Winery Visit- Vintage Ridge Vineyard

On Sunday, April 15, 2012 I visited Vintage Ridge Winery in Rectortown, VA with my friends. It is a really small winery hidden tucked into the hills of the country. Inside, the winery was really elegant and nicely decorated. They also had a great patio area where we did the tasting.

The inside of the tasting room with old stainless steal vats.

The winery was closed from December to March for the whole winemaking process. They grow all of the grapes except for Syrah and Merlot, which they get from a vineyard in Madison County. Then they do the pressing, fermentation, and bottle all of the wines on site. Customers are invited to be a part of almost every step in the process, which is pretty neat. We were lucky enough to see some of the wine being bottled when we got there!

These are the Maiden Voyage Wines being bottles at the winery.

A really neat thing that Vintage Ridge does is their Premier Pairing. They make little, tasty bites for each wine and tell people to sip the wine without food and then with it to get the full affect. They have a person on staff who chooses which wines will go with what types of food. Definitely a job I would like :)

The wines are displayed beautifully when you walk into the tasting room.

  The wines we had included:

Maiden Voyage- this is a blended wine of Vidal Blanc and Mourvedre, which is a red grape, but they don't let the wine soak on the skin. This was definitely a unique wine. They explained that it is perfect by itself so we did not have a pairing with it. On the nose it was citrusy mixed with a gasoline smell. I definitely got more citrusy and tropical fruits on the pallet like pineapple and lemon. This was the driest wine and very interesting, but not my favorite.

Syrah- This was a spicy, light wine. It had earthy, dirty and slightly acidic flavors that went really well with the peppered tomato and peach pairing. I really enjoyed this wine. It was easy to drink with great flavors and complexity.

Drinking the Cabernet Franc with a pairing of Manchago Cheese and Spicy Plum Chutney. Yum!

Cabernet Franc- this wine was more medium-bodied than the last one. It was really well-balanced between the dark fruity cherry flavors and the peppery, green flavors. There was a hint of a clove at the end that left a nice taste in my mouth. We had this wine with Manchago cheese and spicy plum chutney. While I think I liked the previous wine on its own better, this was hand-down my favorite pairing of the whole tasting.

Petite Verdot- this was the biggest, boldest wine of them all. It was really heavy on my pallet with very dry, tannic, black tea components. I got a little bit of oak and leather mixed in with dark, dark, over-ripened cherries. I think this is one of those wines that goes perfectly with a huge, fatty steak. We tasted this wine with salami and three pepper mustard. The fattiness in the salami was perfect with the wine and even though i don't like mustard, it wasn't too bad either.

Summer Night- wow, this wine was yummy. It had more residual sugar than many white wines, which scared me at first, but was really well contained by the fruity, fig flavors in the wine. They suggested pairing the wine with Thai food, which I think would taste fantastic. However, we tried this wine with spiced pecans. The cyan pepper from the glaze was amazing with the wine. I definitely took a bottle of this home with me!

A listing of the wines they carry and the prices.

I will definitely come back to this winery again. It is probably the best one I have been to so far.

Outside at Vintage Ridge Winery with the vineyard in the background.