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April Newsletter | |||||
Chrysalis Vineyards Calendar of Events
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| April 7, 2007 - Chrysalis Vineyards Winemaker's Dinner Join us in the intimate setting of the red barrel room of the winery for an elegant eight course dinner with Jennifer McCloud, proprietress, Mark Bunter, winemaker and Hump Astorga, chef. The wines of Chrysalis Vineyards will be pared with each course to compliment both the flavors of the wine and the food. Experience a surprise wine which Jenni taps from a barrel or pulls from the cellar. $130 per person (all inclusive) / reservations required / seating VERY limited, so reserve NOW. Click here for the menu. Click here for the glossary. For more information or reservations, contact Rory O'Fee at 540-687-8222, ext. 206 or ROFee@ChrysalisWine.com. |
May 5, 2007 - The Hottest Smooth Jazz Festival
Hey, get hip,
daddy-O. Jazz ... yeah, man, come hear 'em beat it out at Chrysalis Vineyards.
Be cool cats on the lawn; slide your jibe, down some wine, bread, cheese and
other stuff ... now that's in the groove. Great wines, breathtaking views, lunch
and jazz on the patio ... what could be better!?
- Festival Time 11 am – 6 pm
- Admission is $12 in advance or $15 at the door (food extra)
- Music for the afternoon
The Matt Grason Quintet and The Joker's Wild - Contact Rory O'Fee at 540-687-8222, ext. 206 or ROFee@ChrysalisWine.com for purchase information.
Group Tours & Tastings
We welcome large groups at Chrysalis Vineyards any day of the week. Please note that group reservations are required, and groups of 10 or more must plan to arrive before noon. If your group arrives late for a scheduled tasting, you must be prepared to wait for an available tasting. To schedule your group for a tasting, contact Rory O'Fee at 540-687-8222, ext. 206 or ROFee@ChrysalisWine.com.
Hosting an Event?
Make Chrysalis Vineyards the venue for your next event. From our red barrel room to our Norton vines, our space is your space! Our calendar is filling up quickly! For more information, to set up a meeting or to reserve a date, please contact ROFee@ChrysalisWine.com or call 540-687-8222, ext. 206
Employment Opportunities NOW!
WE NEED YOUR HELP! Chrysalis Vineyards is growing by leaps and bounds! We are in the process of hiring hard-working, wine appreciators to join our tasting room staff. Pour and discuss wines while interacting with a diverse public and amazing coworkers. What better way to spend a glorious weekend afternoon than by being on one of the most beautiful landscapes around, pouring wine for an internationally acclaimed winery! Contact Rory O'Fee at ROFee@ChrysalisWine.com or 540-687-8222, ext. 206.
We Need Volunteers!
Join our list of volunteers and help Chrysalis Vineyards to continue its mission of restoring Virginia wines to world renown and celebrating the homecoming of Norton, The Real American Grape!® We need volunteers to help us bottle wine, pour wine at wine festivals, help give tastings and make sure we give the best customer service to the public that we can here at the vineyard. Give us a few hours and we' ll give you a few bottles! So, if you like wine and want to do something a little different, sign up! For more information and to get on the list, contact Rory O' Fee at ROFee@ChrysalisWine.com or 540-687-8222, ext. 206.
Spring Special!
Due to a little extra inventory in the winery, our customers are going to benefit by us having a "move-it" sale.
The '03 - 3-Pack!
1
2003 Estate Bottled Norton; 1 2003 Rubiana; 1
2003 Petit Verdot
For $50.00! A savings of $16.00!
The Case Discount
Buy a case of 2003 Estate Bottled Norton
and/or 2003 Rubiana
For $150.00! Savings of over 20%!
The Reserve Clearance
Buy 3 or more bottles of 2003 Petit Verdot
And get 40% off! That's $14.00 off a
bottle!
*Prices do not include tax.
*Discounts good on any order.
*May not be combined with normal case and VIP discounts.
New Release!
