Route 9 Barrel Tasting

If you are looking for something really fun to do today Sunset Hills, Loudoun Valley Vineyards and Doukenie are hosting the annual Route 9 Barrel Tasting.



For $35 you get the opportunity to try some of the upcoming wines from all three wineries. More importantly, you get to meet with the winemakers and talk about their winemaking style and their insights into the vintages. Barrel tastings really give you insight into the winemaker and the types of wines produced at the winery.

New Release: 2007 Doukenie Petit Verdot

This past weekend was a big weekend for new releases in Loudoun County.

On Saturday, Doukenie Wintery released its Petit Verdot. The winemaker and vineyard manager, Sébastien Marquet, describes the wine as, "This wine is a 100%, 2007 Petit Verdot Estate coming from Doukénie's vineyard, and aged 23 months in French oak barrels (40%new)."

The wine had a deep garnet color with good aromas of black fruit and a hint of molasses. On the palate I tasted leather and vanilla and just a hint of cedar was starting to show through, give it some more time in the bottle and I think the cedar will become more prominent.

It is a well-structured wine with good aging potential. I want to thank Sebastien for inviting me out Friday night for the preview party, it was a lot of fun!

Route 9 Barrel Tasting

It is supposed to be nice out today, so if you are looking for a break from all the holiday shopping, you might want to check out the Route 9 Barrel Tasting. 5 wineries along route 9 are participating: Breaux, Doukenie, Sunset Hills, Loudoun Valley and Corcoran. All really good wineries and barrel tastings are a lot of fun. The cost is $50 per person.

Doukenie Winery had their annual Taste of Greece on May 17th, and it was a great event as usual. I've recently talked about their wines, so I won't go over that again. Instead, I'll just share some pictures with you:

If you are looking for something really fun -- and wine related -- to do today Doukenie Winery is hosting their Taste of Greece Festival from 12:00-5:00.

Last week Kris and I went on a winery tour with some friends from work. We hit several of the old standbys, so I thought I would give you all an update:

We started off at Breaux. I've mentioned them enough recently, that I don't havbe anything new, but I do want to thank Jen at Breaux for arranging an area in the bottling room for us to eat lunch -- it was a great way to start the tour.



Next, we jumped over to Doukenie where we got a special treat, we were able to sample the next release of Hope's Legacy (formerly, their Raspberry Merlot). It is scheduled to be bottled on the 11th, and I would recommend picking some up as it is even better than previous vintages.

Our last stop was going to be Hillsborough, where the 2005 Garnet has aged really well and is a nice Brodeaux-style blend.

We finished up around 5:00 and no one was in a hurry to head home, so we stopped at Loudoun Valley Vineyards.



Loudoun Valley Vineyards was recently purchased and we got to meet the new owner/winemaker Bree.



If Bree looks familiar, it is because she was the winemaker at Unicorn Winery. Well, now she is on her own and she has a lot of great ideas going forward. I know Loudoun Valley has a bad reputation in some corners, but it sounds like she is really going to turn it around. And the 2006 Vinera White was an excellent end to the day.

Wine: 2004 Doukenie Winery Cabernet Franc



Review: This is the last Cabernet Franc vintage from Windham before they changed their name to Doukenie. I believe this is also the last vintage that was influenced by Doug Fabbioli (though, don't quote me on that).

The wine was dark purple in color with hints of smoke on the nose flavors of pepper and other spices. The wine had a full body with medium tannins that did not linger. Certainly a decent every day wine, but not the best vintage from Doukenie.

Price: $17

Grade: 85

The 2007 Virginia Wine Festival was this past weekend. I went early on Sunday and it was a perfect day for it. Not too hot, but not yet chilly. The festival was spread out under 5 tents and was very well attended.

A couple of highlights: Waterford Vineyards and Windham Winery have successfully completed their respective name changes. In a weird way, I guess it is nice that Virginia wineries are becoming so well-known that they draw the attention of other wineries/crystal companies.

I also came across a winery I was not familiar with, Athena Vineyards. They had some nice wines. I especially liked their Nightingale Red a Chambourcin-based wine. They also had a Cabernet Franc that was ok, but a little light for my tastes in Cab Franc.

Overall, a good day.

My apologies again for the dearth posts, a lot of wine stuff going on, several posts coming up over the next couple of days, stay tuned.

Windham produces a lot of really good wines. Readers of this blog know that I am particularly fond of their reds. Despite my love of their wines, I have never been out to their winery. This past Sunday I finally managed to make it out to their winery to help them celebrate the Vernal Equinox (yea, yea, I know, a couple of weeks early but I will take any excuse I can to sacrifice a virgin ;)), The tasting was really good, I was poured by Doug Fabbioli, the winemaker, and so got a lot of details about the wine.







In addition to their wines, I also tried a creation from Doug's personal vineyard called Tre Sorelle -- I'll post a review of it shortly. All-in-all, a great fun time.