Hitting a Home Run....

Rarely do you combine the right wine with the right food on the right night….but when you do…HOME RUN!!!!


Last night we really hit a home run. The above picture is a bay scallop risotto with a mild bleu cheese and fennel salad that we had for our dinner. Earlier in the evening, we had discussed wine selections. With the shellfish on the menu of course we leaned to the white side, and in the end went with one of the wineries we are a wine club member of. Delfosse winery south of Charlottesville is own and managed by a great older gentleman who has meant a lot to the VA economy as a whole, Claude Delfosse.


Our Saturday night wine of choice was the 2008 Reserve d’Oraine from Delfosse winery. It is a Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Petite Manseng, and Viognier blend that as described on the Delfosse web site as “a rich, intensely aromatic wine with bright hints of pineapple, honey and lemon peel. Taste – This complex blend of Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc with a touch of Viognier and Petit Manseng shows bright acidity with rich citrus, and spice up front, and lemon on the finish. This elegant, well balanced wine exhibits a long finish with a bouquet of pineapple, peach, coconut and apricot well integrated with soft oak. A great example of a blend that expresses the Virginia terroir. Food Pairing – A great wine with seafood and shellfish. This wine is extremely food friendly and will also pair well with lobster and poultry in richer and creamier sauces or with pork and turkey dishes.” And we don’t typically agree with descriptions by others, the fact they recommend this wine with shellfish gets ringing endorsement from us. The initial nose contained a big floral smell with hints of honeysuckle and lilac. Upon tasting we enjoyed the flavors of dried apricot, creamy and smooth with just a hint of vanilla overtones. This might not be food friendly with all food, but for seafood or shell fish, you really can’t go wrong.

To avoid being a homey, I do have a critic of this wine. It was very temperature sensitive. We found that as this wined warmed up; its acid became more prevalent to the point of ruining the balance. The Viognier really showed through, and not necessarily in a good way. The bad after taste that can sometimes come through in VA Viognier became more prevalent when the wine warmed up. To counter this affect, we chilled it in the freezer. However, what we found there was that if allowed to get too cold the nose and complex taste of this wine became muted if not non-existent.

The Moral of the story is although this wine was a home run when served with our dinner, like a bad socialite. It was a high maintenance wine, demanding careful supervision to be kept at just the right temperature range to maintains if complex delicious flavors, balance, and delicious flavors. So I gives this wine on overall buy rating, it is not for the weak of hurt. Be prepared to nurture and coddle it to get the most of the great qualities this wine has to offer.

Does Anger affect your pallet? My First bad review…..

Question: what does former pop queen Madonna, a winery on the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan, and a semi-dry red wine Tre Rossi have in common?

Answer: They are all the creation of Sylvio Anthony Ciccone (Madonna’s father) in one form or another.







We had made trip to northern Michigan this past summer and dedicated two days to exploring the northern Michigan wine country. While out exploring we had heard about the Ciccone Vineyard and winery, and its ties to Madonna. Having been disappointed in most of the red wines we had tasted on that trip, we got a recommendation by another winery pourer to visit Ciccone. So upon arriving, we excitedly hopped out of the car and ran for the tasting bar for what we had hoped to be some good red wines. From our memory, their red wines were mostly solid and since we came home with a bottle of Tre Rossi we assumed it would be a good red wine to help me get over a particularly bad day in which if they had the ability to fire me, they might have. Not because I’m not a very hard worker, but because I refuse to put up with mediocrity and sometimes forget where I really am in the pecking order.


According to their web site, Tre Rossi is described to be “A hearty semi-dry red wine made with French hybrids grapes showing aromas and flavors of plums, cherries, and spices.” This sounded like a wine that should be quite drinkable by itself, but they said "it should also be good with duck, wild game, fish and tomato sauce dishes."










Immediately upon opening, the wife and I were in agreement, we had made a bad pick!!! The nose showed no sign of fruit, and had a tomato/green pepper smell if any could be detected at all. The wine was a light in body. Medium firm middle tongue tannins and a dirty, earthy, tomato sauce tasting finish with no fruit to be found whatsoever. Deciding it just needed some more time to open up and to bring out the better parts of the wine; we slowly sipped our poured glasses and put the rest of the bottle into the decanter. It was one of those nights so we were going to finish it good, bad, or indifferent. Although the wine did get a little bigger, more expanded tannins, and the tomato/green pepper flavors became more blended, it never really developed into a good sipping wine. It could be that it is better suited to be eaten with food or maybe it just wasn’t our type wine. Who knows? All I can say it would not be one I would recommend to friends, family, or my boss no matter how mad she had made me today. Having tasted many bad wines, this wasn’t one of those. It was very well made, good balance and structure, but overall its flavor was lacking.


