{"id":830,"date":"2015-07-24T14:37:15","date_gmt":"2015-07-24T14:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.overbrookpublishing.com\/BackStory\/?p=830"},"modified":"2015-07-24T14:55:47","modified_gmt":"2015-07-24T14:55:47","slug":"more-wine-berries-and-wineries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/more-wine-berries-and-wineries\/","title":{"rendered":"More Wine Berries and Wineries"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Chapter 30: Country Road” in House Key<\/em> is not only\u00a0about love\u00a0and remorse but about celebrating things unique to Fauquier county that enrich the lives of its inhabitants. “Country Road” is about wild berries and wine, about how Jordan and Santiago get inspired to start their own vineyard despite their obstacles. The rewards from the literal fruits they reap may outweigh the labor, but the work of vintners\u00a0requires passion and persistence. As we approach Wine Release Weekend<\/a> in Fauquier we have an exciting opportunity to explore the rich selection\u00a0of wines that vary from one neighboring vineyard to another.<\/p>\n

We’re fortunate to live in such lush wine country, always discovering new places in our own back yard — especially when friends and family visit from out of town. This was true last weekend when we decided to narrow our must-see list of highlights from twenty-seven wineries in Fauquier County to say\u2026 three. We would go to lunch in Old Town Warrenton in between stops and still have enough time to catch some more local sites. Even though\u00a0we barely traveled a few miles from home, the day was packed with adventure!<\/p>\n

The first visit was to Molon Lave<\/a> where they were about\u00a0to host a wedding. We prepared to leave, but the friendly and gracious hostesses (also the owners’ daughters, one of whom was a former student of mine!) encouraged us to stay. They didn’t have to twist our arms as we cozied up to the bar in their spacious tasting room. We caught up on their news and sampled their home-grown wines.\u00a0Impressed as I was by the hostesses’ maturity and professionalism, I was equally impressed by\u00a0how knowledgeable they were about the family business. The family has a long\u00a0history of wine-making, starting with earlier generations in Greece. The grandparents have another winery in the area (it was next on our list) and this one, Molon Lave, is their newest vineyard run by the younger generation. We watched the wedding take place in a pavilion on a hill overlooking the gorgeous views of the vineyard from the shade of their tasting patio. While we enjoyed a bottle of wine,\u00a0we befriended a couple from out of town, one of whom happened to be a wedding photographer. We left there with new friends and some of our favorite picks, among them their 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon.<\/p>\n

Close by with expansive views of Watery Mountain and Wildcat, our next stop was Mediterranean Cellars<\/a>, run by the older generation of the same family. Our hostess there was also gracious; someone I had met before, as well. Their tasting room was busy but other visitors were happy to make room for us at the bar. We learned that the wines we sampled from their vineyards are only sold at the tasting room and not available through distributors. Along with a wide selection of wines, they also carry imported olive oil of many different varieties. We had made our\u00a0selection and were prepared to leave with a few bottles of our favorite, the 2011 Special Reserve Chambourcin, when a beautiful young woman emerged from an adjoining function room and invited us to join her birthday party. So polite of her to invite\u00a0total strangers, but no\u00a0thank you, we couldn’t possibly intrude like that! However, we ultimately feared offending her more than overstepping, so we entered the boisterous room in which we knew no one.<\/p>\n

There was a lot of food, which we politely declined at first, but everyone at the party insisted we try this and have some of that, and “oh, you have to have this if you’ve never had it before!” got us right in the thick of the celebration. We met the friends and family of the guest of honor, tried a new wine that had not yet been released. In fact, a\u00a0hand-written sticker denoting the proper vintage covered the beautiful label on the bottle of 2013 Cabernet Franc. We met other local farmers, as well, among them a young couple who had brought homemade tarts of goat cheese topped with wild berries, which they informed me are actually called “wine” berries. They are the same berries I’ve been picking for the last couple of weeks! The tarts were absolutely delicious, a recipe I plan to try sometime.\u00a0A\u00a0good hour later, with our guests convinced this sort of hospitality is unique to Fauquier, we reluctantly said our good-byes to\u00a0a number of new friends.<\/p>\n

There was still enough time for us to check out Marterella Winery<\/a>\u00a0across the road, but as we were leaving the\u00a0visitors just arriving informed us the vineyard was closed due to “accounting problems”. That did not bode well, but the gates were still open so we ventured up the long lane lined with rows of vines. There were cars in the parking lot, so we decided to check it out, lured by a familiar delicious scent that wafted over us. We entered a lovely patio with a big stone oven at one end where a woman was sliding in a pizza. We nodded “this is good” to one another and went inside the tasting room\u00a0where we were welcomed by a committee of Golden labs and Yorkshire terriers. The hostess was gregarious and engaging and promptly had us\u00a0sipping watermelon wine slushies. When the owner came in from tending the pizza, we told her how glad we were that they were still open despite what we had heard. She burst out laughing and produced an official document\u00a0she had just received invoicing underpaid taxes of\u00a0$.01. Apparently,\u00a0a\u00a0joking\u00a0remark about owing\u00a0the county a penny billowed into\u00a0a wild shut-down rumor. I admired this businesswoman’s fortitude and sense of humor as we enjoyed hearing about her wines and experiences as a vintner.<\/p>\n

Our visitors enjoyed their day in the country and plan to come back for another winery tour through\u00a0the neighborhood. Meanwhile, we look forward to Wine Release Weekend and hope that if you get the opportunity, you’ll travel to Fauquier County<\/a> for your own day of winery adventure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Chapter 30: Country Road” in House Key is not only\u00a0about love\u00a0and remorse but about celebrating things unique to Fauquier county that enrich the lives of its inhabitants. “Country Road” is about wild berries and wine, about how Jordan and Santiago … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,32,10,31],"tags":[72,33,99],"class_list":["post-830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fauquier-county","category-virginia","category-wildcat-mountain","category-wineries","tag-fauquier-county","tag-virginia-wineries","tag-wine-release-weekend"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/IMG_6342.jpg?fit=2448%2C3264&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":864,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions\/864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosadeberryking.com\/BackStory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}