Ben's Wine Blog: Winery Visit

This Sunday was a beautiful, sunny, spring day. As such, I wanted to spend it outside as much as possible. I gathered up a couple friends and decided to visit one of the local Virginia wineries. Having had White Barrel's wines before (and not being the biggest fan) we decided to venture out to Beliveau Winery. The drive out there was beautiful and we ended up having a great couple hours hanging out in the sun.

Here's a view looking towards the vines from our picnic table

After we arrived at the winery and settled in, I quickly and got up and left for the tour. Derek, who runs most of the operations on the vineyard, showed us around. He first took us up to one of their sections of grapes, as shown below. He explained which grapes they grow where, how they're forced to use antifungal and anitpest chemicals because of the climate. I was surprised to find out that out of all the wineries in VA, only TWO are organic! That's crazy to me. Anyway, after showing us their method for allowing the vines to grow vertically, we went inside where all of the work is done after the grapes are picked.

Derek, the gentleman who showed us around the winery, showing us his pinot gris vines and explaining how they runs things

Inside, Derek showed us how the whole operation works, and we even got some wine fresh out of the barrels. They do a BUNCH of different fermenting, barreling, mixing, etc. They use steel vats, french oak barrels, plastic barrels, and even these super cool hybrid barrels. The hybrid barrels were cool because they are primarily steel, but have oak caps and staves that can be inserted into the barrel to add flavor. They offer less oxidation than normal oak, but more control over the flavors that are imparted into the wine. They mostly use the steel vats for storing wine before bottling, but he said that he has also done the method of adding oak chips to the wine as well. Lastly, he explained that the plastic barrels do offer some oxidation while not allowing wine to evaporate, which I found hard to believe.

He showed us the grape press which is shown below and used to remove the skins from white wines before they begin fermentation. During this portion of the tour he also said that 30% of all the fruit they use is not actually grown on their winery!!! I found this shocking, but it makes total sense. Who would want to grow a reisling in Virginia anyway?

Their grape press for separating the juice from the skins

After the tour, we participated in a wine tasting which included EIGHT of their wines. My notes from the tasting are here below. Unfortunately they're not too extensive since we moved through them very quickly.

Mystique 2014: super refreshing with floral notes. Not very remarkable though

Destiny: Probably my second favorite wine I tried here. Not normally a huge fan of wine wines because I think it's hard to balance the acidity, sweetness, and overall crispness of the drink. Lots of floral flavors and aromas. Light body. Went well with the sunshine

Lovers Quest: 2.5% residual sugar added to this. Sweet on the front of the tongue with the right amount of acidity in the back. Not aromatic at all

Summer Rose: the pinot grigio used in this blend is left with the skins on while fermenting which helps contribute to the darker, almost green color to this wine. Medium to light body with low tannins. Moderately sweet. Initially I was reminded of bananas - derek said he picks up a lot of lime flavor.

Trailblazer: a young merlot - derek explained that this bottle could age very well for a few more years. Medium to high tannin level with smokey and peppery flavors and aromas. Reminded me of a camp fire. Also had quite a cherry like fruit flavor.

A Capella: lots of spice, tart berry flavor, tickled my tongue
Sweet Surrender: made of concord and st vincent grapes! Tasted a lot like welches grape juice, but was made very drinkable and not too sweet by the st vincent grapes

Transformation: This was my favorite wine out of the bunch (maybe cuz it was the last one). As Derek explained, they have a proprietary double fermentation process for this wine which he couldn't share! He did explain that involved multiple different strains of yeast, which makes sense because this wine was 19% ABV without any added brandy or anything. Additionally, it had 3% sugar added as well. This made for an incredibly balanced wine that was sweet but still had the bigger body. It didn't have any of the syrupy texture that I sometimes feel from sweeter wines. Overall, they definitely decided to just go crazy when making this wine, but it definitely worked out!