Has anyone else experienced a well-made one that you just couldn’t get your pallet to enjoy? Do you think it was my anger I was feeling?

In the Vines Series #4

As promised, I’m back to my in the vines series of blogs. As a recap, this series covers a long holiday weekend of events I participated in at two local VA wineries. We are currently about a third of the way through a tour with Hillsborough wine maker Kerem Baki. We are on his side hill overlooking his large patch of Fer Servadou grapes. He had just finished explaining how picking a vineyard site can be very difficult. You not only have to find the ingredients of good draining soil that is not too nutrient rich as vines need to struggle, a site that offers wind to keep your canopies dry, and sun to help photosynthesis develop and ripen the fruit as the grapes are the secret behind good wine. The Fer Servadou grapes are popular grapes at Hillsborough making appearances in their Ruby and Bloodstone wines. Before discovering Hillsborough , I had not heard of Fer Servadou let alone had it in a wine. However, Bloodstone has quickly become one of my favorite wines offered from Hillsborough and Fer Servadou no doubt plays a big role in that.


From there we strolled to the other side of the vineyard and along the way Kerem explained the model behind their vineyard management. Unlike some vineyards that pay random crews at different times to prune and groom their vineyards with oversight from a vineyard manager; Hillsborough has 4 people full time employees charged with maintaining their vines. This keeps those four plenty busy, but it also helps them know the individual plants, and allows them adequate time to spot problems as they are developing which can mean the difference between a good and great year of fruit.


The next grape was my personal favorite single variety when done right, Petite Verdot. Unlike the states’ choice of Viognier, I believe Petite Verdot could be the VA’s signature grape. In my travels around VA it is popular enough, yet unique enough that although every winery could make one, and no two taste the same. But enough on my preaching as to what VA’s signature grape should be, let’s get back to the tour. As we walked up one of the rows of PV, one of my tour mates noted plump lush groups of grapes on the ground. Kerem explained they limit the production of the vines, and they do that by going through the vines and selecting the damaged or incomplete clumps of grapes and removing them. They had recently trimmed back their PV leaving the remaining grapes to get the full attention of the vine during the last four to six weeks of ripening. With the looks of the grapes that were left behind, I’m excited for the wine that they produce. Hopefully Irene and Lee didn’t leave to much water for the vines to utilize.



From there we went on the hike part of the vineyard walk. We walked up the long row of PV, across the dirt entry road between the tasting room and the farm house and then climbed to highest part of the vineyard. From the top of their vineyard we found ourselves surrounded by the more traditional wine grapes Merlot, Cab Franc, and Cab Sauvignon. After finishing our delicious samples of these more traditional wine grapes it was time to head back to the tasting room to enjoy the fruits of Hillsborough hard labor. under the sunset.



We decided our wine would be Garnet to go with our dinner. I left this vineyard tour with a lot more knowledge of all it takes to maintain a vineyard, but more importantly how much work goes into the care and feeding for grapes long before the hectic time of harvest and fermentation. It makes me more appreciative of those who create the wines I enjoy week in and week out. I encourage all my readers if they get a chance to spend some time taking a walk with the wine maker at Hillsborough . You’ll be glad you did.

Taking a break…(A good Group…The winery wasn’t so hot)

I know many of you are holding your breath for the next in my in the vine series, but I’m taking break to blog about a new wine group that wife I joined. We have enjoyed touring VA wineries by ourselves, but sometimes it is nice to share our thoughts with others, and let’s face it, it’s nice to have some social interaction while on the VA wine trail. So to scratch that itch, we went on to meetup.com and found a group that seemed to be the perfect one for us. The Virginia Wine Club had a good number of members, regular offerings of meet ups, and focused on mostly VA wine. This seemed to meet all of our requirements.

So looking at the future offerings, we found one that would be good to check out the group. However, our first experience was to be one found not in VA but a favorite of ours in Maryland, Black Ankle Vineyards. So with high hopes, we headed out with what we thought was going to be about 18 others to meet at Black Ankle. For those of you who haven’t been there, Black Ankle is about 1.5 hours North of D.C. in Mid Maryland, and slightly East North East of Fredrick, Maryland about 8 miles north of I-70.

Upon arriving things were really crazy, a groupon or living social bus was in the middle of their tasting. A second group was there for a tour offered every Saturday and Sunday at 1 P.M. as weather permits to get a full tour of the vineyard (See Black Ankle web site for details), and then somewhere in there was the people we were supposed to be “meeting” with.
Watching the bus leave, the vineyard tour group started tasting, and still no obvious group of 18 formed, the wife and I started our tasting. Meanwhile, I checked into the group’s site to see if anyone was commenting on what was going on.

