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.