2006 Private Reserve White*
This delicate blend of Petit Manseng, Viognier and Chardonnay is a bold, creamy, fruit expressive dry wine. It shows of cinnamon, pineapple and caramel candied apple; it is tart and dry with a long delicate finish. $29.00/btl retail.
*This wine is available to VIP Club members only.
VIP Club at Chrysalis Vineyards
As a Club Member you will be part of a growing number of local and national wine enthusiasts who support local Virginia agriculture and share an excitement about Chrysalis Vineyards wine.
- Pay a one-time fee of $50; the discounted cost of the monthly wines plus shipping & handling; then enjoy a high level of connection with our winery.
- Receive a monthly shipment of two different Chrysalis Vineyards wines hand selected by our winemaker, Mark Bunter.
- Taste our wines in your home before they are released to the public or available in our tasting room; receive sought after "last-of-the-vintage" wines, as well as the exclusive VIP-ONLY, Private Reserve White and Private Reserve Red, made expressly for our VIP Club members.
- Enjoy access to our private, VIP Club website with comprehensive tasting notes from our winemaking staff, recipes and pairings from Chef Hump Astorga, and blog/message boards to keep us connected and in the know.
- Save 15% on all wine, as well as, any other tasting room purchases.
- Visit our tasting room as often as you like for your complimentary tasting (members only, does not include glass).
- Experience fine wine and cuisine at Chrysalis Vineyards with special VIP Club members-only events.
- Celebrate Chrysalis Vineyards wine with free admission to our annual Norton Festival and enjoy priority seating and discounted pricing to any other public event held at the winery during the year.
- Tell a friend about the benefits you receive being a VIP Club Member, and if they join, you receive an additional 25% discount on your next tasting room purchase.
If you would like to join the VIP Club at Chrysalis Vineyards, please contact Rory O'Fee at 540-687-8222, ext. 206 or ROFee@ChrysalisWine.com.
Report from the Tasting Room
Sarah's Patio Red has hit the shelves! Come on out to the winery and stock up!
This month marks the beginning of something very special for Chrysalis Vineyards and our VIP Club. We're always trying to think of new ways to make the VIP Club more valuable and desirable for our customers and this year we came up with something pretty cool, in my opinion. For April's VIP shipment we'll be sending out the 2006 Private Reserve White. This wine was specially made with the VIP Club in mind. It is a small production run wine, one that is just very different from our usual line up, a reserve wine for sure, but unique. We are very excited and proud of this wine. Mark just let me have a sample right out of the tank and mmmmm ... it is delicious. I won't be able to get into the dirty details of exactly how it was made, Mark's the one for that, but what I do know is that he forced the Petit Manseng to go dry, leaving little to no residual sugar. Petit Manseng, as most of you know, is made into a sweeter, dessert style wine for its long ripening period and high acid. The citrus notes just seem to pop in this dry style, and then blend in some Viognier and Chardonnay for complexity and structure, e voilà , a beautiful budding wine, just in time for spring.
The greatest part though ... it's going to happen again in the fall! We've lined up another wine, exclusively for the VIP Club to be released (most likely) in September, Private Reserve Red. We'll tell you more about that one closer to the time.
April is going to kick off the 2007 season for us; the vines will begin to bud in the next coming weeks, the air will warm up and without fail, our faithful customers will come and enjoy the patio. Speaking of customers coming out ... we need a little bit more help in the tasting room. So if you, or someone you know, have ever thought about working for a winery… Please, give me a call ...
Until we meet in the sunshine,
Rory "The Man" O'Fee, Hospitality and Events Manager
Report from the Chef
Who would have thought that a grape with origins in Condrieu, France, situated at the foot of Mont Monnet on the right bank of the Rhône river, south of Lyon, would find a home in Middleburg, Virginia? More so, why would Jennifer McCloud have chosen to grow it with such vehemence at her Chrysalis Vineyards? The answer is in the same reason she became the largest grower in the world of our beloved Norton, The Real American Grape!® It makes sense.
The grape grows well in our Virginia clay soil and prefers warmer environments and a long growing season, but can grow in cooler areas as well. It is reasonably drought resistant, enabling it to thrive when the soil is dry. Like many other varietals, Viognier must be harvested at its peak of maturity, not too soon, not too late, in order to display its unique aroma and flavor characteristics.
