Winery Visit: Chateau Morrisette

     This past Saturday, April 20th, 2013 my mom and I took a drive down to Chateau Morrisette, a local Virginia Winery located in Floyd, VA right off of the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Rocky Knob AVA. Chateau Morrisette consists of a restaurant, tasting room, gift shop, and wine production facility.

The grounds at Chateau Morrisette.

     I was really excited to visit the winery since I've never been to one, and I wanted to see first hand what the wine making process was actually like. I was also equally excited to share this experience with my mom because, like me, she's never visited a winery before!

    The trip was a little less than an hour and a half drive from my hometown in Botetourt County. From Blacksburg, I would say it would take an hour or less. We arrived at a little after 4:00 pm and since the next tour wasn't until 5:00 pm we decided to take a look around.

The winery/tasting room/gift shop we explored when we first arrived.

     We started off in the winery/gift shop and quickly found we picked a very good weekend to come up. All of their wines were discounted 20% with their holiday wines discounted by 30%. Normally $8, their wine tastings were free this weekend and they also had light hor d'oeuvres. 

The beautiful interior of the winery. All the timber inside here was reclaimed .

The tasting room and gift shop. As you can see it was quite  crowded this weekend!

     Their hor d'oeuvres were delicious and they had so many. We grabbed some of the tomato bruschetta and homemade mozzarella, basil, and tomatoes before it was time for our tour to start. 

     Our tour guide Suzette, first gave us the history of the winery. It started as a vacation home for the Morrisette's in the 1970's and soon their hobby of planting grapes got out of hand and they started a wine making business. Their first batch of commercial wine was produced in 1982 under the name Woolwine Winery, with their son David as the wine maker. The winery's name was later changed to Chateau Morrisette by David himself. In the 1990's the growing winery underwent an expansion to become the winery we now see today. 

     Suzette then gave us a tour of the wine making process, starting with what she called the crushing pad. The grapes are brought up in big white rectangular tubs and dumped into a de-stemming machine. Basically, the way it works is there is a holed caged inside the destemmer that rotates and there's counter-rotating paddles that pull the stems off of the grapes and then the grapes fall through the holes in the cage. She then showed us the two pressing machines, nicknamed Lucy and Ethel. These are bladder press machines where inside is a huge rubber bladder that inflates and presses the juice out of the grapes.

Our tour guide Suzette explaining the wine making process on the crushing pad. Behind the white rectangular boxes on the right is the destemmer and in the middle and on the left are the two pressing machines. She nicknamed the smaller pressing machine in the middle, Ethel and the larger pressing machine on the left, Lucy.

     While there was no wine production going on this weekend she encouraged us to come back in September and October when they actually bring up grapes to the crushing pad to see how it works.   
     From the crushing pad she took us into the warehouse where they actually turn grape juice into wine. She showed us where the fermentation takes place and where they keep the grape juice for aging. She explained that they have both french and american oak barrels as well as stainless steel barrels (which looked more like  huge vats). She also gave us a fact about their chardonnay saying they take the wine and split it into oak and stainless steel barrels then mix it together when the aging process is finished. Unfortunately she wasn't able to take us to see the bottling facility, but again encouraged us to come back another time to see that process. 

The Oak Aging Barrels.

The fermentation tanks. The grape juice comes in from outside through  hoses attached to the tops of the tanks. 

The stainless steal aging barrels.

      From the tour we proceeded to go to the wine tasting. We tasted a total of 14 wines. The descriptions are as follows: 

Some of their award winning wines.

• 2011 Chardonnay: The first wine we tasted was a pretty golden color. It smelled like apples and tasted like apples, oak, and it was slightly acidic. It was not my favorite but it wasn't too bad either.
• 2011 Dry Rose: I liked this wine. It was made from 100% Chambourcin grapes. On the nose, it smelled like sour fruit. It tasted like sour cherries.
• 2011 Chambourcin: I actually bought a bottle of this wine because I really liked how balanced it was. It smelled like blackberries and pepper and tasted fruity and smooth.  
• 2011 Cabernet Franc: I didn't really like this wine. On the nose I smelled berries and cedar. I tasted wood and bitter tannins mixed with dark fruit. 
• 2009 Petit Verdot: I didn't really like this wine either. It smelled nice and smoky. On the taste it was definitely fruitier than the Cabernet Franc but it was still too bitter for my taste. 
• 2011 Vidal Blanc: This wine wasn't bad. It smelled floral and citrusy. And tasted tart. It also tasted like citrus and apple, a floral apple. 
• Our Dog Blue: This wine is Chateau Morrisette's version of a Reisling. I also bought a bottle of this wine! It was difficult to get anything on the smell. Possibly because I had smelled so many wines already and my nose was getting overwhelmed. It tasted sweet and refreshing.  
• Blushing Dog: This blended wine was a blend of Vidal Blanc, Traminette, and Chambourcin. It was also a sweet wine that smelled like strawberries. On the taste, I tasted red fruits like raspberries, strawberries, and cherries. 
• Red Mountain Laurel: This wine is a blend of native american grapes (although they never said what kind). It smelled like Welch's grape juice which makes me think that it had some concord grape in it. It tasted like sweet, sweet grapes or as my mom said "grown up Welch's". I probably would've bought a bottle of this but I could see it being really dangerous as it was so good. 

Tasting the Red Mountain Laurel. 

• White Muscadine: This wine is the one wine I really wish I got a bottle of. It was so different than anything I had ever tasted and I'm kicking myself for not buying some. It smelled sweet and very grape-y. It was very difficult to describe because it was so different, but it had a slight fizz that cut through the sweetness.
• Sweet Peach: Chateau Morrisette also does other fruit wines. This wine was exactly like smelling an orchard full of peach trees. It definitely tasted peachy and sweet with a slight spice finish. 
• Blackberry Wine: Another one of their fruit wines, this blackberry wine was made from blackberries shipped from Oregon. It smelled like dark, sweet, juicy blackberries and tasted exactly like the smell. 
• Sweet Mountain Apple Wine: This fruit wine is made from four different types of apples--granny smith, pink lady, golden delicious, and a fourth apple I didn't catch. It smelled exactly like our bartender, Ray, described it would--Apple Jolly Ranchers. If I could describe the way this wine tasted I would describe it as walking though an orchard and picking a nice fresh, juicy, apple from a tree and taking a huge bite. 
• 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon: This wine was our Bartender Ray's favorite. He said that it went up against some California Cabs and won a Bronze Medal. It was not my favorite. It smelled really earthy and like dark berries. It tasted too bitter. I did not like it. 

My Mom and I after the Wine Tasting. 

     All and all I had a really great time with my mom at the winery. I was a little disappointed that we didn't really get to see the actual wine-making process with real wine or the vineyards, but I'll definitely come back in the fall! 

I grabbed a picture of the restaurant before I left.