barboursville), then go through gordonsville and south on 231 and hit keswick on your way back to charlottesville via I-64 east of town.
north of town you can also do Prince Michel and hit horton and barboursville on the way back.
unfortunately for them, white hall is like a lone wolf out there with no neighbors, but also worth going to. out garth road it’s about a 30 minute drive.
even further past Prince Michel, there’s stone mountain, christensen ridge, both kind of in the grave’s mountain area.
even further north, it’s easy to do the culpeper-warrenton circuit – start at old house east of culpeper on rt 3, then head through warrenton and you can do Unicorn, Gadino, Mediterranean, all in one loop.
there’s also some great wineries near leesburg – Sunset Hills is a new-comer with a LOT of potential, and Breaux is up there too.
i think that’s enough for now. happy tasting, bitches.
oh i forget to mention, kind of in the warrenton to winchester area is Rappahannock – VERY GOOD
I like your first suggestion, but why not stop at Pollak after Blue Moon? You drive right past it.
prince michel is vomitously bad, & they don’t even use virginia grapes. and you could taste them at carter mountain, though why you’d want to i don’t know.
what would be the point of hitting keswick after horton? even if you like horton, how could you taste anything after trying 40 wines, fruit wines, & ports?
white hall can be on the way home from stone mountain. uh, which is way this side of prince michel–west of the airport.
wouldn’t it make more sense to start with afton/cardinal point/veritas then head back through pollak & king family? you know, for driving less while more drunk reasons?
you can do jefferson after blenheim bc it’s open later.
i think you just like being contentious. and, FYI, you don’t have to taste EVERY SINGLE wine at EVERY winery. most wineries do several different styles for different types of consumers. so, avoid the sweet stuff like the reisling and blush at prince michel, and the fruity shit at horton if you don’t like it.
your hypberbolic “vomitously bad” summary of prince michel is bullshit. they do in fact use virginia grapes, but not exclusively. they’re co-owned by someone that also owns a winery in California, so they do get some stuff from out of town. but they grow and make wine with plenty of their own stuff, including chardonay from mount joliet and their own viognier. they don’t have like 60 acres of grapes for the fun of it.
i like you, orchid, i really do, but i’m beginning to trust your palette and sense of quality wine less and less the more you comment.
i’m not being contentious. i agree with people when they don’t say things i disagree with.
i taste every single wine to see if i like them. once i don’t, i don’t have them again.
i’ve liked several sweet wines; in fact, one i had sunday was delicious. i’m not judging prince michel bc i don’t like sweet wines. i thought their whites & reds were terrible.
excuse me for not being pretentious. and i don’t trust YOU because you think stone mountain is farther north than prince michel and you don’t know how to spell palate.
Zing
I’ve never actually been to stone mountain I just think of it as in that general area, because of the roads you have to take to get there, according to a map. not as the crow flies.
now we’re going to attack spelling? i think that pretty much ends the conversation as far as i’m concerned.
you can get to it by either going behind the airport and then guessing or going west from ruckersville and then south. gorgeous view.
just follow the signs to the Blue Ridge school and keep going through Bacon Hollow (Holler) and up the mountain. you might puke on your drive up or down.
FANTASTIC view. bring a lunch. wine is OK.
palate and palette, homonyms. honest mistake.
you see, mature people can admit a mistake. other people call a whole winery “vomitously bad” because they don’t like the wine.
do you know how many people pour their hearts into making wines you so callously deride? how many people work in the tasting room or the vineyard so you can say something so insulting and narcissistic?
you can say you don’t like something without being disagreeable.
you are officially the simon cowell of today’s wine thread. full of yourself, full of “it”, and unnecessarily mean.
i have drank 2 bottles of stone mountain maquillage this week already.
“it puts the blush on your cheeks”
do you like gabrielle rause’s? i think it’s very comparable to stone mountain’s.
New Kent winery makes a white norton that’s also probably right up your street.
gabriele is adorable. his is good too. white norton???? you just blew my mind! must have.
Gabrielle and the Stone Mountain dude are buddies. Sometimes Gabrielle sets up shop in Stone Moutnain and you can taste both.
Shen, yes Gabriele is a charming guy. i’m also a big fan of Claude Delfosse. introduce yourself if you ever see him at the winery or one of the festivals. he’s cool.
shen, I told kyle to give you my contact info so I can connect you up with some insider deals. you know, for research and professional development as cvillain’s resident hottie bartender.
if you are going to get her shoes, go to Scarpa and not Caspari
dude, i’m not having a threesome with you.
of course not. happily committed, tyvm. it just wouldn’t be a proper cvillain comment thread without SOMEBODY soliciting you for sex, would it? and I was really just trying to distract orchid from all the “vomitiously bad” wine we are discussing. her malicious wine-hate would be such a buzzkill anyway as to make any threesoming impossibles.
donk, no offense dude.
ok, Dr. rotinaJ, i just got your email that tells me you’re Mr. Horton IRL and you liked my comments so much you are going to give me a lifetime supply of free wine. and that orchid gets none. awesome.
gabriele is the love of my life. i actually carry a photo of him in my car. he pours at stone mountain’s fall & spring open houses, & will guest star at their wine dinner on the 27th.
rotinaj, that is false. i’ve said many lovely, recommending things about many wineries here, including today. i’ve vehemently disliked 4 & equivocated on another, & you’ve focused on those. considering how many wineries are in the region, proportionately, i’m still pollyanna.
i believe flying fox’s rose was just on some “best” list in one of those free magazines.
