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| Amanda (left) and me (right) with a sign! |
Last weekend, my sister and I decided to make our way to
Floyd, VA to visit Chateau Morrisette.
We drove the hour-long journey through the beautiful national park-country like
parts of Southwest Virginia. The windy small roads and the cute towns on the
way to the winery added to the sense of adventure I felt as we set off to
familiarize ourselves with Virginia wine-making processes. Chateau Morrissette
is set on a beautiful 32 acres of land that feature a four-star restaurant, a
home-y tasting room and a production facility. Chateau Morrisette also grows
grapes on their own property, but much of the grapes they use in their wines
come from other vineyards in Virginia. They also have a fruit wine series that
uses apples from Virginia, blackberries from Oregon, cherries from New York and
peaches from South Carolina and Georgia. On the tour, the guide stressed that
in order to be considered a “Virginia Wine”, all of the grapes must come from
and be grown in Virginia.
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| Disregard the people! This is one of the crushers on the Crush Pad. |
Chateau Morrisette uses grapes that are harvested early in
the autumn, and are hand-picked by the growers before being sent to Chateau
Morrisette for de-stemming, crushing and fermenting. On the tour, we were led
to the Crush Pad, where Chateau Morrisette has nicknamed their crushers Lucy
and Ethel. These monstrously huge stainless steel machines are featured on the
Crush Pad just outside the Tasting Room. From the Crush Pad, we were led inside
to the barrels where the wines are aged in either stainless steel or oak
barrels. Chateau Morrisette ages most of their white and fruit wines in
stainless steel. They use American, French and Hungarian oak barrels for their
red wines and Chardonnay. They use each
oak barrel only 5 times before they are sold to other wineries, for furniture
or for weddings. Each of the oak barrels holds up to 295 bottles of wine.
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| Stainless Steel and Oak Barrels |
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| more oak barrels |
After allowing the wines to age, they are ready to be
bottled. We were taken to the bottling section of the warehouse where various stages
if the bottling process could be seen. Chateau Morrisette employees put empty
cases and bottles onto a conveyor belt which takes the bottles through the
processes of sanitation, blasting nitrogen and filling the bottles with wine.
The blasts of nitrogen eliminate as much oxygen in the bottles as possible
before the bottles are filled with the wine. After being filled with wine, the
bottles go through blasts of nitrogen again (giving the bottles a nitrogen
headspace) just before being corked with synthetic corks or closed with screw-tops
so as to prevent oxygen from entering the bottle, affecting the wine. After
applying a closure to the bottles, the bottles are foil-capped then
hand-labelled and packed into boxes on palettes. Employees working the bottling
line generally complete 75 cases of wine in about 15 minutes.
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| Santiation and Nitrogen Blasting |
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| Bottling and Packaging Area |
The final leg of the tour brought us through the aging barrels again before concluding in the Tasting Room. I feel like I learned so much on this tour and it was so interesting to see how the process this winery uses differed from Attimo Winery’s process.
Amanda and I decided to do a tasting (only $8) of about 12
wines. We tasted wines from pretty dry to very sweet in the session and my
concluding thoughts on the tasting were that Chateau Morrisette makes a
wonderful range of wines, offering something for every wine-drinker.
My Tasting Notes
for the 12 wines we tasted from Chateau Morrisette:
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| The building that houses the Tasting Room |
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| Amanda during the tasting |
2011 Merlot: This
wine was smoky, and had hints of cherry and strawberry. I found this wine very
complex with hints of dust and cranberry to complement the nose. With
chocolate, the fruits in this wine opened up a bit and made me think of a
relaxing night next to a fire-pit sipping wine and enjoying the company of
friends.
2011 Petit Verdot:
this wine smelled exceptionally like raisins and burnt toast. There was a tart
quality of cherries on the palate with a bit of cedar wood, blackberry and
citrus, adding to the tartness. I liked this wine, but I craved a bit more body
on it. I found it rather light and watered-down. This wine was dry and
smooth on the finish.
smooth on the finish.
Angel Chardonnay:
This wine tasted like a Riesling. On the nose, bright fruits like citrus and pineapple
came through. On the palate, added to the notes on the nose, I detected mango,
papaya and kiwi; tropical fruits. This wine finished dry and non-lingering.
Very drinkable.
Our Dog Blue:
This wine is renowned for its complexity and drinkability, so I was glad I got
a chance to try it. On the nose, I detected stone fruits like peaches and
apricots paired with roses and earthy stone. These flavors were well-echoed on
the palate and I enjoyed the dry finish. This ended up being my favorite white
wine.
White Muscadine: This
wine had a bit of carbonation forced through it. This wine was SWEET and
featured the flavors/aromas of honeysuckle, peaches and sweet BBQ. This wine
had a lingering finish, but the carbonation cleaned the palate. This was like a
spritzer wine.
Cherry Wine: I
WAS NOT A FAN OF THIS WINE. It smelled like hand-soap (the kind you’d use if
you were in the restrooms in McDonalds) and tasted artificial. This wine was
sweet and had a very smooth mouthfeel, adding to the glycerine-y like
perception of texture you might get from hand-soap. NOT A FAN. I don’t think I’d
want to drink this again unless, perhaps, it were paired with dark chocolate.
Red Muscadine:
In general, this wine smelled terrible on the nose: overly fruity with notes of
day lilies, honey and congnac. Those hints were well translated onto the
palate. Another one I wasn’t a huge fan of.
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| Oils |
Sweet Peach: This
wine didn’t smell like Peaches or even artificial peach flavor, like I was
expecting it to. It, however, tasted like fresh peach juice. Paired with white
chocolate, I could no longer taste the wine. The white chocolate overpowered
the wine and spoke to the light-bodied, freshness of the wine.
Heritage: This
wine was a beautiful ruby-red color and smelled like dark berries, chocolate
and cinnamon/nutmeg. The nose had an overpowering strawberry profile, even
strawberry pudding-ish. This wine tasted like a Port: sweet, hot, smooth,
earthy, smoky and like brandy on the back-end.
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| Amanda (right) and I (left) outside the Tasting Room. We'll be back! |
