Winery Visit- Chateau Morrisette

This past weekend, my friends and I decided to take a trip to Chateau Morrisette. We heard great things about it, but have never visited. I was very excited to visit my first winery. 

Chateau Morrisette

Chateau Morrisette is located in Floyd, which is about 45 minutes away from Virginia Tech. I do have to add a caution for people that get car sick… it is located off the Blue Ridge parkway, which is very windy. So if you happen to get carsick (like myself) make sure to sit in the front. Other than that, the trip was very enjoyable. We had to go late because I had something that I needed to do earlier in the afternoon. We made the last tour of the day. Chateau Morrisette has a tasting room, wine production facility, and a four-start restaurant (which I can tell you is amazing) on the property. One of the main things that they stressed to us was that they get their grapes from the state of Virginia. I believe that he said that they are the only Virginia winery, or maybe one of the few that is able to say this about their grapes. They also get 90% of their fruit from Virginia. The only fruit that they do not get from Virginia is blackberries for their blackberry wine. 

Our group with the barrels of wine

The bottling process

The first thing that we saw when we walked into the production area was barrels of wine. You could tell that they taste the wine frequently by the stains down the side. They have people that have the job of tasting the wine to see if anything needs to be added or if it is ready to be bottled. The barrels that we saw were all wood. They said that the most expensive barrels that they have are Oak barrels from France. They are the best barrels that you can buy and they are used for the Chardonnay if I remember correctly. They also told us that they use both natural and synthetic cork on their bottles. If they natural cork is used, then they must store the bottles upside down until they are sold.

With the fermentation of the wine, they ferment the red wines with the seeds and skins to give it a better flavor, more robust. All of their wines go through an extensive filtering process. This is done to ensure that there is little to no sediment in the bottom. The wines are processed and bottled in the Chateau Morrisette facility. They use Nitrogen in the bottling process to help preserve the wine and reduce spoilage. It is used at the very end of the bottling process to take up the rest of the airspace in the bottle to reduce the risk of the wine going bad.

The tasting room

We moved on to the tasing room after out tour. Our host was pretty awesome and gave an extended tasting after the tour that consisted of the following wines:

2010 Chardonnay

2010 Viognier

2010 Dry Rose

Liberty

2010 Chambourcin

2009 Cabernet Franc

2007 Merlot

The Black Dog

2010 Vidal Blanc

Angel Chardonnay

Our Dog Blue

Blushing Dog

Sweet Mountain Laurel

Red Mountain Laurel

2010 Frosty Dog

Blackberry Wine

She also mixed the Chambourcin with the blackberry wine to make sangria. She also made us a wine shooter at the end of the tasting. Our overall experience was amazing. I could not have asked for a better tour and tasting, especially for my first visit to a winery.