MARCH NEWSLETTER 2025
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
March is looking golden! We are thrilled to announce that we’ve received another gold for one of our exceptional Norton wines in the Virginia Governor’s Cup. After earning gold for our 2021 Locksley Reserve Norton in 2024, we couldn’t be more excited to see another Norton in our lineup being recognized with this prestigious honor in the 2025 competition. Learn more about which wine struck gold in the latest Report from the Cellar and the Note from Jenni.
MARCH EVENTS:
March 15th @ 4PM - St. Patrick's Day Paint & Sip
Get into the St. Patrick’s Day spirit at Chrysalis Vineyards with a festive Paint & Sip Class! Join us on March 15th at 4 PM to paint a retired wine barrel stave with St. Paddy’s Day flair while enjoying a glass of our select wines. Sip, paint, and shamrock the day away with us!
CLICK HERE to purchase your tickets today.
Last day to purchase your ticket(s) is March 10th!
*This event is for 21+ and over ONLY and will be held in a 21+ area. All participants/ticket holders must be 21+.*
March 27th @ 5PM - Book Club
Join us at Chrysalis Vineyards on March 27th, from 5 - 6 PM for Book Club! Sip on some great wine and dive into lively discussion about each month's read! This monthly gathering will occur on the last Thursday of every month and is completely free to attend. We are delighted to have the wonderful team from Loudoun County Public Library leading the discussions.
Interested in attending? Reach out to Jill Smedley at
Jill.Smedley@TheAgDistrict.com.
NOTE TO OUR VIP CLUB MEMBERS
We invite our VIP club members to come and celebrate St. Patrick's Day (a few days early) with us on March 14th at 6:00 PM. Join us in pairing our delicious wines with traditional Irish fare! Members must RSVP no later than March 10th by emailing TR-Manager@Chrysaliswine.com. RSVPs received after March 10th will be placed on a waiting list, and while we will do our best to accommodate everyone, entry to the event cannot be guaranteed. Please include your name and the number of people attending (up to 2 per membership). Please note, this month there will only be one session at 6:00 PM. Lastly, 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!
For March, our VIP members will receive the 2022 Sarah’s Patio White and the 2020 Petit Verdot.
The 2022 Sarah's Patio White offers aromas of honeysuckle and tropical fruit, with delightful notes of melon and yellow peaches on the palate. This refreshing wine is the perfect companion for something spicy and the first taste of warmer weather.
Our 2020 Petit Verdot is a prime example of a variety vinified to showcase a specific place. This fruit is grown on our mountain site called Hollin. This particular site produces vinifera that are driven by bright fruit while still retaining elegant structure. The 2020 Petit Verdot has aromas of blackberries, sage, and violets with notes of chocolate covered cherries, plums, and mocha on the palate.
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 haven't been able to visit for a while and need to pick up more than 3 months of wine selections please call at least a day in advance of your visit so we can have them ready for you.
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
Welcome to March in the Tasting Room!
We’ve got so many exciting things lined up this month, and you won’t want to miss out!
We’re kicking off March with our Featured Wine of the Month—the 2021 Mariposa! This vibrant rosé is extra special because, all month long, when you purchase 6 or more bottles, you'll receive 20% off (Club Members discount honored). With this vintage nearly gone, now’s the time to stock up—grab a case (or two) and get ready for spring.
Rosé is a great way to welcome the season, and the Mariposa offers delightful aromas of strawberries, watermelon, and pomegranate with notes of ripe strawberries and juicy cherries on the palate. Don't miss your chance to savor this delightful wine!
Heading over to visit us in the Tasting Room soon? Be sure to check out our Cellar Sale Cart! Many of these fantastic wines are the last remaining of their vintage in our inventory—once they’re gone, they’re gone! Don’t miss your chance to grab a bottle before it’s too late. The cart wines change daily. So, if you see something you like, get it before it’s gone.
