Winery Visit: Veritas Winery

Over spring break my parents and I visited my uncle in Charlottesville, Virginia where he works. I was utterly astonished as to how many wineries surround Charlottesville, even one right next to the airport which is a great view from a plane. The drive from the heart of the city to the winery is 20-30 minutes and there are so many different wineries on the way, due to the season, late winter, all the vines in the vineyards had no leaves.

From what I could see from the road, Veritas was a much larger vineyard then the surrounding ones, and was much busier. As we drove in my family was wondering what the netting was that was tied up on the vines were, and thanks to this class I was able to explain it was bird netting used to prevent wildlife from getting to the grapes.

This was along the private road in the winery that leads to the main building.

Unfortunately, I was not aware of the plans to head to this vineyard so I could not call ahead to set up a tour, but as I learned when we talked to some of the employees they were not offering tours at this time. They also informed us that the production of the wine does not take place in the main building we were in and was not open for people to walk through during this time.

We headed to ordering station and decided to try a flight of Sauvignon Blanc 2021, Viognier 2022, Merlot 2019, and Claret 2021. The flight also included a virtual tour of what we were drinking. We also decided to get a charcuterie board, with cheeses, jam, and olives, and some bread and hummus. Unfortunately, I do not have a picture of the food because we were quiet hunger and started eating before I had the idea to take a picture, however, the flight is picture below.

As you can see we decided to sit outside and it was the right choice despite the excessive wind that day. We had an amazing view as shown below.

This was my first wine flight and was shocked at how little wine is given for the price. However, I enjoyed the flight thoroughly. I started from the left and went to the right starting with the Sauvignon Blanc 2021. This was the most underwhelming out of the flight and I would call it a "good" wine but certainly not great, but that is probably due to my dislike of Sauvignon Blanc in general. The little paper under the flight above described many flavors present but I only caught onto to a flowery and green apple tastes.

Next was my favorite, the Viognier 2022 this was a delightful light bodied white that did not have a strong bite as the Savignon Blanc did. I tasted flavors of peach, apricot, and honey. It was perfectly balanced and was dry. My family also enjoyed this one best and we ended up getting a bottle to enjoy while we finished up the food after the flight was complete.

Next was the Merlot 2019, which was my favorite of the two reds. The Merlot had strong flavors of raspberries and cherries with some fruitiness and was well balanced. The Claret 2021 went the best with the cheeses and was much fuller in body this wine as fruity with a taste of black berries and raspberries and also tasted oaky and fruity.

Once we had completed the wine and food we decided to take a self-guided tour of one of the fields of vine and got to see it up close. Below is a picture of the specific set of rows we walked through. Unfortunately, the grape that was growing on this set of vines was unknown because of a lack of a tour, but it was still incredible nonetheless. Below is a picture of the vineyards and one of the vineyard and my family.

It was a windy day!

I was astonished by the length of the rows in this vineyard, it felt like it took forever to walk the length of one row. This brought to mind of how monumental the work of growing, maintaining, and harvesting just one set of vines, yet Veritas had many sets. Below is an image of the bird netting that was mentioned at the beginning of the post.

Overall this was a very new experience to me and now I plan to visit as many wineries as possible. The wine was excellent, but excellent wine can be consumed any where. The entire experience of drinking it near where the grapes actually grew and were processed into wine was an experience hard to put to words. It made me enjoy the wine more then if I was not present. If I could have changed anything I would have went when there were grapes on the vines, but overall wouldn't change anything.