JANUARY NEWSLETTER 2024
IN THIS NEWSLETTER...
VIP Wines of the Month
Report from the Tasting Room
Report from the Cellar
Report from the Vineyard
Report from the Locksley Farmstead Cheese
Note from Jenni
January is here and with the holiday season coming to a close, the joy of the season does not have to run dry. Visit us at Chrysalis Vineyards to purchase what the brisk winter weather calls for, red wine. Enjoy a bottle of your personal favorite or explore something new. We are here to help you find just the right bottle to add to your winter weather wine selection.
In addition to providing you with lovely wine this winter, our winter music series will be kicking off this month! Enjoy live instrumental music on the 1st & 3rd Saturdays of the month from 3 - 6pm.
January Music Lineup
January 6th - Caleb Nei - Jazz Pianist
January 20th - Cristian Perez - 7-String Guitarist
NOTE TO OUR VIP CLUB MEMBERS
Our VIP pickup event this month, will be held on Friday, January 12th from 5:00pm until 8:00pm at the Ag District Center. This month we'll be offering a blending presentation! Members must RSVP no later than January 8th by emailing TR-Manager@ChrysalisWine.com. Please include your name, number attending (up to 2 per membership), and preferred time (5:00, 5:45, 6:15, or 7:00). When planning your visit, please remember that we close at 8:00 pm.
If you're not a member of our Chrysalis Vineyards VIP Club, remember to ask one of our associates how to join. Our members enjoy complimentary wine flights and tastings, discounts on wine and food, exclusive access to VIP events and more!
The white wine selection for our VIP Club members this month is Chrysalis Vineyards 2022 Private Reserve White. The 2022 vintage of this reserve-style wine is a blend of Albariño and Viognier with a splash of Petit Manseng that is bursting with aromatics of white flower and hints of of vanilla. The palate offers creamy notes of papaya with a light acidity. Our Private Reserve White is truly a showcase of the finesse and respect given to each varietal.
Our red wine selection for January is Chrysalis Vineyards 2021 Private Reserve Red. Our Private Reserve Red is a blend of Petit Verdot, Norton, Tannat, and Nebbiolo available exclusively to our VIP Club members. This blend is crafted by Jenni McCloud and Jake Blodinger, winemaker, intentionally to produce a fine wine under no limitations. It is a culmination of the finest barrels from different lots. The Norton offers floral aromatics while providing notes of purple flowers and blackberries on the palate. The Petit Verdot and Tannat offer round tannins, plum, and structure that creates a long lasting finish. Enjoy it now or lay it down to enjoy in years to come.
As a reminder to our members, all VIP wine is available for pickup at the Ag District Center tasting room anytime during regular business hours. If you can’t make it out to pick up your wines on a monthly basis, we will hold them for you. Due to storage limitations, however, we do ask that you pick them up once you accumulate a case (6 months). We can also arrange for wine to be shipped to most locations, at your request.
NOTE: Please do not reply to this emailed Newsletter. Your email will not be handled in a timely manner or may even be lost.
REPORT FROM THE TASTING ROOM
Our December Club Pick-up Party was a delight! During this event, our VIP members were given a tasting passport to explore the four delicious pairing stations we had to offer. Each of our stations were comprised of decadant cookies/choclolate and carefully selected wines. Our newly released 2019 Borboleta (Port-style wine) and beloved 2018 Private Reserve White were delightful additions to pairing menu for this event.
The favored cookie of the evening was undecided as the resounding favorites ended in a tie between the Coconut Pecan Sandy and Chocolate Chip Cookies.
When our members completed their tasting tour, they were entered to win a mouth-watering assortment of cheeses from Locksley Farmstead Cheese Company. We are excited to announce and congratulate our winner and new club member, Colin Vitkus!
REPORT FROM THE VINEYARD
January isn’t the most exciting time in the vineyard. The crew is hard at work maintaining fence lines, cleaning our various barns around the property, and getting the green house in full operation. They’ve propagated around 6,000 cuttings this year to meet the current demands.
Over the past few years, we’ve propagated around 5,000-10,000 Norton vines per year. In the past couple of years, Freddy and I designed a program to allow us to fill a quarter acre plot of land next to the green house, we call this “the nursery”. After the vines are pulled from the green house in April or May, we typically send them off to their new homes. Vines that aren’t adopted are usually sold in the tasting room. Should there be any left over after that, Freddy and Berto plant the thriving vines in the nursery.
This quarter acre of land is densely planted and allows us to hold around 15,000 vines if filled to capacity. Our nursery isn’t as easily managed as the vineyard and actually requires extra management. Due to the dense planting of the vineyard, the nursery has to be hand weeded and even sprays are applied with a backpack sprayer. Even though it’s a quarter acre, Freddy and Berto have been known to spend several days a week managing the soil floor or carefully curating the shoot development.
