MARCH NEWSLETTER 2023
IN THIS NEWSLETTER...
VIP Wines of the Month
Report from the Tasting Room
Report from the Cellar
Report from the Vineyard
Report from Locksley Farmstead Cheese
Note from Jenni
What's that old saying.... March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb? Our current weather sure seems a bit lamb-like, following the trend of what has been a very mild winter. The warmer days have drawn people to the Ag District to enjoy their favorite Chrysalis Vineyards wines along with delicious pizzas, soups, and salads from our own Little River Bakehouse and artisan cheeses from Locksley Farmstead Cheese. Seeing our tasting room and lawn areas filling with customers is always our favorite sign of the coming Spring season! We're all hoping that the weather lion doesn't decide to appear and the March weather is kind to us! We hope to see you at the Ag District soon!
NOTE TO OUR VIP CLUB MEMBERS
Our VIP pickup event this month will be held on Friday, March 10th from 5:00pm until 8:00pm at the Ag District Center. This month we will be hosting a "Member-Guest" event! For this month only, each membership may have up to 4 people attend our monthly club event. We invite our club members to show friends and family all the great benefits of being a VIP Club member. Of course we hope that they will want to join the club, so we want to remind you that current members earn a 25% discount on their next purchase when they refer new club members!
Members must RSVP no later than March 6th by emailing TR-Manager@ChrysalisWine.com. Please include your name, number attending (up to 4 per membership, this event only), and your preferred tasting time (5:00, 6:00, or 7:00). Please arrive in time to check in at least 10 minutes prior to your tasting time. 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 2021 Viognier. Our Viognier is carefully crafted using a 100% wild fermentation which produces fresh tropical aromatics. This wine is fermented in 100% neutral oak to increase “mouthfeel” richness and aromatics without any oak character. The nose is greeted with aromas of tangerines and white flowers, while the palate expresses notes of ripe peaches, sweet kumquats, and mango. A soft creamy finish lingers from the extensive batonnage during fermentation.
Our red wine selection for March is Chrysalis Vineyards 2019 Nebbiolo. Aromatics are reserved with hints of roses, cigar box, and red fruit. The palate is covered in large tannins, with notes of spices such as anise. Our Nebbiolo is a proper nod to the classic Nebbiolos of Italian Barolos. To truly enjoy this young red, age it in your cellar for 5-10 years. If you can’t wait, buy a case and taste it over years to come. Try a glass of Nebbiolo with our Hot Italian pizza next time you visit the Ag District.
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
Hello everyone!! How the time flies, I can’t believe it has already been 3 months working at Chrysalis Vineyards and it already feels like I’ve been here for longer. Some updates for everyone out of the tasting room... Last month we officially sold out of the 2021 Albariño and 2021 Tximeleta. While it's always sad to run out of a wine, both of their new, 2022 vintages, will be released in the coming months. Of course our VIP Club members will all have first access to these newly released wines!
As we move into March, the days are starting to get longer, with sunset pushing back a little bit every day, I just want to remind everyone that besides all the amazing things Jenni has built onto this property, we still have all of our animal friends who are living in our surrounding woods. With that in mind, this is a reminder to take it slow as you drive onto and off the property, especially when it's dark. Deer are everywhere, and they love to jump out at the last moment. So here’s to getting home safely after enjoying your time with us at Chrysalis Vineyards. We look forward to your next visit.
Amitai Cohen, Tasting Room Manager
REPORT FROM THE VINEYARD
Over the past few vintages, all of our attention has been focused on caring for the overall health of the vines in hopes of further increasing the quality of the fruit. Through the careful consideration of “source to sync”, pesticide management, and intentional pruning practices we’ve seen vast improvements across all 70 acres. Despite all of the improvements, some blocks are still showing their age through short, spindly shoots, and lighter green leaves. These symptoms are signs of nutrient deficiency.
Nutrient deficiency is typically easy to spot during the growing season. You may notice that your leaves just aren’t as dark green as you would expect. The question became, where is the nutrient deficiency coming from. Typically, nutrient deficiencies start in the soil.
Early last year, Freddy and I took on a large project of assessing our soil through extensive sampling. Analyzing the results we found that not only did we NOT have a deficiency in any nutrients, but that we actually had an abundance of nutrients. This created some confusion and we actually retested all 70 acres again but this time, we also tested our “SOM”. SOM or soil organic matter refers to the amount of microbes, plants, and animal detritus found in soil and directly correlates with “soil fertility”. In other words, we need tiny microbes in our soils to break down nutrients into bite size particulates for the vines.