/enjoy it, shen. my bff is a wine rep; i’ll be fine
look at that, orchid actually does have a friend. can it be?
Stone Mountain is my go-to for non wine enthusiast out-of-towners. The wine is drinkable, but the view is amazing. Bring a loaf of bread, some cheeses, a light salad and something sweet, buy a bottle of wine and enjoy the endless view from their wraparound porch. Another bonus is that it is usually much cooler up there.
that first sentence…wow. sounds like moi
i meant @ 85
also, if you’re in the wintergreen-afton corridor, Flying Fox is also very good and worth a visit. they might not be open daily, they’re rather small and kind of a family hobby, AFAIK. loved their petit verdot and a white blend of vio and vidal blanc.
nobody has any love for burnley? I adore burnley. it’s like wine in the 70’s. they have that one called moon mist in the narrow dessert wine bottle and the label has rainbow glitter on it. glitter!
and who else thinks the kluge wines are awful?
i like kluge’s albemarle red, but that’s the only standout for me. and you’re right, burnley is kinda cool. they’ve definitely improved over the years. tasted them at montpelier recently and their Norton is actually very nice, among others. a good young norton can taste like a cross between a jammy australian shiraz and a barn-y french medoc. burnley’s hits the mark.
that sounds good.
shen, disagree with you about burnley (it’s creepy!), as of the last time i went there 2 1/2 years ago, but SO agree about kluge.
it is a little brown cabin like à la Friday the 13th, yes but then you go in and it’s their grandma pouring the wine. that doesn’t matter at wine festivals, though. they always have the nicest people at their tent.
oh, we had this goth kid. he was nice enough.
did somebody say mcthreesomes?
Veritas for its unpretentious and their lovely, romantic, family-friendly Starry Nights series once a month on Saturdays. And the view…seductive in its days-gone-by, when-things-were-slower, romantic atmosphere.
/The July 13th one has Abbey Road playing and yes, while in no way comparable to the real thing, they are one of the best Beatles coverbands I’ve heard.
Starry Nights pic
july 11th, darlin.
thanks…i’m so lost.
Gosh — an unfamiliar visitor to this site might wonder about the fact(!) that the posts on here that seem to get the largest number of responses are the ones about alcohol related topics?
Now my great-grandmother, who was, in fact, a teetotaler, gave my mother grief on her own 21st birthday. They were out to dinner in a New York suburb, and when my mother decided she wanted creme de menthe on her vanilla ice cream for dessert, my great-grandmother said to her: “Don’t you know alcoholism runs in the family?”
Well my mom didn’t care what she said: went ahead and ordered it anyway. And I would have done the same. Cause that’s kinda a metier of mine own!
Still: have to sit in here and say a thing or two —
1. WHY are you worried about Blue Mountain Brewery? Or the one by Wintergreen. Heck I wish em all the best. But don’t get me to waste my time checking that stuff out. (Oh Wait… already did.)
2. And although I think I already said something earlier in this thread about the topic, about Barboursvile, I think… why don’t you spend more time on more worthwhile topics? (Emphasis on “more” — it’s not worthless… But!)
Or: (cf. point #2) talk is cheap. So — go out, into your dance. Drink, be merry. I applaud. But, shush. Virginia wine and beer have such a LONG way to go. I’m older than most of you on here, for sure, and I know that nothing produced in this state will ever match what comes from France or Belgium in your lifetime.
Deal. Let’s talk about something that we’re good at. There’s quite a bit! Umm — don’t worry, be happy.
Regards,
We are a bunch of drunks. What is your point exactly?
Actually — there were several.
I was gonna read that long-ass comment above but instead I went and drank a bunch of crappy wine.
If there’s one thing that I can depend on — it’s that you will always be pretty funny!
Most best,
your structure and style are strange. did you just learn english or something?
I’m just old, I guess –
Regarding cf. point #2: I took a trip to Napa and Sonoma this spring and certainly got an education on wine. Yes, nothing produced in Virginia will be as good as France or California wines, but the topic and subsequent conversations were to help a Cvillain find a LOCAL wine tasting experience. I think we did just that and had some interesting discussion and reviews about what our local wine brings to the table. We are talking about something that we are good at: local wine tasting.
p.s. I love creme de menthe sundaes. Shout out to your mom. Get one next time you are at Bavarian Chef.
