One weekend in and here we are in Virginia Wine Month! I started the month by finishing a very long week at work (after a week of vacation, to be fair) with one of my favorite end-of-summer wines:
The 2023 Rosé of Pinot Noir from Ankida Ridge is fruit forward, acidic and refreshing. This is such an easy sipper and it’s a great way to wind down a Friday night after a challenging week. You’ve heard me rave about this wine in general, and it really is unlike many other rosés in that it feels brighter and fresher to me, I imagine because of the quality of the Pinot Noir. This grape is so hard to grow in Virginia (and there have historically been very few producing, but many are jumping on the bandwagon if they are a high altitude site! wooohooooo!) that it may simply be that this grape imparts different and better acids because it’s grown in high altitudes and holds those acids because it’s picked early. Whatever the reason, this is truly a summer go-to for me, and a great way to open Virginia Wine Month.
Day two of the first weekend of Virginia Wine Month we opened this from one of Virginia’s Founding Fathers of Wine and major contributors, Gabrielle Rausse:
Virginia Malbec is so hard. It’s a grape so poorly suited to our climate. But when it thrives it’s truly exceptional. Two of my all-time favorite rosés have been from Virginia Malbec – Arterra’s 2017 (which was Malbec and PV) and Mount Ida’s 2020 with Malbec from Turk Mountain (which is where these grapes were grown!!!). So while I confess to grabbing this bottle at Wegman’s (CVille Wegman’s has the BEST.DARNED.VA.WINE.SELECTION!) I was very excited to pop the cork and see what Gabrielle had done with it. I’ve visited his winery twice, and I truly want to get back there, it’s such a great spot. I can feel an Oct/Nov trip coming. This Malbec is a super-easy drinker, and while it’s not rocking my world the way Arterra’s 2016 and 2017 did, it goes down great in the afternoon, or at home after dinner out while I wind down with TV.
And loookeeee here what I found in the back of my wine fridge this morning:
I thought I had no more Albariño! Turns out I had two of these babies AND one more from Fifty-Third. Clear and sunny Sunday, after two weeks of rain, seventy-something degrees, and I am on the screened porch with my laptop, some music, and this super-crisp, lovely and refreshing wine. Arterra, as you know if you’ve followed my writing, uses native yeast and clean wine-making practices with ultra-low intervention to produce very distinctive wines. Albariño is MyNoVaWineBlog’s official Summer Grape of 2024, so it only seems proper to open this bottle during Virginia Wine Month.
In case you’re wondering, while we were on vacation we drank plenty of Virginia Wine, but we also discovered sipping tequila. This is a whole new adventure for me, and while I have been cheating on Virginia Wine with good Bourbon, it does seem my attention will be a bit divided for a while.
As Virginia Wine Month has started, what have you been drinking? What are the wines so important you save them for now?
And have you purchased the Virginia Wine t-shirt or sweatshirt of your dreams? They’re all waiting for you. Pop over to our store and check them out!
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