Our tasting started with their 2010 Viognier. Although the nose was a great melon floral mix, the wine has such a bad acid bitter middle that it was almost dumped. If you know me, I can’t dump wine, but this is the closest I had ever come. Since the wine wasn’t that striking I took this opportunity to check the clubs website, and found other members had arrived and after a quick comment, I was directed to where I could find them.

Following the Viognier the 2010 Bedlam was poured. It is a white blend of Viognier 36%, 23% Muscat, 17% Gruner Veltiner, 17 % Albarino, and 7 % Chardonnay. This too had a very pleasant fruit and floral nose, and was much better white wine; it still had some of the bitter characteristics of the Viognier.

On the red side on their standard tasting they started with their 2010 Passeggiata, this was interesting wine blend of Syrah and Viognier wines. This was the best of their red wine standard tasting wines for the wife and I at least. They followed this up by their 2009 Rolling Hills which is almost a Bordeaux blend with Cab Sav, Cab Franc, Malbec, PV, and Syrah. It had muted red fruits on the noise the continued into the wine with an earthy finish.

That ended their standard tasting you get for five dollars, for an additional five you get to taste two of their bigger reds and finish with their red port style wine. Not wanting to be gipped on my experience, we continued with their “reserve tasting.”

The first of their reserve reds was 2008 Crumbling. Rock, it’s a blend of all the grapes in the Rolling Hills with a little Merlot to add complexity. This showed a lot of bright red fruit mostly raspberry, the finished off with light but firm tannins. This wine can be paired with lots of food, and the both will be better for it.

After that we moved on to their Slate wine, a blend of their Cab Sav, Syrah, Cab Franc, Malbec, and PV. It had much more earthy herby nose than the Crumbling Rock. It also had a much deeper earth finish that previous reserve. However, I think it is much less versatile due to those characteristics.

Lastly, they offered their port style wine Terra Dulce I, it contained a blend of all their red (and white!) grapes. It is a delicious dessert wine. Although much higher in alcohol content, it is not burning or over power in the mouth and only after it goes down the throat does it have the alcoholic warming affect. It gets a high recommendation from this red neck; even for those who don’t typically like dessert or port wines.

The wife and I decided to take a bottle of the Passeggiata back to the table to enjoy. Once the rest of our group finished their tasting, we enjoyed an after of wine drinking and discussing of wine, economy, politics, and just getting to know one another. As a first experience, I would say the Virginia wine club was a big thumbs up, and the wife and I are excited to go to the next meeting of wine lovers of VA. As for the winery, we thought all in all the wines were only OK, and the best ones were well over priced for the market they are in. It is a shame as Black Ankle was a favorite of ours for the Maryland wine community.

In the Vines Series…Blog #2

Well I guess if it isn’t work it's football that distracts me from my blog responsibilities…if only my fantasy football was half as good as my tour in the vines at Hillsboro was. Alas it wasn’t and I took my first fantasy football loss, and pile on the misery my Cowboy’s squandered a sure win away. Thankfully, looking back on the vineyard tour at Hillsboro can brighten my day.


Our Vineyard tour started in the Tannat. A hardy vine capable of producing many tons per acre, however at Hillsborough they keep it trimmed back to 3 to 4 ton an acre. Still, this is more yield per acre than the rest of the vines at Hillsborough.

Tannat is a dark purple grape with a large canopy and big fruit compared to most other grapes. This is the single grape in the Onyx , it is also the leading grape in their Ruby, and makes an appearance in their Bloodstone so it’s not wonder a good portion of their vineyard is planted in it.

Tannat is becoming increasingly popular on the hillsides in Virginia. A surprise to me is how sweet the fruit was. I was expecting a drier flavor more like the wine but instead the Tannat was a very pleasant table style grape and I snuck a second grape to make sure my first wasn’t an outlier.





























From there the group of about 20 walked up the hill to where the Roussanne grapes were growing.

A uniquely French grape, Its believed to originate in the Rhone valley, these are much younger than the Tannat grapes we just left. Much juicer, these grapes were very sweet and pleasant. I can imagine why they have deer a problem out here.

Kerem , the wine maker at Hillsboro, explains how this will be their first harvest of these particular vines and this will probably be the last new patch of grapes for this vineyard as they have pretty much maxed out their 36 acres.

This of course is the single varietal grape in their Canelian wine which I reviewed in the first blog in this series. And unless all the rain totally delayed them, they should be harvesting them as I type.
































