Winery Visit:
Another term I have learned this semester is "charis" used to describe old byzantine architecture and describes the degree of spectacle of the winery and also "metaxu" which describes the holistic and sensroy environment. I would say that in a way you could apply these terms to each winery because they are each unique and offer different senses of environment and degrees of spectacle that may contribute to the overall wine tasting experience. For example, the winery I visited today was the New River Valley Winery, outside the city of Radford, and the patio deck where we sat overlooked the vast new river valley. It offered a great view and the winery is located on the top of one of the mountains so with a higher altidtude that may effect the quality and certain characteristics of the air that might contribute to a different scent or taste of the wine. Who knows, it's quite possible, and I think there are many more things that conribute to wine tastings at different wineries. I had a great experience here and really got to enjoy the weather, and the staff that worked there were all super friendly and eager to make sure we were taken care of in terms of atmosphere and wine picks.
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Unfortunately I called the three local wineries within 20 miles of Blacksburg and only one of them gave tours, but they had an eight person minimum. So, with the winery I visited I was unable to tour any production facility and I even tried to sneak my head into a few buildings/sheds and I couldn't find anything relative to the production of their wines aside from the grape vines themselves. The grape vines looked really young to me as there was no bush or vines present on the lattice they have set up. Another thing I will add though is this is a small scale vineyard and I imagine all the vines/grapes are managed by hand only, planting, harvesting, etc.
Additionally the wine flights were pretty cheap. We got two wine flights for about $25.00 and I thought that was a kick ass deal. I only tried the sweet wine flight and this other special thing they offered us. We were offered some samples of a wine slushy, one red and one white, and those things were crazy. So refreshing, defenitely used a lighter sweet wine for both of them and on a hot day I imagine that would be dangerously fun.
Wine Tasting:
I ordered a flight of their sweet wines because I have never tried sweet wines before, and as the greatest rookie wine taster ever, I thought these sweet wines were rather exceptional compared to the earlier deep reds that I have tried. These were all more juicy and didn't have as much of a robust alcohol component to them. Below are my impressions of them as I took notes while I tried them. The list is also in order to match up with the flight depicted on the left, so top to bottom of this list corresponds to left to right in the picture.
2022 Colonel Luze - raspberry infused wine, was very sweet and light, doesn’t seem be be so strong in terms of alcoholic content, it was a bit syrupy, but very refreshing, I could drink this on a nice warm spring day just like today. Also getting hints of other berries, like strawberries and it’s sweet like a date.
2021 sneaky peach - again, very sweet and refreshing, light alcoholic content, not very acidic, can feel the syrupy texture but it’s very smooth and doesn’t sting at all going down the hatch. Hints of honey, and nectar
2021 Amore - when I smelled it it came off very strong, alcoholically, and is very floral. Still it’s very sweet, not as sweet as the other too, and oddly enough, although it is a rose colored wine it has a mouth feel of some sweet green grapes. Tastes like there was sweet n low sugar added to the glass.
2021 Depot Red - the sweetest red colored wine I’ve smelt. This was so smooth and lighter bodied, not as tannic as a full, deep red. It’s literally grape juice that’s got a touch of alcohol added to it. This one seems to have higher tartaric acid because it has a similar mouthfeel to a green apple
