JUNE 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 Locksley Farmstead Cheese
Note from Jenni
Warm weather and sipping wine on a sunny patio – is there a better way to spend an afternoon? This June, embrace the sunshine and fine weather with a glass of wine at Chrysalis Vineyards. We have an incredible lineup of music, events, and, of course, exceptional wines waiting for you! So, mark your calendars and plan your next visit today.
JUNE MUSIC LINEUP:
June 1st - Melanie Pearl
June 8th - Joe Martin
June 15th - Carly Ratcliffe
June 22nd - Anthony Semiao
June 23rd - Robbie Límon
June 29th - Luke Andrews
*Reminder: During our Summer Music Series enjoy music at Chrysalis Vineyards every Saturday (and the occasional Sunday) from 2-5 PM.*
June Events:
June 8th 1 - 4 PM - National Dairy month Celebration
Come out to Chrysalis Vineyards on June 8th and celebrate National Dairy Month with us! Our GM and assistant cheesemaker, Teri Scott, will be here sampling the delicious cheeses from Locksley Farmstead Cheese Company! Interested in a wine and cheese pairing? Head to the tasting bar and indulge in a guided wine and cheese pairing.
For more information check out our events page.
June 15th 4 - 6 PM - Paint & Sip: American Flag Stave
*Participants must be 21 or older. This event will not be held in a 21+ only area, allowing parents with children to attend.*
Join us at Chrysalis Vineyards on June 15th for a special American Flag Paint & Sip Class! Sip on a glass of our 2022 Albariño, 2021 Sarah's Patio White, or 2022 Sarah's Patio Red (one glass of wine included with your ticket) while you paint Old Glory onto a barrel stave sourced from a retired barrel that once aged our fine wine. Come out and enjoy a creative and relaxing evening at Chrysalis Vineyards!
Tickets will be made available for purchase on June 1st through our events page. For questions or help registering, reach out to Jill.Smedley@TheAgDistrict.com.
June 27th - Book Club (For Adults 21+ ONLY)
Join us at Chrysalis Vineyards on Thursday, June 27th, from 5 - 6 PM for Book Club! This gathering will occur on the last Thursday of every month and is completely free to attend. If you haven't read the book beforehand, don't fret! Come for the discussion and stay for the announcement of the next book to read so that you can join in on the fun.
Interested in attending? Email Jill.Smedley@TheAgDistrict.com.
NOTE TO OUR VIP CLUB MEMBERS
We invite our VIP club members to join us on June 14th for a Cookout Pick-Up Party! Enjoy smash burgers and other cookout favorites prepared by The Polished Foxx @ The Ag District, along with fun yard games. Don’t miss this delightful evening of great food and good company! Members must RSVP no later than June 12th by emailing TR-Manager@ChrysalisWine.com. Please include your name, number attending (up to 2 per membership), and preferred time (5:00 PM or 6:30 PM). When planning your visit, please remember that we close at 8:00 pm.
Not a VIP Club member yet?
Learn more about the benefits below and join the club today!
This month, our VIP Club members will enjoy the 2021 Sarah's Patio White as their white wine selection. The 2021 Sarah's Patio White has aromas of honeysuckle and tropical fruit with notes of melon and yellow peaches on the palate. A long-time favorite at Chrysalis Vineyards, this wine is the perfect choice for warm weather and leisurely afternoons spent sipping on the patio.
The red wine selection for our VIP Club members this month is the 2020 Hollin Reserve Nebbiolo. Our Nebbiolo has aromas of cedar, bing cherry, and licorice and notes of raspberry, baking spices, and plum on the palate. Enjoy this wine with a seared flat iron steak fresh off the grill!
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.
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
Exciting News from the Tasting Room! As of June 1, 2024, Chrysalis Vineyards' Tasting Room will be open 7 days a week! Wait! There is more! All those delicious pizzas, paninis, salads, and more that our chef Erik Foxx has been creating will also be available 7 days a week!
Our new hours of operation are as follows: * Monday – Thursday: 12:00 – 6:00 PM (Last chance to order food is 5:00 PM and last call is 5:30 PM)
* Friday – Saturday: 12:00 – 8:00 PM
(Last chance to order food is 7:00 PM and last call is 7:30 PM)
* Sunday: 12:00 – 7:00 PM
(Last chance to order food is 6:00 PM And last call is 6:30 PM)
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please free to reach out to me via email at any time TR-Manager@Chrysaliswine.com. I always love to hear from you!
Events - Our team is working hard to put together events that you'll love so stay up to date on all the happenings at Chrysalis Vineyards with our event calendar!
- Lori Tate, Tasting Room Manager
Large Groups – We're ready to make your visit sensational! So, mark your calendars and set the date because it's time to visit us at Chrysalis Vineyards! Remember to reach out to us – TR-Manager@Chrysaliswine.com - when you’re coming to visit with a group larger than 8 ppl.
REPORT FROM THE VINEYARD
If you have visited the tasting room during the past month, you may have noticed that there were Norton vines for sale. Typically, our Norton vines sell out long before I can put any in the tasting room for purchase, but this year I made sure that everyone has the opportunity to purchase vines of their very own.
Since Norton is native to Virginia, it’s quite easy to plant and care for it at home. To start, you will need to dig a 12-18-inch hole anywhere you want to enjoy some delicious grapes. I recommend blending the removed soil with some fertilizer. Miracle Grow, worm casing, nitrogen, or cow manure will do the trick. The ratio isn't important but ensuring an equal distribution of the nutrients into the soil is.
Next, take the nutrient-enriched soil and add about 3-4 inches of it back to the hole. Remove the vine from the white box. Don't worry about rinsing the soil off, it’s actually nutrient-enriched soil used to further root development. Gently, place the vine on top of the enriched soil and fill the hole with the remaining soil. Once the hole is filled, gently tug on the base of the vine to straighten out the roots. Pat the soil down, and tug on the vine one last time.
