Virginia Wine Weekend

Who: Stacy, Greg, Wade, Ingrid
When: March 24-26, 2006
Where: Virginia - from Loudoun County to Charlottesville to Richmond
What: A Virginia Wine Tour

This wine weekend was Stacy's idea. Her birthday was March 24th, and we now have an almost-tradition of going on trips for her birthday. The idea of this trip was to fly into DC, spend one night hanging out with my pop (Eric) and his wife Julie, then drive to Charlottesville, visiting as many wineries as we could along the way. It started off as the three of us, but then she invited along Greg, her current beau. Though I don't believe he was told, this trip was also a way for us to put Greg through a thorough boyfriend-vetting process. The results of the boyfriend vetting are, unfortunately for you, completely confidential. A complete report was presented to Stacy, which she can choose to leak. Or not.

We flew out of Atlanta on Friday morning. Our flight was at 7:30 a.m. - right in the middle of the morning airport rush. Here is a short list of the things I forgot to bring: Wade's contacts, music CDs, mp3 player, underwear, shampoo, my Blackberry and face wash. Fortunately I remembered my Blackberry when we were still on our street, but that and other delays meant we were hurrying to get to the airport on time.

As soon as we got to the airport, we hooked up with Stacy and Greg and headed for security. I opened my wallet to get out my driver's license, and ... it was gone. I had no idea where it could be. After running back and forth between the Delta ticket counter and the security line about 10 times, I managed to get through security with my ATM card and my paper fishing license. They really didn't want to let me through, but I advised them (sounding most professional) that I know the law, and they have to let me through with a government ID. And the Department of Fish and Wildlife is the government. I knew no such thing, but it worked.

During the flight I reached into my pocket to retrieve a mint and found my drivers license. No idea how it go there - whether I unconsciously got it out sometime in the airport, of if it was there from the last time I wore those jeans. Fortunately, the rest of the flight was uneventful.

We landed at Dulles, got our car, and set out for the first winery. On the way to the first winery, we pulled off the expressway to find a grocery store, and the street looked very familiar. We drove around for a few minutes and found Pop's house. Last time I was there was about three or four years ago, so I was surprised that I could find it!

We visited Breaux, Willowcroft, Windham and Hillsboro(ugh?) wineries before picking up Pop and going to the last winery of the day, Crysalis. From there we went back to Pop & Julie's house, where we hung out, drank a nice bottle of wine (thanks, Greg!) and visited. We had dinner at a wonderful Vietnamese place, where Wade and I ordered the same thing that we always order at our Vietnamese place in Decatur. No branching out for us.

Saturday morning we started bright and early with breakfast at the Leesburg Restaurant, one of the strangest places I've seen. The building has been around since about 1492, and the restaurant itself has been operating continuously since around that time. It recently (like, maybe 1932) had a sketchy renovation job done, so it's got this weird art deco thing going on. Pop, maybe you could help out with some history?

Pop observed that one of the place's charms is that the owners, managers and staff don't try to bring attention to its quaintitude. Because they really don't realize that it is quaint. For proof that this is so, Google "leesburg restaurant" or "history of leesburg restaurant." You will come up with nothing.

The highlight of breakfast was that I got to try scrapple. Apparently it wasn't exactly right. It had the consistency of pudding, and I guess it's supposed to be fried harder. For those who don't know what scrapple is, here is a definition from http://www.southernfood.about.com/:

"Scrapple - A dish made from scraps of cooked pork mixed with cornmeal, broth, and seasonings. The cornmeal mixture is cooked, packed into loaf pans, chilled until firm, then cut and fried."

What they don't mention in this definition is the parts of the pig that are used. It should read:

"Scrapple - A dish made from scraps of cooked swine guts mixed with cornmeal, broth, and seasonings...."

It was gross, but not as disgusting as lots of other things I've eaten. Ironic (or at least odd) that I had to leave Georgia and head north to try a purely southern delicacy.