Keeping the excitement going, We’ve added some fantastic new offerings to both our tasting floor and Guided Tasting Menu. You can now enjoy the 2023 Viognier and 2023 Albariño Verde by the glass or bottle. Plus, we’ve introduced the 2023 Viognier and 2022 Rubiana to our Guided Tasting Menu. Come join us and experience these fresh additions!
While you're visiting the Tasting Room and enjoying our wines, be sure to check out our delicious food menu. Each week, we offer a fresh Weekly Features Menu. Let our staff know which dishes are your new favorites and what you'd love to see more of in the future! Look forward to seeing all of you in the Tasting Room.
- Lori Tate, Tasting Room Manager
REPORT FROM THE VINEYARD
Despite the constant snow and cold temperatures, the crew has been moving forward with pruning and this year they are 3 weeks ahead of schedule. As with every year, we get a better handle on the vineyard and this year we are making some plans to experiment not just with the winemaking but in the vineyard again as well.
In the vineyard, there are only so many things that can be done to improve the quality of the fruit and plants themselves. We started by looking closely at the number of sprays and what we spray. From there we started removing questionable sprays and asking the question “could we balance the vines nutrition as a way to encourage disease resistance?” We then poured our efforts into caring for the vine’s nutritional needs over covering them with blanket sprays.
It took no time to see a shift in the overall quality and yields. It seemed like the vineyard was openly responding to the shift in care. We took another step forward and looked to the soil to figure out if there was something that could be done and discovered we could raise the organic matter content by utilizing the manure from our own cows. Doing so resulted in the vines pulling more nutrients from the soil. In 2023, we saw a huge uptake in quality and yield that confirmed that our efforts were more effective than the textbook industry approach of the past 25 years.
In 2024, we focused on “good land stewardship practices”. This means caring for the entirety of the vineyard. We cleared away tree lines of brush, dead trees, and leaves. The concept being that the removal of these things would lower predation, reduced populations of threatening insects, and lower disease pressure. This in turn, led to us having to spray only 9 times. Granted there was a drought but the overall health of the vineyard was immaculate.
This brings me to 2025. I’ve honestly been at a loss for what else we can do until I spent time with other growers and producers and realized that more environmentally focused practices are on the rise. Through numerous conversations and research, we've come to understand that Norton is actually an ideal grape for implementing more "natural" chemicals in the vineyard. I’m going to skip using the “O” word, but I’m excited to trial some entirely new practices in one of our Norton blocks and report back on the results.
- Jake Blodinger, Winemaker
REPORT FROM THE CELLAR
I’m excited to announce that we’ve once again received a gold medal from the Virginia’s Governor’s Cup! Not only for another Norton wine but for our ever-popular Bull Run Mountain Cuvée. Many of you have known for years that this wine is delicious and perfect for every night but it’s nice to have it recognized by this prestigious competition. While this wine has always been a huge crowd pleaser, we really don’t spend enough time talking about how the winemaking has evolved over the years, so since this is our gold medal wine, I thought there was no time like the present to dive into it.
Before we get too far into the winemaking, it would be helpful to note that most new world wines are heavier on the oak, jammy, and have a kiss of sweetness to soften the palette. Well, this style very obviously matches the description for Norton. So, it makes perfect sense to have a wine in our line up of Nortons in this style. Originally named Schitz and Giggles, this wine flew off the shelves early on with no explanation. Over time, we realized it wasn’t just popular amongst our guests but critics began taking it seriously as well.
As many of our long-time VIP Club members may know, during the renovation of labels, we decided to change the name from Schitz and Giggles to Bull Run Mountain Cuveé to better represent the quality of the wine and pay homage to the vineyard’s location. You might find yourself asking, "what is a “cuvée?” Cuvée is a term that simply means a blend of wines. While our Bull Run Mountain Cuvee is 100% Norton, the different winemaking techniques used on each lot of juice produce a variety of unique wines. In 2021, we blended our first Bull Run Mountain Cuvée using 2 different styles of Norton. In 2022, we got even craftier and blended 4 types of Norton together to create an even more impressive wine.
