The Best & Worst of Virginia Wine

We don’t drink a lot of sparkling wine here at chez snark.  I’ll be the first to admit that we’re not the most educated sparkling drinkers – after all we’re mostly self-taught and we don’t drink a lot of bubbly – vicious cycle anyone?  It’s not that we don’t like these wines, however.  In fact, [...]

DelFosse Vineyards is one of those wineries that we generally enjoy but rarely remember to visit.  Since we’ve got some friends who’ve moved to the vicinity, hopefully we’ll be able to stop by a bit more often.  After all, they have a light and airy tasting room, and some really attractive grounds that contain hiking [...]

This is my first book report since grade school. Yay! While strolling through Borders, waiting on VA Wine Diva to make her selections, I stumbled upon A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage. The premise is simple: discuss six beverages that were major players in world history. The beverages? Beer, wine, [...]

I like that wine can be made in so many different ways.  That means I can always find a wine to fit my meal or my mood.  Some styles, however, just seem like a bad idea all around.  I often struggle with oak in my white wines.  I have come to recognize that a well [...]

We were in the Charlottesville area with some friends and we decided to take them by Pollak Vineyards, a winery fast becoming a favorite of ours. Yes, we did just review these guys, but we got to try two new wines. First was the ’08 cab franc. This is a really dark, rich, sexy wine, [...]

Lately I’ve been having some trouble with the bottles of cabernet franc we’ve opened.  One was odd (e.g., jalapenos), and another was bad (e.g., oak table).  That made it that much nicer when I got some nice fruit and spice from the bottle of ’07 Gadino Cellars cab franc we drank recently.  This was our [...]

When I was in college, some friends took me to my first ever Renaissance Faire. In Kentucky. You haven’t experienced odd until you’ve been lambasted by a lusty serving wench faking a British accent through a thick, Appalachian-Kentucky drawl. Hearing of Hill Top Berry Farm and Winery’s fondness for historical honey meads, a little part [...]

I’ve nearly exhausted my supply of wine books from my local libraries, so I’m soon going to have to start haunting used book stores so that I can afford both my wine and book habits.  For now, however, I still have a few more I can talk about, and the next one up is Educating [...]

Some friends suggested we meet them at Afton Mountain Vineyards for an afternoon of wine and music since they were having an event and none of us has much experience with their wines.  Since the first (and last) time we visited was last summer right after an ownership change and before the opening of their [...]

We recently spent some time with friends visiting wineries in the Charlottesville area.  One of our stops was Veritas.  We’d recently been there, and we’re typically bigger fans of their whites than their reds, so we decided to do only the white flight this time out.  I was really excited, however, when I realized that [...]