Tag: Charlottesville wine

Categories
Living

Take your pick: Facing early harvest, local vineyards seek harvest volunteers

Because of sustained hot weather in central Virginia this summer, the harvest at some wineries is running a week to two weeks earlier than usual. Vineyards are looking for volunteers now through the end of October. Photo: Paul W.

Ready to pick some grapes? Awesome. But before you tap the date into your iCalendar, there’s something those feisty, ripening clusters want you to know: Your schedule means nothing to them.

“One year we picked vidal with a 30-minute advance notice,” says Karl Hambsch, the winemaker at Loving Cup Winery in North Garden. “When I woke up, the forecast had suddenly changed to boatloads of rain, so I called the family and said, ‘We’re picking nowAs a volunteer, you probably won’t be rousted out of bed, but wineries will appreciate it if you keep your schedule flexible as they determine the window of opportunity to harvest, often just a few days in advance.

Pitching in to pick grapes loosely reflects the rural European tradition of villagers helping with—and then celebrating—the harvest. This is still common in many wine-producing areas, notably in Italy and France, and popular enough to support its own category of tourism.

In Virginia, sustained heat this summer has led to early ripening, so picking will commence at some wineries one to two weeks earlier than usual. Many producers rushed to rent refrigerated trailers—to store the fruit before the crush—as early as August 19, according to Steve LeSueur of Worldwide Trailer Rental, which supplies Horton, Jefferson, and Barboursville vineyards, among others. “Last year, they wanted them just before Labor Day,” he says.

Regardless of the weather, picking schedules vary. Debby Deal, owner of Palmyra’s Cunningham Creek Winery, says she’s looking for volunteers now through the end of September, while David Foster, owner of Mountain Run Winery, in Culpeper, needs help September 1 through early October.

The tangible rewards vary—a meal with wine is often served—but the real payoff is bonding with others who pitch in their time for a unique agricultural experience.

Five Oaks Vineyard, Barboursville

The winery is a relative newcomer to the area, but owner Robert Shepard’s vines date back to 2011. Volunteers will be picking medal-winning chambourcin, as well as traminette, vidal blanc and cayuga. Breakfast is provided, and pickers take home a bottle or two of wine. Contact: info@five oaksvineyard.com.

Glass House Winery, Free Union

Owner Jeff Sanders jokingly calls his volunteer opportunity a “hard-labor fantasy camp.” But there’s always plenty of interest, so while all are welcome to apply, Glass House Wine Club members get first dibs. Picking starts between 6:30 and 7am, and shifts run three to five hours. The winery provides snacks, cold drinks, and usually lunch and wine. Bottling volunteers are also needed during the year. Contact: jeff@glass housewinery.com.    

Loving Cup Winery, North Garden

Plan ahead if you want to pick grapes at Loving Cup Winery, the sole organic vineyard and winery in the state. “Only our Wine Club members get to work harvest, and you can’t buy your way in—you have to work your way in,” Karl Hambsch says. Eight hours in the vineyard, usually completed in two four-hour shifts, get you into the club. Volunteers can pitch in year-round with everything from shoot thinning to picking. Shifts often end with a cold glass of sangria on the veranda, shooting the breeze with Hambsch. Sign up at lovingcupwine.com/wineclub.html. Contact: info@lovingcupwine.com.

Mountain Run Winery, Culpeper

At Mountain Run’s three vineyards—in Aldie, Hume, and Fredericksburg—grape gathering starts just after dawn, and shifts last as long (or as short) as you’d like, followed by a light breakfast. Ever wanted to foot-stomp grapes? You’ll get your chance here, and home winemakers can even purchase fruit to bring home (BYO buckets!). Contact: mountainrunwinery@gmail.com.

Cunningham Creek Winery, Palmyra

Owner Debby Deal has two jobs for harvest volunteers: picking and sorting. Picking generally starts soon after dawn, depending on the weather. Sorters work inside, assembly-line fashion, separating the good grapes from the detritus. Plan to spend two to three hours as a sorter, or about four hours as a picker. Volunteers get a special harvest T-shirt and a bottle of wine after six volunteer hours. Contact: debby@middleforkfarm.net.

Volunteer tips

Picking: Wear comfortable closed-toe shoes or boots, dress in layers, and bring a hat, gloves, and a water bottle (it gets hot among the vines).