The purpose of the nursery is to allow Chrysalis to maintain a larger available inventory of our Norton vines, but also allows us to provide mature vines for planting. This can shave a year off the total grow time allowing you to receive fruit earlier. Presently, we have around 6,000 vines in our nursery and the crew is planning on bringing in an additional 6,000 cuttings, look for your own Norton vines this Spring at the tasting room!
Jake Blodinger, Winemaker
REPORT FROM THE CELLAR
We are ringing in the new year with our brand new bottling line. You may have heard mention of it last year in Jenni’s note a few months ago. We’ve been keeping it under wraps mostly because we’ve been focused on the 2023 vintage. Now that harvest is over, it’s time to move to bottling and I’m excited to share the news.
In 2022, Jenni and I were discussing limitations we were experiencing using a mobile bottling service. While this service worked for Chrysalis over the past 20 years, we didn’t have precise control over the “when” we bottle our wines nor the quality assurance of our packages. This lead Jenni to the idea of purchasing our own bottling line and with a bit of renovation in the winery, we had a brand new GAI 1305 bottling line.
Our new bottling line has 9 filling heads and is able to apply a cork or screw cap. At full speed we are able to bottle 1,600 bottles an hour. The line is state of the art with a digital display that allows us to make calibrations to filling levels, bottle sizes, and other adjustments on the fly. With the bottling line came a new labeler that was actually built and assembled in Richmond, Virginia. Our labeler provides more flexibility with our packaging as it can apply 3 different kinds of labels and several types of capsules.
As the new year begins, Jenni and I are hard at work blending and tasting wines but we are most excited to begin bottling our own wines in house. Our new bottling line will ensure that we can bottle the wines exactly the right time to further maintain the highest quality possible. As always, it’s just another step we are taking to further improve the quality of our wines!
Jake Blodinger, Winemaker
REPORT FROM LOCKSLEY FARMSTEAD CHEESE
The happy guy pictured here in our Gouda aging room is Steven Stiles, dairy manager, cheesemaker and farmer extraordinaire! Steven was raised on his family dairy farm, so he has a lifetime of experience caring for cows and producing high-quality milk. He started with Locksley Farmstead Cheese back in the spring of 2018 when we were just beginning to milk our herd and produce cheese. Starting out as part of the team that milked and cared for the cows, he quickly took on other responsibilities. He manages the herd which includes healthcare, diet management, breeding, calving, milking, dairy sanitation, and much more. His care for our pastures provides the herd with nutritious grass during the grazing season and high-quality hay for the winter months… the first step in keeping our cows healthy and happy. And he maintains the fences, equipment and roadways on the farm.
As if he weren’t doing enough, Steven has also become one of the main cogs on our creamery team. On cheesemake days he can frequently be found in the creamery after the early milking. His specialties are our Nottingham Gouda and Little John Cheddar. His attention to detail and constant effort toward improvement have produced some delicious cheeses.
Farming is hard work every day in all kinds of weather. Steven’s diligence, dedication, positive attitude, and willingness to take on more responsibilities are the core values needed to farm successfully. We’re thankful to have him as part of the team and hope that you will think of all that he does when you’re enjoying a slice of delicious Locksley Farmstead Cheese!
Today (Thursday, December 28th) was such a gorgeous day in the countryside. And I spent a glorious number of hours wandering around western Loudoun’s dirt roads, with the sun beating down on me through my open sun roof and windows and warming my face when I stepped out to just absorb the sun. Boy, I needed this!
You see, I got some darned chest cold a week ago Tuesday and I’ve been stuck in the house feeling crummy, eating chicken soup, sleeping and generally trying to recuperate straight through the Christmas weekend. Everyone else in my family had headed down to Miami to visit brothers, cousins, etc. gorging on Christmas dishes of all types (including empanadas by the Chilean contingency). Me… chicken soup.
So today I just had to get out of the house. And it… was… glorious. I was going down some dirt roads I’ve never been on (after being in Loudoun for 25 years) and I ran into a huge murder of crows…. like hundreds and hundreds. They were flying all over, squawking up a storm, flitting from tree to tree, dive bombing each other… just having a good ol’ crow time. I reveled in their revelry, going back and forth down the same road four times, I was enjoying them so much!
My point! The countryside is cathartic, especially when you’ve been cooped up with crummy weather. And the demands and stresses of the holidays can exact a toll, as well. Take my advice, and come out to the countryside this weekend. Waste some time driving down a dirt road you’ve never been on.. Stop on a bridge over Goose Creek, or the Little River and just take in its beauty. Stop to say hi to the crows, and the cows and horses.
And another good idea is to start by stopping by the Ag District Center and picking up some lunch and cheeses and a little wine. Good doctor’s orders!
Take care... and Happy New Year,
Jennifer McCloud
Chrysalis Vineyards at The Ag District
39025 John Mosby Highway (Tasting Room/Creamery/Kitchen)
23876 Champe Ford Road (Winery/Milking Center/Offices)
Middleburg, VA 20117
McCloud@ChrysalisWine.com
Office: 540-687-8222
www.ChrysalisWine.com
Facebook.com/ChrysalisVineyards