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Fall 2007 Virginia Wine Festival - The Results Are In!

Written by Lyn
Sunday, 16 September 2007
The weather was perfect, the company fun and the wine freely flowing. Cheers to the 2007 fall Virginia Wine Festival! I had no problem sticking to my low sodium diet yesterday at the Virginia Wine Festival in Leesburg, Virginia. Exluding the one cinnamon-sugar coated almond I tasted, the only sodium I consumed came from wine. Now, I'm not exactly sure how much wine it was that I had but it was a solid 3 1/2 hours of tasting after hitting only 3 of the 5 tents. Thank you designated driver! This was a particularly good wine festival. There was more wine than one could possibly taste and my perennial favorite wineries were there. My tactic is to try only 1 - 2 wines at a vendor lest I drink way too much and lose my palette or my marbles. I broke this rule though once I hit Horton Vineyards. This was in part due to the enthusiastic wine pourer and the fact that Horton is rated as one of the best wineries in the Commonwealth. They have a wide variety of wines to choose from; more than 40 as stated on their web site! While they did not have all 40 wines at the tasting, there must have been more than 10 so we had a great time trying some of their best. I came home with their Stonecaste Bin 2000 (a red containing 10 different vinifera) and their Niagra (a sweet white wine.) I was sad as can be though that by the time we made our purchasing rounds, my favorite Horton wine I tasted that day was sold out - their Rkatsiteli, a dry white. Luckily, this can be ordered direct fom the winery and shipped to my door. The Barboursville tasting was a disappointment. Not because the wines weren't good but because they were highly understaffed for the event. Barboursville is know as one of the best, if not THE best winery in Virginia. This requires more than one pourer per 20 tasters. They also split the reds, whites and sweet wines up so that you had to move from station to station to taste them all. It was impossible. The slowness of the pourers and the 5-person deep mass of flesh prevented us from stepping up to taste. We did manage a hearty pour of their Phileo sweet white though. A little distraction of the pourer resulted in about 1/3 glass of Phileo for each of us. However, we decided to move on because it was impossible to get through to the reds and that was what we really wanted to try. Next time Barboursville, staff up. The husband really enjoys sweet raspberry-flavored wines so we tasted pretty much every one we came across. We finally decided to purchase Villa Appalaccia's "Beret". This one seemed to have the perfect combination of taste, aroma and texture. Well done Villa Appalaccia. There were a couple of other sweet surprises. I was mostly interested in seeking out the traditional reds and whites but ended up being most-often entranced by the sweet wines. There were a couple of bottles I picked up - Cooper Vineyards "Noche" with a distinct flavoring of chocolate and Kluge Estate's"Cru" - an aperitif white with the flavoring of almonds and a devilish 18% alcohol content. This one is almost a licquer! And then we saw it. Another Barboursville stand with easy access to the front. We jammed in our arms and glasses and were swept away by the generous pours of the Barboursville volunteer and their sumptuous reds. Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Barbera, Nebbiolo and their flagship meritage wine - Octagon. We were reminded as to why it is so hard to stumble your way up to the front of the line at Barboursville and were thankful that they had the foresight to add a second smaller table in the back of a tent at the top of the hill. Bravo! While we didn't bring back any bottles home yesterday (you can pick them up at the wine stores here locally) we agreed to plan a trip ASAP to visit the winery. When I arrived home I checked my wine fridge and found a nice little bottle of their Octagon 2004 ready and waiting. I think I'll hold on to that one for several more years and the next time I hit the wine store I'm picking up a bottle of their Cab Franc. With only 45 minutes left before the festival was to close for the day, we decided to begin making our rounds back to the wineries we wanted to purchase from. We turned a corner and came upon a surprise winery that I was introduced to at the Spring festival - White Fences Vineyard. This is only their first year of producing bottles for sale from their 2003 vines but their wine is surprisingly good for such a new winery. In the Spring I came home with a bottle of red and a bottle of white so did the same yesterday - their Meteor Bright Red, a Chambourcin and Merlot blend and their Meteor Bright White. A bright future for White Fences indeed. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to pick up all of the wine we wanted to buy but one of our DD's, Michelle, took great notes as to which wines us drinkers most liked that day. There was a fantastic mead that we forgot all about... I hope that one was on the list.... The only lowlight of the otherwise ridiculously fun day was the traffic escaping Morven Park. It took us 90 minutes to get out since they force everyone through only one departure point. The collective heart attack by the festival-goers was sounded off by the many horns 'a honkin' as the Leesburg Police Dept ushered traffic through a single narrow artery. Seriously Morven Park and Town of Leesburg, there are three exit points - let us use them all! In the end, though, I can safely sum up the 2007 fall Virginia Wine Festival with just one question. Which bottle am I going to open to go with dinner tonight???
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 18 September 2007 )