Sorting and bottling: Mostly done under cover or indoors; wear comfortable shoes and clothes you won’t mind getting stained, and carry a water bottle.

Categories
Food & Drink Living

BYOW: How, when, and where to bring your own wine out to dinner

Brian Helleberg of Fleurie.

It’s been nearly a decade since Virginia made it legal for folks to bring their own vino to restaurants. The Corkage Bill of 2011 effectively gives diners more wines to choose from, and in some cases, a less expensive option to ordering from a restaurant’s list. “We have to provide value, whatever the customer wants,” says Brian Helleberg, owner of Fleurie and Petit Pois.

Most local restaurants offer corkage for $10 to $35. For the fee, diners’ bottles are treated with the same care as in-house wines —decanted, poured, and served in proper stemware. Most restaurants also prefer to be notified by diners before they show up with their own bottles. In fact, it’s proper etiquette (just like tipping as if you’d bought the wine in-house is), so call ahead, and you’ll receive a warm welcome.

“It’s great when someone has a special wine,” Helleberg says. “It’s flattering to the restaurant.”

Where to bring your own

C&O Restaurant

Want to BYO without having to CYA? C&O charges a flat fee and “passes no judgment,” catering manager Cristelle Koerper says. That means everything’s fair game, from non-vintage plonk to ’98 Petrus.

Cost: $25, no restrictions or discounts

515 E. Water St. 971-7044,
candorestaurant.com

Ivy Inn

About four or five Ivy Inn customers bring their own bottles of wine per week, a spokesperson says. And it’s usually a special wine for a special occasion—exactly what the Ivy Inn is known for.

Cost: $25, no restrictions or discounts

2244 Old Ivy Rd., 977-1222,
ivyinn restaurant.com

Fleurie

What’s the best wine to bring out to dinner? That tasty little number you bought while touring local vineyards. “If it’s a local winery, it’s nice to have that relationship,” Helleberg says.”We get people in who’ve been sent from a wine tasting to Fleurie.”

Cost: $25 for Virginia wines; $35 for others

108 Third St. NE, 971-7800,

fleurierestaurant.com

Mangione’s on Main

Regulars at Mangione’s predecessor Bella’s were long known to carry in wine for the restaurant’s low corkage fee of $15. The owners who took over the space in January have stuck with the policy.

Cost: $15, no restrictions or discounts

707 W. Main St., 327-4833,
mangionesonmain.com

The Whiskey Jar

As with most things, The Whiskey Jar keeps it unpretentious when it comes to corkage. It offers the least expensive fee in town (matched only by Bebedero). There’s occasionally some confusion about the corkage fee at the Jar, but tell ’em owner Will Richey himself confirmed it’s $10.

Cost: $10, free for Wine Guild of Charlottesville members

227 W. Main St., 202-1549,

thewhiskeyjarcville.com

Categories
Living

Style points: Vitae Spirits scores design award

Vitae Spirits’ tasting room has the precise, clean look of a laboratory, but its wood finishes and smart design make it comfortable, too. Photo: Andrea Hubbell

Vitae Spirits just added another accolade to its pile of awards, but this one is for its design, not for its excellent craft liquors. A converted schoolhouse, Vitae’s tasting room and production facility on Henry Street is half laboratory and half chic cocktail lounge. This combination earned Vitae’s design/build contractor, Charlottesville’s Alloy Workshop, the award for best commercial interior of 2019 from the National Association of the Remodeling Industry. Pitted against 350 other contestants, Alloy took the top spot in NARI’s southeast region. Vitae founder Ian Glomski praised Alloy for “creating a space with clean contemporary floating lines transfused with the welcoming organic warmth of wood and botanical art.”

On the grapevine

Local wine power couple Will and Priscilla Martin Curley have purchased The Wine Guild of Charlottesville, where they were both already on staff. In fact, Will had been running it since his recent departure from Brasserie Saison on the Downtown Mall, where he was the general manager and wine director. Priscilla, a certified sommelier, is the wine director at tavola in Belmont. Also located in Belmont, at 221 Carlton Rd., the guild is a small wine and craft beer shop that’s open to the public, but where members ($200 a year) enjoy a 20 percent discount and other perks.

Nice to meade you!