Even though it has a distinctive profile suggesting "sweet-aroma", Viognier is made in a dry style and seems to strongly appeal to the otherwise exclusive, Chardonnay drinker. Even with little or no wood aging, Viognier can be as full-bodied as an "oaky" Chardonnay, both sharing tropical fruit flavors and a creamy mouth-feel, but has a much more distinguishing fruit character. It has a typically deep golden color, low acidity, and doesn't require much aging to develop complexity and full aromatics. Within two years from the vintage date, the wine is generally as good as it's going to get.
The distinctive, Viognier perfume holds up even when blended with a large portion of other grapes. It is sometimes used to add fragrance and soften wines made predominantly with red grapes, (i.e. Côte Rôtie from France) as well as adding body and complexity to other whites. For many wine growers, this may be the grape's ultimate destiny - as a blender.
It is no wonder why Jennifer chose to grow this varietal. Versatile, in purpose and appeal, accepting of Virginia terroir and climate, assertive in aroma and flavor, and soon to reach maturity…a no brainier! As a wine lover, and chef I couldn't be happier with her decision. Our Viognier opens up a plethora of food options it enjoys sharing at the table. I think of pairing foods with the wine that parallel its intensity of flavor and aroma. Cream based sauces, seafood (in general) that is not acidic in preparation, dishes that are spicy and fragrant yet not fiery hot, and lighter meat proteins like, veal or chicken, presented in harmony in with the fruit forward character of the wine.
This month I've paired a tender "Rolled Veal Sausage" that is spiced with fragrant aromatics and served cold, as part of a smorgasbord or antipasto at a casual spring dinner party. What a perfect compliment while enjoying our 2005 Viognier! Click here for the recipe.
Hump Astorga, Director of Hospitality and Culinary Operations
Report from the Winery
Well, we jumped right into the screw cap issue with both feet. We bottled all of the 2006 Sarah's Patio White, Sarah's Patio Red and Mariposa Rosé under screw caps. The new style screw caps are a lot sleeker than the old roll-on-pilfer-proof caps. The bottle that accommodates them is prettier, too. There has been a lot of discussion in the industry about screw caps. It boils down to, first, how they affect the wine, and, second, how customers feel about them. The people who want to sell you screw caps and the machines that apply them say that they have done lots of research and guess what- screw caps are the best thing to hit wine since, uh, corks! They are less expensive than cork, they can't taint your wine like cork can, and often does, and they protect wine from oxidation during bottle aging, allowing the wine to live longer and taste fresher, yet still improve with age. The people who sell corks and many of the people who sell really expensive wine, say screw caps ruin your wine. They say screw caps look cheap, wine lovers will never buy your expensive wine with a screw closure, and worse, they ruin your wine because they do not allow any oxygen to enter. According to this camp, a small amount of oxygen is necessary to permit the magic of bottle aging, and to prevent your wine from becoming "reduced", and smelling like boiled cabbages, skunk (dead or alive), rubber tires (burning or not), garlic, and Aunt Edna's BO. If that's not a redundancy. Mmmm. There is some cause to wonder about how red wines react to an aging environment totally devoid of oxygen, and, more importantly, if wines which have sulfide compounds (many, many of them do) present at bottling time need to be treated differently when bottling under screw cap. We already know that we need to do things a little differently when we bottle using plastic "corks". So far, we at Chrysalis Vineyards are very happy with the screw caps, but we will know a lot more as we market these wines over time. The proof is in the pudding. If you like the wines and you buy them, that's all we really need to know. Personally, I think it's nice to be able to easily re-close a bottle after you pour a glass or two. Don't try this at home, but I left a half-full bottle of '06 Sarah's Patio Red, with the screw cap replaced, in the refrigerator for over a week before I noticed it. It still tasted good. Even nicer, my dog doesn't like to chew up screw caps and spread them all over the house in millions of tiny bits, like he does corks.