The question became, how to increase our SOM without rigorous intervention in our 25 year old vineyard. SOM should be adjusted carefully and with natural organic matter found in the same environment where the vineyard is located. As a 412 acre farm with it’s very own dairy, we have access to the purest organic matter around, cow manure. Everyone knows, cow manure is probably the best fertilizer around but turns out, it’s actually filled with tons of microbes.
Through careful application of our dairy’s by-product, we’ve begun to see new life in the vigor our oldest vines. We’ve made another stride towards improving the overall biome of vineyard and are excited to utilize another product found on our farm.
Jake Blodinger, Winemaker
REPORT FROM THE CELLAR
As many know, here at Chrysalis Vineyards we produce some of the finest Viognier around (that glass in the picture to the right is unfiltered Viognier juice!). While we are very proud of that title, it doesn’t mean we stop striving to further the quality of our best wines. In the 2022 vintage, Jenni and I endeavored to further dial in the quality of Viognier by looking more closely at the “when” we pick our fruit.
If you’ll recall, we pick our Viognier based on physical ripeness, not chemical. This means that to determine the proper pick date for this Condreiu native, we are focused on the look, smell, and taste of the juice. It should taste like a ripe cantaloupe, not a honeydew. This sounds easier than it really is and often times, during harvest Jenni and I will have some pretty heated debates on whether we are capturing that important component.
In the spirit of defining this more accurately, we’d decided to pick the same block of Viognier 4 separate times on 4 different days. Each pick the crew would only harvest the most ripe fruit and leave the less ripe fruit behind until the next pick. This forces the vine to send even more energy to the remaining clusters, ripening the leftover fruit faster, and potentially pushing the quality of the fruit even further.
As there is only one way to make Viognier, the winemaking method was the same across the board. What we discovered though is vastly different wines. Our first pick is lean, slightly “green” in flavor, more acid driven, and reminded us of a unripe cantaloupe. The second pick still had that nice acidity and cantaloupe flavor, but started to showcase white floral aromatics. The third pick is smooth, flavorful, and extremely floral on the nose, almost “perfume-y”. The fourth pick, is a mouthful of cantaloupe and stone fruit with wild tropical flowers on the nose but lacked any acidity.
While all of these wines are good in their own right, they each lacked what the other had. When Jenni and I began to blend them together, we found that not only were we able to create a complete wine, but we were able to dial in various characteristics of the wine with more accuracy. In just the rough blending trials, Jenni and I were amazed at the potential to truly bring a wine into balance through intentional blending.
As always, our goal is always to further improve the quality of our wines. I’m truly excited to share the 2022 Viognier later this year.
Jake Blodinger, Winemaker
REPORT FROM LOCKSLEY FARMSTEAD CHEESE COMPANY
Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey... huh? What are curds and whey... or a tuffet for that matter? Here at Locksley Farmstead Cheese we don't have alot of time to sit on our tuffets, but we do work with curds and whey almost every day!
Curds and whey are produced when cultures, enzymes and rennet are added to our pasteurized milk. The curd is formed when these components cause the casein protein and fat in the milk to coagulate. The solid particles that are produced from this coagulation are the curds and the remaining liquid is the whey. When we make our cheeses we drain off the whey before placing the curd in moulds. Depending on the type of cheese that we are making, the curd is the pressed or drained more in the mould to remove more whey.
So why was Little Miss Muffet eating curds and whey? Well, she might have dipped into the vat before the whey was drained off or she may have actually been eating cottage cheese. The whey that is the byproduct of cheesemaking contains other proteins that don't coagulate to create the curd in the initial process along with some minerals and amino acids. Cottage cheese is produced by adding different cultures to the whey and heating it to create a secondary coagluation. The soft curds that are created are strained and salt and cream are added to created cottage cheese!
Chrysalis Vineyards has been publishing our monthly newsletter, on time… every month, for more than 18 years. We enjoy telling our customers, friends, family and supporters all about what’s going on at The Ag District, and adding cool photos of our grounds, vineyards, winery and tasting room areas (and sometimes just… different stuff, like last month’s bald eagles). Thanks for all of you who have made such positive and supportive comments about our publishing efforts over the years. Your comments help make all the hard work worthwhile for the effort we put into it. We send out our Newsletter at the end of the last week of the month prior to the month of publication.
As I write this today (Thursday, 2/23/23) the unusually warm weather brought to mind that very soon the cold and short days will be over, and spring will start its new growth all over again. I suppose we’ll have to endure some more cold weather on our way to spring, but at least we got a warm, inviting glimpse of what’s just around the corner.
Oh… and my chickens are getting all excited, too. Soon there will be little chickies peeping and running around. Everybody loves springtime… and no one more than me. I can’t wait.
Take Care,
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