Jefferson Vineyard Winery

On March 11, 2013, my sister and I went to Jefferson Vineyards in Charlottesville, VA. The place was in the middle of no where. We had to drive through some rocky roads before getting to the vineyard.

Barrels outside of the shop

The building was a small little house with the walls lined with their wines. The tour of their winery was nice but cold. I was expecting to taste some wines during this visit but they were done for the day so we had to come back another day for the tastings.

Crushing machine

The first place they showed us was the machine they used to crush all the grapes. Everything was done in the steel crushing machine. I was surprised that they only had 1 machine with how many bottles of wine they produce. 

Steel barrels

Then they showed us where they fermented and then stored the grapes. A lot of the grapes they used were aged in the steel barrels. They leave the grapes in the steel barrels from a few months to a few years, depending on the type of wine they are producing.

Barrel room

After the steel barrels they take the wine and put them in wooden barrels for a few months. The room that held the barrels was really cold. The room wasn't air conditioned or anything, just really dark and cold. I was surprised at how cold it was considering it wasn't in the basement or anything. They also said that there were some wines that they stored for a year or more after they had been bottled. It was cool to be able to see a winery that stores their wine after bottling for a year before they release it, because Boyer said that not that many wineries would do that unless they were well established. I didn't think this was a well established winery until our tour guide told us how they store bottles of wine. After seeing all the rooms and barrels we went to see the vineyard, but there wasn't much to see...

Everything was bare and they were just starting the harvest. I was a bit disappointed because I was hoping to try some of the grapes during this visit. But maybe next time.

Me

My sister

I enjoyed my visit to this winery because of the history behind it. The tour guide told us the winery had been around since before the Civil War. The land was originally owned by Thomas Jefferson and he gave the land to an Italian to produce a vineyard and winery.