Skjald Meadworks, Charlottesville’s first and only meadery, celebrated its grand opening on March 30 with a birthday bash for meade-maker Jerome Snyder, who co-owns the business with his wife, Gwen Wells. After operating for five years in Altavista, south of Lynchburg, Skjald joins a downtown food-and-beverage boomlet, opening its doors (and tasting room) at 1114 E. Market St. Local meade heads are already familiar with Skjald’s honey-based brews, which retail at Market Street Wine, Beer Run, and Rebecca’s Natural Food, and are served at Firefly and Renewal.

In the mix

Rebecca Edwards of tavola’s cicchetti bar has advanced to the regional finals of the prestigious USBG World Class bartending competition, placing her among the top 50 mixologists in the nation, and one of 10 in the contest’s Southern region. That group faces off April 28 in Minneapolis, where “we will be competing in a series of challenges judged by technical skill, style, creativity, hospitality, and product knowledge,” Edwards says. The ultimate goal is to reach the 11th annual global finals, in September in Glasgow, Scotland, where a single winner will be crowned. Speaking of crowns, Charlottesville’s top bottle slinger will earn one at the Tom Tom Festival’s inaugural Bartender’s Ball, on Monday, April 8. For more information, go to tomtomfest.com.

Categories
Living

Buzzkill: Government shutdown put squeeze on Virginia wineries

Brian Schornberg (right) of Keswick Vineyards says the government shutdown hurt business. Photo: Amy Jackson Smith

Even though the federal government shutdown is temporarily on hold, Virginia’s winemakers have taken an economic hit that will only worsen if the freeze resumes as announced, on February 15. Regardless, the negative effects are likely to linger into the spring and summer,  industry sources say.

The primary sticking point is the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which must approve formulas and labels for new products before they are issued for public consumption, whether by bottle, can, or keg. While TTB employees were out of work, the fine folks who make your adult beverages were out of luck.

“If a winery loses a new wine because it has sat too long [before bottling] and aged-out, that’s a big deal,” says Mary Beth Williams, of Williams Compliance and Consulting, which represents 150 wineries statewide. “The government is tying winemakers’ hands.”

Luca Paschina, general manager and winemaker at Barboursville Vineyards, says most of his recent vintages will make it to market in spite of the shutdown, because wines produced the same way year after year are not subject to TTB approval, known in the industry as a COLA (Certificate of License Approval). Regardless, he’s still concerned.

“I do have two labels awaiting approval,” Paschina says. “They are for wines we intend to release later in the year. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

Other wines hijacked by the TTB closure included a new viognier by Septenary Winery, in Greenwood, and a sparkling white by Peaks of Otter Winery, in Bedford. “We wanted to have this wine ready for sale by this summer, but I’m not sure that will happen now,” Danny Johnson, Peaks of Otter’s co-owner, told The News & Advance of Lynchburg.

Closer to home, at Keswick Vineyards, the shutdown impact has been both immediate and quantifiable—and a hindrance to expansion plans the owners had hoped to realize in the spring.

“The majority of our traffic on the weekends is from the D.C. area, and that has been drastically reduced,” says Brian Schornberg, Keswick’s wine club manager and son of Al and Cindy Schornberg, who bought the winery in 1999. “A lot our customers work for the government and [were] not receiving a paycheck. So, they put off visiting, which put a dent in tasting-room sales.”

Keswick has also had “about a dozen wine-club cancellations,” which translate to monetary losses of “several grand a year,” he adds.

Keswick had also applied months before the shutdown for TTB licenses to execute expansion plans, Schornberg says. He declined to reveal specifics, but hinted that the winery may be looking to increase wine production or make another type of alcoholic beverage. Whether that’s cider, beer, or spirits, the plans are on hold.

“We were hoping to have all of our plans approved so we could begin production by April,” he says. “That’s not going to happen. We’re kind of handcuffed, to tell the truth.”

The shutdown came on the heels of a grape harvest depleted by the year’s record-breaking rainfall, which caused some wineries to lose 40 percent or more of their fruit.

“The 2018 vintage was already weird,” Williams says. “Winemaking, and bringing a wine to market, is extremely time-sensitive. It may not seem like a huge problem today, but I do think it’s going to emerge as one in as soon as a couple of weeks.”