Everything’s Great at Linden!

On July 4th weekend we invited some friends to join us for a tasting at Linden Vineyards. We also decided to sign up for the cellar tasting. We love the cellar tastings because you get to taste wines you would normally not taste on the tasting menu. At any given time Linden has five wines on the tasting menu. These change from time to time. Every once in a while Jim Law will allow the tasting crew to open up one of the library wines to taste. We didn’t visit on such a weekend.

I first thought I’d go through and describe all the wines we tasted and then I realized we loved everything on the menu! Linden is one of the few wineries where we enjoy every wine we taste. We can’t think of one we don’t enjoy. This makes it difficult to limit our choices to one case. Warren is a case club member and needs to purchase one case a year to have access to the deck. On this visit it was time to renew the membership and purchase a case. He made some very difficult decisions but was able to fill a case. While at Linden we decided to take advantage of Warren’s membership and enjoy some lunch on the deck. Instead of describing all the wines, I will instead post several photos from our visit. Just know that anything you taste at Linden, you will enjoy. And when you do go to Linden, tell them Virginia WIne Time sent you!

Veraison

From Wikipedia: Véraison is a viticulture (grape-growing) term meaning “the onset of ripening”. It is originally French, but has been adopted into English use. The official definition of veraison is “change of color of the grape berries.” Veraison represents the transition from berry growth to berry ripening, and many changes in berry development occur at veraison.

We were at Breaux Vineyards yesterday picking up my Cellar Club selections. While there we checked out the grapes and this is what we saw. Is this early for veraison?

Out and About

We’ve been out and about on the wine trail recently. Here are a few stops we made and photos from each stop.

One stop was at Naked Mountain. We always enjoy going to Naked Mountain and finding out about their new releases. Here are some pictures from that visit. I’ll note here that my gold star went to the 2008 Unoaked Chardonnay. Warren’s gold star goes to the 2006 Barrel Fermented Chardonnay. This is typical for us. I prefer stainless and Warren prefers barrel fermented.

Village Winery is another winery we visited recently. Kent Marrs, the winemaker and owner, always treats us so well when we visit. We visited with our wine blogging friend Dezel from myvinespot. Our gold star here went to the combination of Elderberry Sparkling drink and the Apple wine. This was perfect the day we were there because it was quite warm and the drink was quite cool. Here are a few photos from the visit.