Chateau Morrisette Winery Visit

I went on a winery visit to Chateau Morrisette this weekend with a group of friends. We planned on taking a tour of the winery facilities as well as sampling wines.

All of us outside of Chateau Morrisette.

Chateau Morrisette is located off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Floyd, Virginia. On the property there are 13-acres of grape vines, which is not enough grapes to make all the wine produced by Chateau Morrisette. They have contracts with other grape growers across the state of Virginia that ship grapes to the main site at Floyd. The other benefit of getting grapes shipped in from different areas is that because of the altitude of Floyd only certain grapes can grow at that altitude.The biggest harvest is in October.

This is where the grapes come in and the stems are picked up and are crushed for the juices.

After the grapes are picked they are put through a machine in which the grapes are picked off the stems. A metal cylinder with holes turns, and the grapes go in the holes and into a holding container. Then the grapes are put into a crusher. When the grapes are crushed, no matter what types of grapes they are, the juice is white. In the crusher a metal cylinder with holes on the outside and a bladder that expands to crush the grapes, they make sure to not expand the bladder to much because then the seeds will be crushed releasing more acid than desired.

Fermentation tanks and barrels.

After the wines have been fermented they are aged, they are either in a French Oak, American Oak, or a Stainless Steel based on the type of wine. Only two whites are aged in oak. Because of the cost of French oak barrels ($700) they are not experimenting with using Belgium oak that is grown in the same soil conditions as French Oak. A French Oak barrel, that will age a wine for a year and a half, will last for seven cycles.

Bottling process/machine.

 After the wines is aged a wine tester will taste the wine a determine how to mix them in order to produce the wine correctly. There is also a lab that will test the acidity, pH balance, and alcohol content. After the wine is mixed and ready to bottled it is put through a machine that can bottle 3500 bottles an hour.

After the winery tour we sampled some of the different wines available:
       Chardonnay; Independence; Dry Rose; Chambourcin; Cabernet Franc; Merlot; Cabernet Sauvignon; Petit Verdot; The Black Dog; Vidal Blanc; Our Dog Blue; Sweet Mountain Laurel; Frosty Dog; and Blackberry Wine.