Oh thanks — I wish… my mother died of leukemia in ‘84. And her great-grandmother, the daughter of Sarah Lawrence, departed 20 years before that.
It is what it is. We move on.
I don’t do dessert, but maybe some nice pilsener at the Bavarian Chef someday could be a plan!
Virginia isn’t where California is but we are closing the gap every year. People looked down their nose for years at west coast wines as well- watch “bottle shock” to see what happened there. Virginia is well on it’s way to something better. Most wineries here aren’t very old (few are any where near 20 years). Vines take time and so does a reputation of great wines.
By closing the gap do you mean quality or price? Virginia wine is average, maybe a bit below, but you would never know it looking at the price tag. To put it another way, $20 can get you a much better bottle of CA wine that it can VA wine. But it is good enough to make the experience of visiting a winery interesting moreso than novel.
i agree that a select few individual wines do “close the gap” with their California analogues, but production, marketing, pricing, and quality on the whole still has a lot of ground to cover.
More than half of the wine produced in Virginia is made by the top 5-10 largest wineries in the state. Something like 90% of the wineries in Virginia produce less than 3,000 cases a year and do not get anything close to national distribution.
So will the mom-and-pop small-scale estate winery be the future of Virginia wine? If so, they’re going to have to keep prices high as locals and tourists are their ONLY SOURCE OF INCOME. and that’s why a $30 bottle of VA wine is only as good as a $15 bottle from CA.
it’s like we’re being punished for wanting to support these local businesses, paying a surcharge for their lack of a business model.
punished, is that the only wine you can drink? Many years ago Kluge had a decent champagne but it was around $35- it would have sold more at 20 -25. I could buy better french for the same price. Now that winemaker makes his champagne under is own label and I can buy it for $25.
That’s progress in my book. The little ones that can’t compete will end up selling their grapes to someone else or be bought out. The vines will get older and better and good business and good winemakers will come and go. In terms of wine business we are infants and we are just learning to call in this area. But we will get better, tastier, and value added soon enough. In 10 years who knows
“learning to crawl” go distracted downloading the new iPhone update.
3.0 baby!
yeah, how is that movie? i’d never heard of it until i saw a preview on a dvd. (though i’ve read _judgment of paris_.)
there’s crappy wine in CA too.
there is crappy wine everywhere.
true- i spilled some in donk’s phone
insert witty pun from Floozy here.
I don’t know what a monkey with a gun is doing with a phone, anyway. Or a gun.
according to orchid, there’s crappy wine in mine and shenanigans’ glasses most of the time.
or shen, do you just go straight from the bottle with a giant straw?
if they make a straw that long, let me know.
you could cut off each end of one of those giant pixie sticks
it’s pretty good but it does have Alan Rickman so that a plus in my book. If you like wine and like sticking it to “the man” (esp. when he’s french) I would give it a try
It always seems to be “Popular in Charlottesville” on Netflix.
Timbits are the new DonutHoles.
Pussy is the new Donutholes.
it may just be me, Hipsterbot, and if so I certainly apologise and will keep mum. but is there any way at all we could void extreme vulgarity? or at least suppress words/phrases so blatantly offensive to general sensibilities (not that much of what i say without such specifically awful words, and much of this site, isn’t offensive to conventional sensibilities), or perhaps find either more circumlocutionary ways to express the vulgarity, or perhaps funnier ways?
again–if it’s just me, sorry and i’ll just deal with it.
But how would one go for cheap shock without 10 dollar words? How does one prove their internet bravery by boldly and frankly sexing up every little thing without a pornographic lexicon?
I just dont see how it is possible.
/penis.
you can always go to 4chan.
Are you asking me to leave?
heavens, no.
thor—perhaps it’s just the obfuscation that gets me, not the outright common crassness. could you elaborate on, providing a workable definition for, the argot/vulgarism:
TAINT (n.):
I’m sorry otterdung. What I meant to say was Pussy is the new Timbits.
thank you. sorry for bringing it up.
4chan is the new Dejanews. deal with it. Paraurethral glands.
wasn’t the battle against racism more satisfying than this new angle?
no implicit critcisms of your explicit witticisms—i just don’t quite understand yet what it’s getting-at.
HIPSTERBOT IS THE NEW UVA LAGRAPE
Perhaps if you changed your avatar and didn’t link to your Twitter page, we might be more easily fooled UvalaGrope.FAIL
actually, i think backup planet did it for weeks.
farts are the new threats.
I liked you better when you were interesting.
Its just having an internet tantrum. Poor little thing isn’t getting enough attention. Just ignore it, and it will wander off to craigslist or something.
hipsterbot is the new SUCK
Go straight to Keswick $5 or $8. Serious winemaker and tasting room crew are lots of fun. Others would be Jefferson and DelFosse.