Not only did we want to create a cuvée, we also fell in love with the idea of using many different styles of the Nortons we produce to create something exciting. The gold medal winning wine features 50% Norton whole cluster pressed, 30% Norton whole berry in tank, 10% Norton carbonic maceration, and 10% Block 8-3 Norton. The sweetness comes from an addition of unfermented Norton juice to avoid adding any sugar. To finish out the oak is around 40% new French.
Like everything we do here at Chrysalis Vineyards, we have found a way to take something very simple and elevate it into something unique and exciting. Thank you to all those that stop by the tasting room and support our efforts. We definitely couldn’t have done this without you.
- Jake Blodinger, Winemaker
REPORT FROM LOCKSLEY FARMSTEAD CHEESE COMPANY
We’re getting ready to roll into Spring here on the farm and we can’t wait! Cold temps, rain, snow, sleet and wind definitely make it more difficult for Steven to manage the dairy.
Our happy dairy herd needs to be milked and fed twice a day every day and Steven does it, regardless of the weather. When the weather forecast sounds like he might have trouble getting to the dairy, he pulls out a cot and stays overnight. The welfare of the cows is much more important to him than his comfort or convenience. His dedication, hard work, and sense of responsibility are the backbone of farming and the cornerstone of our farmstead cheese business. Without Steven’s efforts in the dairy (and the creamery, but that’s a different story) we wouldn’t have the high-quality milk that we need to produce our delicious cheese.
Ag District Center visitors can peek in at our cheese production area and see the work that’s done there, but the work that’s done early in the morning and late in the evening on the other side of the farm is sometimes overlooked. Our vocabulary these days is full of phrases like “eat local”, “buy local”, and “support local agriculture”. These are all great campaigns – our small farms are disappearing and they need our support, but maybe it would be more compelling if we thought about it in terms of supporting local farmers. Support the people who are fighting the weather and trudging out into the mud to bring healthy, fresh food to your table. They deserve our support.
“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Teri Scott, General Manager
WhooHoo… another Governor’s Cup Gold Medal for Norton! Ya’ know, it had been quite some time since we last entered a wine competition until last year’s Governor’s Cup, where we received the first gold medal for a Norton wine in the competition's history. That's not to say we don't have our fair share of medals because we’ve received a ton of medals during the first decade or so of competiting in wine competitions (you can see our medals hanging on wine at The Ag District Center tasting room, which include multiple Best in Shows and Best in Class awards).
It’s certainly nice to get acknowledged for your well-made wines, but I always thought that the wine speaks for itself. However, as I’ve been told, that’s not very good marketing! This is true, and brings to mind a very simple definition of PR that I really like, “Good works… well publicized”. We’ve always done the "good works" part, and with the creation of the Norton Network, we’re full speed ahead in supporting the “well publicized” side of the equation.
Norton is a real, true American gem that should be celebrated. It became renowned in Europe (and of course, America) in the late 1800s, winning all sorts of accolades and gold medals... in Paris, Vienna, Montpelier, and more. To me, one of the most significant facts about the quality of Virginia’s native grape is that it was repeatedly… and publicly, recommended by Dr. Jules-Émile Planchon, to be the ideal grape to replant the Languedoc in Southern France after phylloxera (small grapevine louse) decimated all the French vineyards. Pretty serious recommendation, huh? For reference, Monsieur le Professeur Planchon of University of Montpelier was the guy that also discovered that the Phylloxera louse was killing the French vines!
Well, the French just couldn’t have an American grape replace the French ones, so they decided to graft their European vines (Vitis vinifera) onto American rootstocks, which are Phylloxera resistant (Norton is Vitis aestivalis and is entirely resistant to the bug). European grapevines around the world are now grafted on American rootstock (Our main rootstock here at The Ag District for non-Norton vines is 3309, a cross between Vitis riparia and Vitis rupestris, two other American native grapevines).
So here we are, nearly 150 years later, carrying on Norton’s legacy of excellence—from international recognition in the 19th century to making history again in the Governor’s Cup. And with the Norton Network, we’re making sure more people discover and celebrate this incredible grape.
Enjoy good Norton wines... and as always…
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