From there we walked down the other face of the hill, along the way Kerem points how they trimmed back the free standing brush. He says they do this, especially this time of the year, to keep the deer out. With harvest right around the corner, the grapes are at their eating best, and if they didn’t, the deer would go back and forth all day from brush to vines gorging themseves.


Another interesting fact he shared with us was about the trees surrounding the Vineyard. He points to some cut down Black Walnut trees. They have been cut down not to expand the vineyard, but because Walnut trees excrete a substance into the soil that is poison to vines. This is a defensive mechanism against intrusive vines that like to climb walnut trees, but a side effect is that it can kill large portions of grape vines if allowed to stand too close to the vineyard.


From here we can see the large amount of acreage dedicated to the Fer Servadou grape and it is good time wrap up blog two of this series. The next blog will cover the rest grapes grown at Hillsboro. Talk a little more about vineyard care and vineyard management.

In the Vines Series…Blog #1

Two things I have noticed…1) Work is getting in the way of my blogging life style lately… 2) I did a bunch of research last week, and haven’t even started the blog series that will utilize that research…Although I don’t have control over observation #1…I can do something about #2.

Through my love of wines, and some great events hosted by local wineries, I recently enjoyed a chance to take a walk in the vines with two people ankle deep or more in the VA Wine industry. Over the next six blogs, I plan on covering the wineries involved, the people who gave the tours, and share the awesome experience I had learning a little more about everything from vines to wines.My first experience involved going to Hillsboro Winery in Hillsboro , Loudon County, Virginia. The evening hike in the vines with the Wine Maker, Kerem Baki, was offered to Hillsboro Frequent Winers, They wanted to give their winers a chance to learn more about the process, fruit, and people who make Hillsboro wines.

The process started with me with learning a little history of the winery. Hillsboro winery was established and vines planted in 2002 on a great parcel of land. The combination of being located on a severely sloping side hill, having a southwest facing exposure, beautiful scenery in all directions led to an almost perfect sit-up for a vineyard. Lots of sun, quick draining soil, and protection from late season frost are ingredients for growing great grapes, and that is half the scenario needed to make good wine.


Part of establishing their winery meant refurbishing/renovating the on-site 1820’s stone barn into a beautiful tasting room, that also host events, weddings, and of course afternoon picnickers for those on the VA Wine Trail.





























They incorporated a beautiful babbling brook, pergola¸ and plenty of covered and uncovered seating areas available for wine drinkers to enjoy a glass of their favorite Hillsboro wine. The best part their outdoor seating areas are how close you are to their grape vines, and they do encourage you to go and take an up close and personal view of them.












While waiting to start our tour with the wine maker, my wife and I enjoyed their outdoor seating area with a delicious glass of the Hillsboro 2009 Carnelian wine. This wine is made with 100% Roussanne grape. One of the many unique grapes grown at Hillsboro, you won’t almost anywhere else on the VA wine trail.

Unfortunately for us this vintage was only an ok sipping wine. It had an almost pee color, and didn’t hold up well when it got only a little bit warm. It turned bitter and reminded me of homemade dandelion wine when the heat of the day got to it. But chilled it had floral nose, and a mixed floral pear flavor. It had a medium to heavy body for a white wine, and can stand up to a variety of foods.

In the next of this series, I’m going to cover the first part of the walk in the vines; it includes several different varietals and some little known facts of Vineyard management. I hope you all are waiting with baited breath….On a parting note, does anyone else have experience with a 100% Roussanne wine???

New tasting room makes winery hidden no more…

With the last four day weekend for the foreseeable future upon us, the wife and I had some big plans for visiting VA wine country. Saturday’s highlights included a stop at a little hidden gem the wife and I have been visiting since 2008. It is run by nothing less the most personable owner and wine maker you’ll get to meet on the VA wine trail. When we heard this winery was opening a new tasting room this weekend, we sort of scratched our heads. In all the times we visited there, there had never been more than one other small group with us at the same time. The ability to taste wines right alongside the wine making process had always been highlight for us, so why were they opening a new tasting room??? Only time would tell.


After a quick stop at closer winery on the way out to Loudon County, our stomachs said it was time for lunch, and we made the right hand turn off route 9 towards Lovettsville and Hiddencroft Winery.


Once there, the changes to this winery were immediately clear. We were greeted by a larger parking lot quite a ways away from where the old tasting room used to be. Another welcome change was that it was quite full.


A beautiful crushed gravel walk way leads you through an old 1900’s barn and up to the new tasting room which is a restored farm house.