After breakfast, it was off to taste more wines. The first winery of the day was Swedenburg, and when we arrived, the winemaker, a woman who looked to be about 90, told us that we should come back later, because they were redoing their floors. She changed her mind and let us in. All of the wines kind of tasted like paint thinner.

All of the staff at all the wineries we visited up until this point told us we should visit a winery, which we're going to call Winery X. We made it our mission to find Winery X and see what the fuss was about. The only thing was, no one could tell us exactly where they were, and we couldn't find a phone number or map in any of our publications. We finally found someone at a Naked Mountain Winery who knew where Winery X was. He said, "It's, like, at this dude's house."

On the way to Winery X, the ubiquitous grape signs that helped us find the other wineries had paper taped over the arrows. I thought, "This hole in the wall is going to be good!" When we arrived, we found not "some dude's house," but a huge facility and a packed parking lot. The tasting room was full of customers.

Winery X almost defies description. They take snobbery to a whole new level. We knew the winemaker's name before we even started to taste their wine. At the start of every sentence was "Jim says ..." I began to hate Jim before I had seen him.

Here are some things about Winery X:

• Nothing happens without Jim's express approval. Not even employee bathroom breaks.
• They don't ship because then they can't have control of their wine. Something bad could happen to it during shipping, and you would think that Jim's wine was bad, not that it got too hot on the truck.
• They don't "do" marketing. That's why they don't have directions in any publications. They do have a website, but that's not marketing. What???
• They accused other Virginia wineries of using bad grapes from Europe and California, or even importing wines from California and putting Virginia labels on them. No one would name any wineries that do these things.
• They had some very good wine, which we didn't buy, because they were so infuriating.

We were in their cellar for a cellar tasting. Basically a cellar tasting is standing in a cold room on a hard stone floor and listening enraptured while some pompous "expert" pretending not to be pompous lectures you about wine. Anyway, there we were in the cellar. Greg asks how often they spray their vines for bugs. He has asked others and gotten answers around 14 times a year.

Greg: How often do you spray?

Pompous Woman: Not nearly as often as they spray commercial fruits, do you know how much pesticides there are on commercial apples?

Ingrid: But that's not what he asked. He asked how often you spray your vines for bugs.

PW: (very defensive) Not as often as that apple you ate for lunch was sprayed. It doesn't affect the flavor, and anyway, in this climate you would have to hire someone full time to be in the vineyards killing bugs in order to make a dent in them ... blah, blah, blah ....

Ingrid: Just answer the damned question!

PW: (Still defensive) BLAH, blah, blah, blah ....

She went on and on and on, and I'm not sure she ever answered the question.

The same woman told Wade "We don't allow sharing" when he had a sip of my wine.

Greg was able to look past the pomposity of PW and the egomania of Jim and purchase a case or two of wine from Winery X. Stacy, Wade and I were much more juvenile about the experience, and spent the rest of our time at the winery giggling and acting like fools. Stacy found a hat there that she really liked, but after being treated so rudely, she didn't want to spend any money on a hat there.

She put the hat on, and ... a couple of miles down the road she realized that she still had it on. HA! We showed them! Spent several hundred dollars on wine and walked out with a hat! Take that, Winery X!

Our next winery was Gray Ghost, which was a lovely experience. Al, the winemaker, was the one who did our tasting. He was as affable and unassuming as Jim-bo was irritatingly snobbish. And they had a reserve Cab Sav that was to die for.

Saturday night we spent in Charlottesville at the Hampton Inn near UVA. I had never been before - what a cute town. We'll definitely go back. That night we had dinner at Escafe with Stacy's childhood friend Shannon.

Sunday morning Wade and I did a short run around the UVA campus, and we set out to hit several more wineries before flying out Sunday night. Sunday we visited: First Colony, Kluge Estate, Jefferson Vineyards and King Family Estate.

Three days, fifteen tastings and 19 cases of wine later we flew into Atlanta, and drove immediately to Twains ... for a nice, cold beer.