Winery Visit- Attimo Winery

The Vines at Attimo Winery

          This past weekend, my friends and I decided to take a trip to Attimo Winery. We heard great things about it, but have never visited. I was very excited to visit a winery that was so close to Tech.

Attimo Winery is located in Christiansburg, about 30 minutes away from Virginia Tech. The drive was pretty enjoyable and strait forward. It is very close to Sinkland Farms where everyone goes to pick pumpkins in the fall. Rik and Melissa Obiso own the winery. They both attended Virginia Tech and never thought that they would be returning to opening a winery after graduating and leaving for their respective jobs. They have lived in Nex Mexico, Tennessee, and Maryland working in corporate jobs. In 2006, the Obiso’s decided to move back to the New River Valley to raise their children and do something that wasn’t working with corporate America. Rik explained to us that he had the idea to start the winery about 10 years ago. About four years after that is when he and his wife decided to move to southwest Virginia. The only opened the winery just last year. He explained that wine making runs in his family. His great grandfather and grandfather were wine makers in Sicily. Rik and his wife have always been interested and wine and the business of winemaking. They even started making wine in their home before they decided to move back here. 

Inside the Winery

The winery started with some test vines, and has grown into what we saw. They have consistently planted vines every year beginning in 2007. They could not open the winery until a year ago because the vines started producing fruit that could be used in 2010. They now have over 10,000 vines on the property. Most of the vines come from New York or California, but they do have a USDA permit to plant Saperavi grapes from the republic of Georgia. Attimo is currently the only winery in Virginia to have these grapes. They also have 1,200 raspberry and blackberry plants right as you come onto the property. This is for their desert wines mostly, which we got a chance to try.

Kathryn and I at the tasting

Rik and his wife make the wine in their basement and at the winery in Charlottesville. The name Attimo means in the moment. All of their wines are named after a specific moment in time. This was really cool because Rik explained all of the moments while we tasted. They are one of three wineries in the state of Virginia that have a restaurant. All of their wines are stylized based on the grapes or region that the wines originally come from. Because of this, their fermentation process varies. For the Chardonnay and Vidal Blanc they use barrel fermentation. This means that the wine goes strait into the barrel instead of being fermented in stainless steel. This is fairly unique. The sweet wines are only fermented in stainless steel. This is to preserve the fruitiness. With the red wines, they usually bin ferment them and then move them to an oak barrel to age them. 

As far as production, they have been very successful over the past few years since opening. In the year 2009, they produced 200 cases of wine. In 2010, they produced 1,700 cases. In the year 2011, they produce 3,200 cases. And they expect to produce 5,000 cases in the year 2012. 

The bottling process is a bit different in a small winery. They bottle by hand and bottling truck here in Christiansburg, and share a bottling facility in Charlottesville with other wineries. 

The Winery

They are a green winery, which was a pretty cool concept. The tasting room was a passive solar building. This means that the windows, walls and floors are designed to collect, store and distribute solar energy. This energy comes in the form of heat in the winter and rejects solar heat in the summer. This type of solar energy does not use mechanical or electrical devices like active solar heating. They also compost everything possible, and recycle all of their wine bottles. They use recycled cork too. 

They are currently only selling wine at the winery and at a few select restaurants in and around town… including Zeppoli’s. They plan to expand to all restaurants in the Blacksburg area, and then move out to Floyd and some other surrounding counties in the future. Rik said that they will be hosting Fork and Cork this semester, which is a big step for them. Overall this was an awesome trip. It was really cool to talk to Rik. He explained the process of their wine making really well, and was just a genuinely nice guy. I finished off the tasting by having a dark chocolate-rimmed glass of sweet berry sunset.

So Yummy!

We tasted:

Masquerade

Sonnet 98

I do

Deep Silence

AD 325

Vertex

Sweet Berry Sunset

Sudden Downpour

Seduction

Firefly Dance