We started our route 9 Barrel tasting at
Hillsborough winery. We are familiar with
Kerem Baki, the wine maker at Hillsborough, from an event we did with him last year when he gave a tour through his vineyards. I did a small series of blogs based on that event that I encourage you to review, it was the in the vine series of blogs and the first one can be read here
here. During this event, we got to sample fresh grapes before harvest from all over his 36 acres of vines. We were very excited to try wine that was still in the barrel. Upon arriving, our friends made their way to the regular tasting bar for their current vintage tasting, while we were directed down to their production facility. It was a small bar about 100 yards from their tasting room. We had seen it several times out the window from their tasting room and never knew the number of barrels that were stored down there.
Upon walking in, we were surprised by the large group of people already well into their barrel tasting. The room was stacked ceiling to floor with barrels from different grapes, years, and of course blends. In the back left corner were three barrels with labels on them describing the wine within, a table with crackers and a sign in sheet, and of course drain grates for any wine you didn't enjoy.
We opened with a 2011 single varietal chardonnay done not in traditional oak but in Acucia wood barrel. It keeps the fruit as the key flavor and takes away the buttery taste that happens with California chardonnays. We found this quite young still and needing a little more time in the barrel, but showed great promise.
From there we moved on to his 2010 Cab Sav. This too was quite young. It was still quite acidic and needed time to mellow and develop, but with several more months on the barrel it should be delicious.
The last on the scheduled tasting was the 2010 Petite Verdot. We are kind of home bodies for Petite Verdot. I always lobby that Virginia needs to change its signature grape from Viognier to Petite Verdot, but unfortunately my voice is small in the grand sea of Virginia wineries. This wine was great as it was. It was well balanced with equal parts fruit and oak. I was ready to buy futures of it right there, unfortunately they were not being offered so I instead just made this sample last as long as I could while Kerem answered more questions on the 2011 vintage, growing grapes, the starting of the winery, and of course what was in the rest of the barrels surrounding us.
Kerem knew he had a group of red wine lovers with him and he took advantage to let us try his 2010 Tannat. It showed very well, but more was the love that Kerem showed in telling why it does so well in Virginia and the pain staking care it takes to grow. Tannat is one of the last grapes he harvests so although October was very wet this year, Tannat still did quite well because it hung on the vine well into November.
Lastly, Kerem climbed high into his barrels to allow us to try his 2011 Fer Servadou. It is a lesser known grape from France that is only grown in three vineyards in the U.S. in which Hillsborough is the largest one. It was a bit pasty for me for some reason, but I know the end product will be quite delicious when blended bottled in the final product.
After finishing off our last sample and thanking Kerem for his time, my wife and I headed back to the tasting room to collect our friends. It was at that time I realized that this event wasn’t going to be for the faint of heart, and why I was glad they had extended it over two days. This many wineries in one day would not be an advisable undertaking, unless of course you have a limo. The walk back to the tasting room was all up hill and gave me a chance to enjoy the scenery surrounding Hillsborough winery.
