Frost Scare for Loudoun Wineries

This weekend, I was out at Breaux and snapped a shot of leaves starting to appear on the vines. The vines have been trimmed back and are starting to shake off winter. Unfortunately, last night was unseasonably cold with a frost warning. Frost can be very bad for vines this early in the season (well, any time). I surveyed some of the local wineries to see how they fared:

North Gate Vineyard:

Here at North Gate, the wind stayed pretty constant all night and it helped keep the temps up. Low temp overnight here was 42 degrees. Dodged this bullet! The crops are saved!

Chrysalis Vineyard:

...we had a tiny bit of frost at the absolute lowest pastures night before last. No frost last night, with temps in the mid-30s.

No damage to vines reported.

Tarara Winery:

As for the last few nights. We have come away with zero frost or any damage. We tend to be one of the least likely for frost due to the river, but anything is still possible. So far, a great year for us.

Breaux Vineyards:

We do have a touch of bud damage in the lower parts of the vineyard but all in all things could have been a lot worse. With bud break being 7 days earlier, our risk was, of course, increased by 7 days. We believe that the damage was actually done on Saturday as the temps didn’t drop low enough last night and we didn’t actually frost last night. We believe this because frost damage doesn’t typically show immediately but rather after a few days after the tissue actually dies and because of the temps not actually dropping as low as predicted as mentioned previously. We truly consider this time around a non-issue because it was so slight and we don’t believe that the tissue actually died. We expect the buds to continue to grow right through the seemingly superficial damage. Fingers crossed for things to warm up – time to bless the vines just in case!

It seems like, thankfully, everyone escaped major damage and there is no frost in the forecast.

Virginia Wine Getaways

Virginia has a bunch of promotions this year to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the "Virginia is for Lovers" campaign. One of the coolest is a series of wine getaways. The label them 48 Hour Guilt Free Getaways, but that is way too much to type :).

Now that the harvest is here, its the perfect time to visit Virginia wineries and making a weekend of it is a lot of fun. They even have something nice for my neck of the woods, Loudoun County. My personal favorite is the Mountain Majesty Getaway. In addition to harvest, this is when the leaves change and it is the perfect time for a drive through the mountains.

The Post Remembers Virginia has Wineries

The Post ran their bi-annual 'Virginia has wineries' article this morning. Completely not ironically (I assume) they also ran an article about how Virginia wineries get no respect in their own backyard.

I will give the first article some credit in that they picked 4 interesting wineries from different parts of Loudoun to highlight: Bluemont, Chrysalis, Sunset Hills and Notaviva.

Despite living so close to it, I had never visited Chrysalis. Part of the reason for that is their affinity for the Norton grape, but more than that it just hadn't been on my radar. Well, I finally corrected that a few weeks ago.

Their setup is a little unusual for a Virginia winery: The tastings are actually held in a large building that is separate from their "tasting room". The tasting room is very small, so this arrangement makes sense. They have three tables set up in the building where they do the tastings and they run group tastings at set times during the hour. So, you get your tasting ticket, go the table where the next tasting is going to start and wait until the appointed time.

Their wines make heavy use of Norton, so if you love that grape you need to visit this winery. In my case, I was impressed with their Petit Verdot and their Tannat, both grapes that are not seen often in Virginia and both excellently done.

I also enjoyed Sarah's Patio White and Red, excellent summer wines.