Winery Visit – Chateau Morrisette

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.

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.

Stainless Steel and Oak
Barrels

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.

Santiation and Nitrogen
Blasting

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:

The building that houses the Tasting Room

2011 Chardonnay: This wine had a lovely nose of green apple, Bradford pear trees, vanilla and citrus. I   thought the wine was a little too oaky: offering vanilla, butter, popcorn and a smooth lingering finish. This wine was the driest white wine they offered us.

Amanda during the tasting

2011 Cabernet Sauvignon: This wine had a nose of raspberry, blackberry, cinnamon and spice. Thoughts of an oaky cellar came to mind as the tannic and dry initial first taste hit my palate. This was a BIG RED, offering a suggestion of cigars and a sweet, smooth finish.

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.

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.

Oils

Blackberry Wine: This wine, surprisingly, actually smelled like blackberries….and hand-soap, much like the Cherry Wine. It had a lovely light color. On the palate, the wine started off sweet and dried up with a tart finish. Apparently, I’m not hugely into Chateau Morrisette’s  fruit-wines.

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.

Amanda (right) and I (left) outside the Tasting Room.
We'll be back!

After tasting the wines, we were feeling a little tipsy, so we walked around a bit, allowing our bodies to fully metabolize the alcohol. We shopped around a bit and saw that Chateau Morrisette also sells their own cooking/baking ingredients including flavored oils, crackers, tomato sauces and much more. They even have their own coffees. I had a great time exploring this wonderful winery with Amanda. The next time I visit Chateau Morrisette, I would love to try their restaurant and their recommended food pairings.