Once the vine is planted, we recommend watering the soil. This will result in the soil sinking down, compacting the roots below. Simply add some extra soil and then gently tug the base of the vine again. It’s our practice to provide 8 gallons of water to new vines every week. Norton is a heavily disease-resistant vine that revels in Virginia's climate so don’t panic if you just watered your vine and there’s rain in the forecast.
Norton is the only native variety to Virginia meaning it’s suited for the climate here and any natural disease pressure. That said, I do recommend using a 1% solution of hydrogen peroxide as a natural fungicide to deal with any unsightly fungus.
It will take roughly 3 years for your vine to fruit but with a lot love and patience you’ll surely enjoy some real Virginia fruit!
- Jake Blodinger, Winemaker
REPORT FROM THE CELLAR
Summer has finally arrived! The vineyard is looking great, we are humming along in the cellar, and Jenni and I are enjoying some fantastic wines from the 2023 vintage. Right now, we're tasting through some of the more eclectic varieties that we grow.
Most recently, Jenni and I enjoyed a sample of Fer Servadou that we produced in 2023. You might be familiar with this varietal if you’ve ever had our more delicate rosé, Tximeleta. This wine is made by using the technique “saignée” (French for bleeding) to remove some juice from the skins before it extracts too much color.
Most folks believe this method is about making light-colored rosé wine but it’s actually about concentrating the color of the red wine by removing some volume. The red produced from this method is typically denser in color, tannin, and fruit flavors. We use this method every year to produce a rosé and then blend away any of the leftover red wine into Rubiana, Estate Bottled Norton, or even into the Mariposa for some extra color.
During the 2023 vintage, the Fer Servadou arrived at the crush pad extremely ripe, delicious, and full of color which required an excessive amount of saignée. At the end of the day, there was still more than enough to make a couple of barrels of wine and so I fermented the remainder on the skins and barreled it down. Six months later, during a racking, I tasted the wine and was amazed. What a beautiful medium-body red wine!
Needless to say, Jenni and I sucked down a bottle of it during one of our weekly meetings! Truly a delightful red wine with nice flavors of blackberry and raspberry, smooth tannin, and a pleasant finish. The aromatics reminded me of a young Vin De Pays French wine. In my 5 years of Chrysalis Vineyards winemaking, I can’t recall a time when our Fer Servadou ripened enough to produce a red wine, let alone something so interesting. I finally understood why Jenni and Alan planted it so long ago. This begs the question though, do we blend it into something or would you be interested in taking a bottle home with you? Let me know at the next VIP Pick-Up Party!
- Jake Blodinger, Winemaker
REPORT FROM LOCKSLEY FARMSTEAD CHEESE COMPANY
June marks the beginning of summer and here at Locksley Farmstead Cheese, we’re also celebrating National Dairy Month! Dairy Month was started in 1937 as Milk Month - a marketing campaign to help increase the consumption of milk during the warm summer months when sales were lower. In time, Milk Month became Dairy Month and the celebration broadened to include the promotion of dairy products, education about the nutritional value of dairy, and recognition of the hard-working farmers that bring us those delicious dairy foods.
Dairy products include milk, yogurt, kefir, butter, cream, ice cream (my personal favorite!), and endless varieties of CHEESE! We produce 11 different cheeses at our creamery, everything from fresh fromage blanc to aged cheddar. All of those delicious cheeses are made with rich, nutritious cow’s-milk full of protein, calcium, and vitamins.
We invite you to stop by The Ag District on June 8th to help us celebrate! We’ll be sampling our cheeses from 1:00 - 4:00 PM and offering paired wine and cheese tastings. Take home some of your favorite cheeses or relax and enjoy a big slice of pizza featuring our Monk Mozzarella!
- Teri Scott, General Manager
As y’all know, Chrysalis Vineyards’ flagship grape variety is Norton. I fell in love with this unique Virginia gem when I first tasted it in the summer of 1995. It reminded me of the fruit-forward Spanish wines that I cut my teeth on all the way back in the late 1970s, when I began a lifetime’s love affair with wine. When I learned that it was native, and the most disease resistant bunch grape in the world for any kind of use, whether for table fruit, raisins or wine, that made up my mind to come to Virginia and have a hand in restoring this historically renowned grape (BTW, bunch grapes, like Chardonnay, Cabernet and Norton grow together in a bunch, not separately spaced out on the grapevine, like V. rotundifolia. But Norton is Vitis aestivalis and the European grapes are Vitis vinifera).
Anyway, on Tuesday, June 4th, Chrysalis Vineyards will host the “foundational” meeting of the Norton Network… “Showcasing Virginia wines made by Virginia producers, from the fruit of Virginia vines, cultivated by Virginia growers.” 50+ Virginia winemakers and winery owners will be in attendance, celebrating our native grape and creating a collaborative effect to promote Norton as the most important American variety that produces world-class wines. I’m super excited to see the burgeoning interest in Norton, and proud to have had a significant part in helping with its restoration. Our “mission”, from the very start, has been “To roudly restore Virginia wines to world renown, and celebrate the homecoming of Norton, The Real American Grape!®”
(The photo for my Note from Jenni is of Norton grapevines that we propagate here at The Ag District. We’ve been a commercial source of Norton for nearly 20 years now, and off and on we have Norton vines available for purchase at the ADC (Ag District Center). And we’re “on” right now for Norton vines at the tasting room if you’d like to get a few vines for your back yard.)
Take Care,
Jennifer McCloud
Chrysalis Vineyards at The Ag District
39025 Little River Turnpike (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