Barrel Tasting at Mountain and Vine

With drizzling rain outside, it wasn’t the best weather day, especially after having an 80 degrees-in-January Friday two days prior. But it was an incredible day in the barrel room checking in on the 2023 vintage as it settles in the barrel for aging. Getting to see a different site and different winegrower/winemaker who uses many of the practices I love is always fascinating, and as we go through the process I always learn new things that I will remember as I sip through my wine collection. I love that Mike and Stephen did this event, and I want more of these in my life.

A friend and I grabbed some sandwiches and headed down to Mountain and Vine, close to the Albemarle/Nelson border. It’s really not that far and mostly highway, but it gets rural very quickly. I kept checking the google map route to be sure I hadn’t gone astray after we left the main road. The winery and vineyard is tucked away in an amazing site and it’s nothing less than a little piece of heaven. I previously posted about a visit here last summer.

We had our sandwiches and a tasting before the event started. The tasting room was not crowded, and I had an amazing sample from their current lineup of reds, including the new vintage of Screaming Hawk (2022) and my beloved Grinning Fox (2020) (spoiler alert: I brought bottles of both home). We had enough time to finish and chat a bit when Mike gathered everyone to drive up to the production facility

Winery owner Mike Albers started us off by talking about how he had always wanted to do these barrel tastings and how thrilled he was that new winemaker Stephen Barnard was excited about doing them. He had drawn a good crowd for this event, and this was the third and final session of the day. We tasted samples from seven varietals in tank and barrel from the 2023 vintage as both Mike and Stephen talked about the growing conditions and working with that specific grape.

I was less than diligent and didn’t take good notes on each varietal, so I’m drawing on memory here. We started with the rosé, which is awaiting March bottling in stainless steel. Stephen walked us through how he uses a three hour bladder press to get this juice from the grapes, using just the right pressure to extract juice but not too much color, and that they pick the Cabernet Franc and Merlot grapes based on the acidity of the grapes as they want a higher acidity for this wine. They will make two separate rosés, rather than blending these two. We got to taste the Cabernet Franc one, which was lovely. It had an odd sense to the nose when tasting at first – very heavy on yeast smell. It left after a little bit, and didn’t impact the taste of the wine, which was very nice and fresh.

We tasted the Sauvignon Blanc next – it was very bright. This grape is also picked based on acidity. I think the hot and dry growing season made this even brighter. Stephen and Mike spoke to how the elevation of the growing site and how that enhances the acidity- the higher the site, the wider the temperature difference between day and night, allowing the fruit to ripen in the heat of day and then cool at night – nighttime is when the acid develops. I suspect this will be a rockstar example of this varietal.

The third wine was the Viognier – I actually enjoyed this, continuing my streak of eating my words. It was light and had a lot of tropical notes, and really didn’t remind me of Viognier I’ve previously had.

The fourth taste was of Chardonnay from a tank. They gave an interesting talk about Chardonnay as a grape that tells you a lot about a winery’s philosophy and approach – it can be heavy with toasty and nutty oak and butter, which means they do a good bit of cellar intervention – or it can be bright and crisp which means they focus on the fruit grown in the vineyard and less on “fixing” the fruit when they get it to the cellar. Mountain and Vine clearly favors the former – a focus on growing the wine to express what the site and season bring to the wine. More on that in a bit.

Switching to reds, we tasted fantastic Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot.

Each of these reds is a superb, albeit young, expression of the varietal. The Cabernet Franc was quite fruity and really pleasant – and had clearly fully ripened on their site. The Cabernet Sauvignon had a completely stunning nose on it – smelling rich and I even got a hint of chocolate out of it. The taste was very silky, and it’s clear that this is grown on a great site – producing good Cabernet Sauvignon in average years and fantastic wine in years like 2023. My friend, who really doesn’t enjoy reds very much, thought this was incredible as is, right now, and worthy of drinking today. The Petit Verdot was also a good example of this grape, but was interesting because malolactic fermentation was still ongoing and it surprised my tongue when tasting. The rich PV flavors are quite present, and this will make an excellent base to one of their blends or their single varietal.

The barrel tasting experience overall was really well designed and educated us about what Stephen has learned since taking over winemaking here, and what he will be seeking to learn about growing grapes at this site moving forward. Throughout the talk, he presented himself as a student of this site – while he has plenty of experience making wine in Virginia, he shared that he has much to learn still about these vines on this land. This approach is what I truly love about Virginia Wine – for more and more growers and makers, it is about understanding their site and how it responds to our rainiest years, our coldest cold snaps and our driest periods of drought in the summer. It is about watching the grapes respond and understanding how to prune for the optimum yield, pushing the fruit hard with stress and directing the vine to concentrate all its might in a smaller number of clusters, producing better fruit. They reinforced what I always share with my husband – yes, I can pay $18 for a bottle at the grocery store that has a lovely bold red wine in it, but the maker used heavy oak and additives put in that wine to make it taste that way and like everything else from that mass-producing wine region. And that’s not where the fun is. The excitement in all of this is in seeing how the winegrower and winemaker bring the best out of the fruit through radically different growing seasons, and comparing it to the same fruit grown on a different site to see how it brought something different out. We’re talking about a real labor of love to make all the variables come together, whatever the weather brings. It’s clear that Stephen and Mike are loving what they do with this vineyard, and it was so fun hearing them talk about this exceptional growing season.

And just to tease me, we spent the entire event standing in front of this barrel:

Never forget that Mike is the man that taught me that “Malbec is the bacon of wine.” As much as I love Malbec, I am certain that this barrel contains a stunning sample of the 2023 vintage. Mike hinted that there will be a single varietal of this wine made available in the future to club members. I spent half the session trying to figure out how I could sneak this barrel home with me. Obviously, that didn’t work out.

So that’s another Vintage 2023 Barrel Tasting in the books, and I’ve got to get myself in order to see where others are coming up. This vintage will likely continue to develop in impressive and exciting ways, and just reminds us that the best is yet to come! Are you checking out any 2023 barrel samples and finding young samples of wine that knock your socks off? Drop a comment and let us know!