Vintage Virginia Wine Festival

“Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance.”
–Benjamin Franklin

I’m not quite as much of a wine drinker as I used to be. Vintage Virginia used to be firmly scheduled each year, but when I got rid of my car and other friends with cars moved away, it wasn’t quite as easy to make it out to VA to attend. This year a last-minute invite in response to my need for a day trip appeared out of nowhere and Vintage Virginia was back on!

About 50 wineries from Virginia show up, along with food and crafts vendors, and it’s a really good time. You’d think that it would be a loss for the wineries as they’re just giving away product all day–albeit in 1-2 ounce doses–but the vendors I talked to seemed really excited about the day. When I’d been in the past, the wineries had descriptions of their wines available and you could request a tasting of select bottles, but this year most of them seemed content to give tasting flights to a group at a time. This was both good and bad, as the group I was with was there to taste and buy, not taste and party. We got stuck behind some people for whom tasting had evolved to drinking. But as every taster is a potential purchaser, I can’t fault the wineries and volunteers for making sure no one’s glass went dry.

Thankfully the sun stayed away for most of the day, but around 4 or so, it was streaming down on us. By then even my tasting had become drinking–especially as some wineries also sell wines by the glass. Along the way we’d made lots of notes about the wines we liked and decided to head back to our favored wineries to buy some bottles and have them sent to will call. (Will Call at a wine festival is the most dangerous and brilliant idea ever.) Luckily, for me, some of the wineries had sold out of the bottles I wanted by the time we rolled around. This is really a defensive maneuver on my part as I only came home with nine bottles. If I’d been buying while tasting, I’d have bought a lot more.

The pictures from the day are on flickr, and I’ve still got my notes on the wines I liked and the wineries I want to visit. Most of the wineries are a few hours outside DC/NoVA and I look forward to a day trip or two to make a visit. However, even if I can’t make it, living in DC allows me to have wine shipped–a big plus. Between Vintage Virginia and Wine in the Woods each year, there are few excuses not to indulge your love of wines and local wineries.