Ahhh, Norton! We are a little late getting the '06 dry red Norton lots racked. I had hoped to be full of amazing accounts of the life-affirming qualities of 2006 Chrysalis Norton. There are trials, tribulations, thrills and chills, whole cluster fermentations, carbonic macerations, bizarre and intense olfactory sensations, spills and more spills, all awaiting in the red barrel room. I will have to save it for next month. For now, let me remind you to try the new 2006 Sarah's Patio White (Vidal) and Red (100% Norton). The 2006 Mariposa Dry Rosé we just bottled won't be released for a little while yet, until we sell out the previous vintage. Try them and e-mail us to tell us what you think... about the 2006 Patio wines. About screw caps. And, if you haven't tried it recently, about Norton Barrel Select. The 2005 is starting to drink very nicely. Just in time for spring lamb!
We have a bottling right around the corner, which is what's keeping me from getting to the Norton rackings. April 2 and 3 we will be bottling 2006 Viognier, Chardonnay, Albariño, and Petit Manseng dessert wine. There will also be a very small lot of white wine specially blended for our VIP Club members. There is a ton of good wine here from 2006, but the Albariño is unbelievable. I'm a little nervous about being able to get everything it's got now, in barrel, safely into the bottle. You never know until a few months after bottling. Will it be the same wine that wowed us all while still in the barrel and tank? You need to make a point of being here soon after this stuff is released. We only made a couple of hundred cases worth, and, once released (probably in May), it will go fast. It's dry, has plenty of acidity, an aroma of citrus flowers, and a lot of flavor. Everybody who's tried it loves it. I think I better go check on it right now. Oh, look, there's a glass. And, it's quitting time. How convenient!
Mark Bunter, Winemaker
Report from the Vineyard
We are happy to announce that vineyard work is rolling along according to plan. As scheduled, our dormant pruning is substantially complete and will be totally behind us by the end of next week. We saved pruning Petit Manseng and Albariño until last, in order to save the "budwood" from these varieties, which are used for propagation and somewhat difficult to obtain. Since both of these varieties have proven themselves in the field to be desirable, here at Chrysalis Vineyards, we are confident the demand for Petit Manseng and Albariño vines will exceed the current supply.
Concurrently, tying the vines, another major vineyard task, is well underway. This is part of the process of "training" the vines to the trellis system in order to promote healthy, controlled growth through out the growing season. Tying is scheduled for completion within the next 5-6 days.
Faced with warm weather approaching, we also removed last years dormant rooted Norton vines from their winter nursery beds and placed these vines into "cold storage. By moving these year-old cuttings to "cold storage", we delay bud break until later this spring, when planting conditions for Norton will be optimum.
Lastly, we have begun a judicious application of small amounts of pre-emergent herbicides within the vine rows. As the name implies, pre-emergent herbicide is applied before weeds germinate and emerge to begin aggressively growing. This is a time critical task, which reduces subsequent competition from weeds, and is an important part of managing the vineyard "floor".
The relative winter lull in the vineyard is now well behind us. Wish us luck for the upcoming season.
Perry Griffin, Locksley Estate Manager
Note from Jenni
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Dear Friends, Yeeeaaahhh! I love spring. The ice and slush are gone, the chickens no longer have to stay cooped up (...hey, I get it, now I know how they feel) and can scratch around all day in their yard, the new growth is popping out all over the place; the ornamental pears are sporting their spring sweaters of white flowers, the beds are all yellow from the daffodils, and the tulips are about to wow us with their breathtaking cups of color. Sitting on the patio with a glass of wine, enjoying the fresh air while watching the American Milking Devons cavort around ... ah, now that's livin'! Come share it with us. Come out to Sarah's Patio, grill up a couple burgers on one of the Iron Man grills, and try our new Sarah's Patio Red (just the perfect wine for this endeavor). See you soon, I hope. | |
Jennifer McCloud Chrysalis Vineyards 23876 Champe Ford Road Middleburg VA 20117 email: McCloud@ChrysalisWine.com telephone: 540-687-8222 website: http://www.ChrysalisWine.com |
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