We’ll be going, will you?

There are lots of wine events coming up this weekend. We suggest you check out the Virginia Wineries website for a full listing of events. Piedmont Vinyards, Philip Carter, and Barrel Oak are three that we might be attending. What are you doing this wine weekend?

At Piedmont Vineyards and Winery:

At Philip Carter Winery:

May 29: Anniversary of American Wine – the 248th Anniversary Celebration of American Wine Festival, a three day event. Join hosts, Mr. Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Charles Carter, for our third annual 1762 Gold Medal Ceremony and discover why the Carter family is recognized as the first family of American wine.

It’s a day of fun in wine country for the entire family. Be there for the release of “Cleve”, a full-bodied red Bordeaux that is both complex and sophisticated, and enjoy the modern day juxtaposed to the eighteenth century! Hear the voices of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Carter as they speak of their personal connection to wine in young America.

Link-in to the Philip Carter Virtual Tweet-up & Tasting that will explore each Philip Carter wine, including Cleve, during the event, and bring Twitter, Facebook & Foursquare fans together.

Activities include live music, delicious foods, hay rides and moon bounce, and much, much more. Author, Marc Leepson returns. and, as always, all well behaved canine friends are welcomed. Gates open at 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.

At Barrel Oak:

It is Barrel Oak Winery’s 2nd anniversary and we are celebrating this Memorial Day Weekend in several amazing ways! We are:

1. Releasing our most popular wines this weekend: BOWHaus White and BOWHaus Red as well as our highly anticipated Rose.
2. Opening the new art show by Ben Roeder: “Traces of Memory, an Abstract Introspective”.
3. Featuring great live music Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights!
4. Giving a Golden Ticket to every purchaser of a case of our wine. These Golden Tickets contain the gift of a free tasting for two, a combo platter, a bottle of wine, or a membership in our BOWClub. These gifts range in value from $18 to $175.
5. Raffling off TWO Aged Barrels with memberships in our Barrel Club. Each membership has a value of over $1300. Everyone tasting our wines will receive a raffle ticket.

Additionally, on Saturday and Sunday we will have awesome food service from Local 647, serving the best locally sourced farm-fresh organic foods and runners up winners of ABC Weekend’s 2009 Best Food Cart in America Competition.

There will be great music Friday from 6-9 with Demetrios and Curtis and dancing to the sunsets on Saturday 6-9pm to local favorites eNVee and Sunday 6-9pm to the Fabulous Exaggerations! And Sunday we will have old-timey music during the day with Poor Ellen Smith.

We have seating for over 400 guests and of course as always, dogs, kids and picnics are welcome!

Please join us at BOW for the perfect blend of Farm, Family, and Fun!
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Have a great weekend!

Today we went to the Spring Wine Festival at the Plains. The weather was cool and cloudy but the sun came out a few times. We had the opportunity to sample many wines from wineries all over the state of Virginia. We also had some delicious foods, participated in a California versus Virginia Twitter taste off, and heard some great music.

We were able to tasted wines at 15 different booths. We took lots of notes but couldn’t possibly let you know about each and every winery. Here are highlights from today’s tastings. We picked out a few to share with you. We’ll list the winery and the wine we noted.

Rockbridge-Pinot Noir
Castle Gruen-The King’s Red
Unicorn-Slightly Embarrassed
Abingdon-White Pinot Noir
Cooper-Viognier
Hiddencroft-Dutchman’s Creek
Virginia Mountain-Traminette
Aspen Dale-Consistant quality-we loved all their wines
Stone Mountain-Traminette
Pearmund-both were good
Kluge-Blanc de Blanc
Del Fosse-Reserve d’Oriane
Miracle Valley-Sweet Michelle
Vincent’s Vineyard-Cab Franc
Delaplane Cellars-Honah Lee Viognier

There were several other wineries in attendance but we didn’t have time to get to them all.

The Twitter Taste Off was described like this:

“You be the judge! Come into our wine laboratory and blind-taste your favorite Virginia varietal from several wineries side by side! Brandon Walsh, of Hosted Wine Tasting, will add a non-VA wine to each flight just to make it interesting. Varietals for this exclusive tasting includes Virginia’s best Chardonnays, Viogniers, Cabernets, Merlots and Bordeaux-style Blends.”

It was exactly that. We tasted a viognier from California and Virginia. The Delaplane Cellars Honah Lee Viognier beat the California viognier. We then tasted cab franc from both and the California cab franc won. The last tasting of merlots was a toss up. Half liked the California and half liked the Miracle Valley Merlot. Warren and I were split as well. I liked the California and Warren enjoyed the Miracle Valley.

We ended the day with some biscotti and a glass of the Delaplane Cellars Honah Lee Viognier while listening to Bianca Merkley on the music stage. It began to rain so we called it a day and headed home. We were pleased with the wines we were able to taste today. We highly recommend the wine festivals at the Plains. There’s something there for everyone.