Wine Day - 8 Chains North; Waterford, VA

I started out my tour of wineries on Mothers Day Weekend at 8 Chains.  While this was my first stop, it was also the winery I was targeting on that rainy Saturday.

As I've mentioned in other posts, rainy days are absolutely the best days to go out to the wineries.   This was no exception.

My visit to 8 Chains North was likely a bit premature as they are an extremely new winery.  Part of my hesitation is I generally only like to taste wine that the winemaker has a heavy hand in the agricultural parts of the wine as well.  This is the case with the better known wineries in Virginia.  Several wineries are still sourcing their grapes for parts of what they produce elsewhere.  This happens, but when I stop at a winery, I'm hoping to see the vines the grapes come off of.  Very much like a stop at a cheese farm in Vermont, one would expect that the cows, sheep, or goats who's milk was used in the production would be visible on the farm, I don't enjoy driving miles out into the country to taste grapes from elsewhere.  I'm sure some will argue with that, but to each his own.

*Note: Since the original publication of this, yours truely has had to eat crow...as some of my favorite wineries are, unbeknownst to me, sourcing from elsewhere...oops! 

8 Chains is still well worth a visit.  They are now pouring white wines that were physically grown on the property, and if they're any indication of what is to come when they start up with their reds in a year or so, the reds will be wines that stand up to the best of what Virginia has to offer.

I'm very much looking forward to returning in a few years to experience the best of what they have to offer!

You can reach 8 Chains North on the web at http://8chainsnorth.com/ or on twitter @8ChainsNorth

A few weeks' worth of break and we're back...

I promise.  It was by no means intentional that I dropped off the face of the earth over the past several weeks.  Multiple work-related items kept me fairly swamped, which was unfortunate, but since this is a volunteer project (mainly because Google is evil) sometimes this is necessary. 

This week we're coming back online with reviews of a winery and a pizza joint in Florida!

Stay tuned next week for a status update on the Jetta...and a new iPhone app that was recommended at a winery and is really quite good!