spring is for wine tasting | 3 virginia vineyards

cork love, at veritas vineyards

Oh, this photo, the one up top, is imperfect - the light does weird things, and the lower half is just a little blurry, but I "love" it so much I had to share it anyway. Zan and I spent our cold, gray sky Sunday in Charlottesville last weekend wine tasting at a few nearby vineyards. Natasha, the beautiful blogger behind Paper Crowns, recommended that we try Veritas and King Family Vineyards, so we took her advice and headed out into the mountains. We had such a great time that the weather didn't phase us, and we even stopped in at Afton Mountain Vineyards just because we saw the sign. It might as well have been a Spring day in blossom. I can't wait to spend this entire season squeezing in a winery or two after a hike in Shenandoah National Park. 

I'm no oenophile (just a regular old wino), but I'm happy to share the sights and views and tell you what I liked. 

Veritas is sprawling - one of the biggest vineyards in Virginia. I liked the Sauvignon Blanc and Viognier - both were crisp and refreshing, my perfect complement to a warm Spring day (if it ever warms up!). Zan enjoyed the Red Star - a great table red wine, and the Claret - a Bordeaux style blend that I found pleasingly tanniny. As we walked along the wrap-around porch, with the blue ridge mountains framing the vineyard, Zan said, "I could get drunk sitting on the porch and taking in the view all day." So we added that to our to-do list.

Tasting: $5

As I was snapping a few final photos and trying to drag myself away from Veritas, the couple that had been wine-tasting beside us asked if we'd been to Afton Mountain. Nope, we shook our heads. "It's a must. It's right up the road, about 2 miles, you can't miss the sign." It was on our way, and they were right, it was impossible to miss. As we drove in, I gasped. It's breathtaking. There's a sign inside the tasting room that reads, "Grapes don't grow in ugly places." It's no joke out there. 

We were surprised by the wines, too. Afton offers two wine tastings - house and reserve. The house tasting has a heavy focus on sweeter wines, so the reserve was more my style. We tasted 8 wines, and we enjoyed the majority of them. We left with four bottles - 2 steel Chardonnays (a crisp, fruity, dry chardonnay - we got one to give as a gift), Cab Sauv, and we splurged on the limited-case Petit Verdot, planning to uncork it on our next special occasion. 

House tasting: $5

Reserve tasting: $8 

Zan is hard to get riled up, about anything other than traffic. He's a happy man, but you won't find him breaking into excited laughter or jumping up and down over much. But when he does it, man, it's worth the wait. He was head over heels for King Family - for every little detail about it - from the bustling tasting room, to the polo field in the near-distance, to the wines themselves. He stage whispered to me at the end of our tasting, "I love this place!"

I loved this place, too. I loved it so much, in fact, that I planned out my whole future life living in the massive white farmhouse beyond the polo field. I could handle that view every day, couldn't you?

The most remarkable thing about King Family is that we liked every single wine. I don't think that's ever happened before. And there was a donut truck out front. And giant, rustic checker boards inside so you can challenge an opponent while you sip on that bottle you ordered. There's polo in the summer on Sundays, and we'll be there with Jess and Brian as fast as you can say, "Chukker" (that's a polo joke I learned at the winery. Dorky, huh?).

So we ordered a bottle of almost all of the tasting wines. Yep. Six bottles. We skipped the port, but we ordered a second Cab Franc because it's good with anything for anyone. Their Cab Franc might be our new all-purpose go-to wine. My favorite was the Roseland, a 2012 Chardonnay and Viognier blend.

Tasting: $5, goes up to $7 on April 1