Clyde greeted us as we walked up the porch with a hardy handshake and directed us to one of three new tasting bars. Before heading straight to the good stuff (wine of course for you sickos), we thought we'd check out the rest of the new tasting house.

Upstairs featured many private rooms, which we could see coming in handy for private tasting, or for winter hours when the outside areas may not be suitable for drinking wine.












































The main tasting bars are perfect for housing intimate tasting of no more than 5 or 6.































Plus the kitchen offers them the ability to cook for some gatherings, or in the case of today have delicious hour’ deouvers for the guest, and best yet a whole separate room for settling up at the end of the day.

The outdoor patio made for a nice setting for hosting our lunch plus a few other parties, and if the patio isn’t really your style then there are picnic tables that are scattered around the outdoor area. Now that we covered the new part of the winery, let’s get back to old reliable.




The tasting consisted of ten wines three mostly dry whites (is there any other kind), four red wines (all dry), and three fruit wines. Now for the sake of not tainting anyone’s opinion, or letting my personal biases again chardonnay show too much, I’ll cover some of their better ones, even if only in my lowly opinion.


Their third wine of the tasting was their 2009 Traminette. It started off with a nice floral nose, with a lush floral taste with a light spice finish. It has a clean finish helped out with the 2.5% residual finish.


The first red of their tasting was a 2008 Chambourcin had a smoky delicious nose followed by red fruity black pepper taste mellowed out with a touch of smoke on the finish. I won’t lie, this is the one we took to our picnic, and it carried it most of the way through our evening also.


Something you won’t find on their web site but will if you find at the winery right now is their 2009 Tannat. This is the last in their red line up. This Hiddencroft Tannat has a Smoky red fruit nose, and our small sample revealed red berries smoke and some balanced tannins.


This was a great experience. We believe that the new tasting room and outdoor area will make Hiddencroft more popular and get more recognition that it rightfully deserves, and if nothing else, gives us a great place to have lunches in wine country.

Oil Tyco0n or Condiment on Hamburger?

I’m all about exposing people to wineries they don’t know about, and this year’s FLX wine tour included some places we had never been. One of those new places for us was a random stop J.R. Dill Winery .

Overall, we had a great visit at this winery. Their pourers were very entertaining, however they weren't producing the type wines my wife and I really enjoy, but they did produce some fun sipping wines that are great by themselves or with light summer fare.

After enjoying a quick evening out in VA wine country (Loundon County to be specific), the wife and I decided we were ready for easy evening drinking wine while enjoying an evening of sports and “Diners, Drivers, and Dives.” We decided to open up our bottle of Lake Glass Red.

This non-vintage blend of popular Finger Lakes red grapes has a green earthy smell. Not quite moldy, more like sniffing around the roots of a green pepper plant. The wine was a real fruit bomb. Raspberry was the predominant taste but balanced with a little green pepper, and burning sharp tannins on the back of the tongue.

This wine was not something I’d want every day but in the right situation with a juicy grilled meat, or tangy bar-b-que sauce this wine is a great compliment, or a sipping wine to top off a great evening on the start of a holiday weekend. Either way, it is fun and a signal of things to come from this winery.

Adventures in Cider

Along with my enjoyment of wines, I have been known to dabble in other drinks of the Alcoholic variety beer, whiskey, and cider to name a few. I have noticed in my travels around VA that cider makers are popping up here in there. The idea of this makes me smile. However today we are going to talk about a cider from the Finger Lakes Wine Region.


Bellewether Hard Ciders on Cayuga Lake was a break from our day of wine touring. Both the wife and I enjoy hard ciders. We started drinking cider together when we discovered a little cider place from PA. Although we quickly learned, like NY, most states treat cider more like wine then beer. With an alcoholic content between 5 & 6 percent, I view it more like beer, and wish it came more in six packs instead of 750 ml bottles.

But enough complaining about alcohol regulation and on to the cider, I generally prefer my ciders dry like I enjoy my wine. However after tasting every cider on their available tasting menu, my wife and I ended up buying Bellewether’s Liberty Spy along with another cider I’ll review when it gets opened.


Liberty Spy is actually a semi-sweet cider made from the popular Spy apple. So on a recent hot day when we were looking for something refreshing, out came this cider from the bottom of our fridge. It was just what the doctor ordered. With a little apple nose, it encourage big gulps. The flavor of good spy apple followed by mineral and acid mixed well with the small sparkling effervescence of the cider.

It is refreshing break for those hot summer days, when red wine just doesn’t work and you’re on strike from the pink stuff. Do my fellow wine drinkers also dabble in the enjoyment of Hard Ciders, or am I the odd man out?