The next stop on my spring break all day winery marathon (see my post about Bogati) was Bluemont Vineyard. This is one my parents had been to before and really like, so they took my brother and me here to try it out. Bluemont is set further back in the country, about 5 miles away from Bogati Bodega & Vineyard. Their grape vines and other fruit are planted on a steep slope leading up to Bluemont's facility. Bluemont is at the highest elevation above sea level of any Virginia winery.
Looking up the hill to the vineyard
On a clear day they say you can see Washington DC from the upper deck of the building. We were able to see out to Leesburg, which is still a good distance away. Bluemont has a great facility with two tasting rooms (one on each level), two decks (one outside of each tasting room), a gift shop upstairs, and a patio. I believe there's also a kitchen downstairs.
Bluemont's building and Vinny's obnoxious red pants
The people at Bluemont were very friendly and welcoming. Their background story is that they started off as a farm, so all (or almost all) of their wines are named after farm animals. They also have fruit trees and berries planted on their property, and they buy fruit from a neighbor farm to make some of their wines. They let us chose which wines we wanted to taste. We passed on the dessert wines since they aren't really our favorite, and we started off with some whites, as usual.
The first was their new 2011 Petit Manseng. In past vintages they've used Petit Manseng to make a dessert wine, but last year they chose to make a dry variation. It has aromas of tropical fruit, fresh cut grass, and lemon, On the palette there's more lemon, pineapple, grapefruit, and orange. It was really nice and refreshing and would be great on the beach during summer. Next up was "The Goat" aka the Viognier. This one is fermented in American and French oak as well as Acacia barrels. The bouquet was lacking, was a lot like white grape juice, but on the palette it was very creamy with nutty flavors. It's dry and slightly tannic from the time spent in the barrels. Then came "The Donkey," the Rose. It's made from a blend of over seven different varietals including Viognier, Alberino, and Chardonnay. It has 0.05% residual sugar. You could smell the alcohol in this one, but the overpowering aroma I got was Willy Wonka Nerds Jelly Beans (those ugly, but delicious bumby ones). I'm not complaining because those rank in my top 5 favorite candies of all time, but I digress. This Rose is light and slightly floral. It's got 2% residual sugar so it's sweet. Last white was "The Cow" aka the Vidal Blanc. It's their most popular white, 2% residual sugar, fermented in stainless steel. The nose was pretty plain, sweet white grapes with a bit of citrus. It was very sweet and had flavors of lemon. Not my thing. I think it was around this time that a stinkbug fell off of the ceiling and almost landed in my glass, but I'll say more about that later...
The upstairs tasting room, tasting bar on the left
Now here comes the good stuff: the red wines. The first red wine we had is called their Farm Table Red. It's a nonvintage blend of Merlot, Mourvedre, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Petit Verdot. Interestingly, it has 1% residual sugar. This had a big bouquet of cherries and flavors of blackberries, cherries, and strawberries. I could detect some alcohol on the finish but not enough to bother me. I really like this wine, easy to drink, and just an all around good table wine. Next was "The Ram", or the Merlot. This Merlot is aged in oak for 1 year and blended with 5% Cabernet Sauvignon. Again I got aromas of cherries, I couldn't pinpoint much else but it smelled awesome. It's really well balanced, medium bodied and finishes smooth. The last wine we tasted that day was "The Pig" aka the Norton. This is a grape native to Virginia, and doesn't suit a lot of people's wine preferences. Bluemont doesn't usually have this one open for tasting, but there happened to be an open bottle behind the counter and my parents really love another Norton from a different vineyard and wanted to taste this one. I got black pepper and blackberries on the nose and those continued through on the palette. It's really full bodied and bold, but smooth. I give The Pig thumbs up.
The only red on the list we didn't taste was the Meritage. We planned to stay a while and share a bottle, and Vinny really loves Meritage blends, so we grabbed a bottle of that and had a seat. In the mean time I took a few pictures while the people from Bluemont prepared us a cheese platter.
The cheese platter included handmade Amish cheese, goat cheese, cherry jam, spicy mustard, and a warm baguette. My family and I were sitting enjoying our wine and our snack when all of a sudden something landed on my head. I immediately shook it off and it turned out to be a stinkbug. Now I don't freak out much about bugs, but after that I looked up and saw that there were about 30 of these nasty things crawling on the ceiling above me. I changed seats to avoid any more arial attacks but that's when I noticed, there were stink bugs all over the tasting room, dive bombing at will.
Each of those black specks is a stinkbug.
Our server said that they like to live in old buildings like theirs, and that they like the warmth and light. Well a few might not have bothered me, but by the time we left one landed on me, my dad, almost in my wine, and on my coat. This might not bother most people, but I didn't like sweeping bugs off of myself and surfaces around me to enjoy my time at the winery. Although there was that annoyance, I really like the location, the facility, the staff, and the wines at Bluemont and would definitely visit again. It would be really nice in the summer to enjoy their outdoor seating.
