Summer is here and the living is good here in the vineyard... Here's all the latest news from Afton Mountain Vineyards:

Events:

JULY 4^th CELEBRATION: On Sunday, July 4^th, our event begins at 12:00 noon and ends at 5:00pm.  We will have live music from Ampersand from 1-4; $10.00 admission covers live music and a souvenir tasting glass. We will have wine sales outside on the patio, and wine tasting inside the Tasting House.   The patio will be open for relaxing; and there's the picnic area for 4-legged friends and kids to romp!  Bring a chair, a blanket, a picnic (of course we will have our usual wonderful assortment of picnic fare for sale in the Tasting House t00), and grab a friend and a bottle of Afton Mountain Vineyards wine and enjoy the music.  Check out Ampersand at http://www.reverbnation.com/ampersandmusic.

From the Tasting House:

We hope you have had time to come see us in our new Tasting House!  It's been a year in the making/renovation, but all projects are finally done and it's been worth the wait.  In this new space, we have expanded our tasting space and opened the living room for climate-controlled relaxing.  We are using our Board Room for group tastings of 6 - 15 people, and of course, our gorgeous terrace is full of wine-loving folks enjoying the juice and the fabulous setting.

We have booked a few weddings for the fall - we're taking this slowly as we ease into a new venture for Afton Mountain Vineyards.  Our site is special to us and we intend to be good stewards of this beautiful place, while sharing it with others who want to have their special day in a true vineyard setting!

From the Vineyard:

Many of you have asked how the tremendous amount of snow this past winter affected the vineyard.  The good news is: it really acts as insulation from the cold and does not damage the vines.  What is much more detrimental are clear, extremely cold nights, and we didn't have too many of those.

With some of our vines being 30 years old, though, we are always in the process of replacing vines that are not in good health.  Our vineyard manager, Robbie, and his crew planted almost  1000 new vines of Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer, Muscat, Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir, and Cabernet Sauvignon.  Whew!

Though this spring was not nearly as wet as it was in 2009, it was cloudy during the 10 days or so of late May "flowering": when the vines are in flower and setting their fruit for the summer.  Cloudy days reduce the ability of the plants to photosynthesize, and so that critical time determines our "fruit set" for the year.  So while we've had a dry season so far, which is good for the grapes, we can already tell that the 2010 harvest will not be as bountiful as last year's.  But hey, we weren't affected by the late-season frosts as many vineyards in the state were, so we'll count our blessings.

For those of you who live nearby, you know that we've had some crazy thunderstorms this year.  One of the reasons that Afton Mountain Vineyards has such a premium vineyard site is that we are in the "rain shadow" of the mountain.  This means that we watch the storms come up across the mountains behind us from the Shenandoah Valley, then skirt right around us!  Many afternoons we've enjoyed relaxing on the patio and watching it storm like crazy in Charlottesville, Wintergreen, Lovingston, etc.  That's great news for the grapes - it favors small berry size and really helps to concentrate the flavors - but all of our poor little new vines!  Like any plant, they need lots of water as they are getting established, so between the new vine plantings and all of our new landscaping at the Tasting House, Tony and I have been on "sprinkler duty" for many days on end now...

From the Winery:

WOW!  We just cannot wait to share the 2009 wines with you when the time is right!  This past harvest was the best in the 20 year history of Afton Mountain Vineyards!  We processed over 60 tons of grapes in the fall of last year; we've been barrel-tasting along the way and we are so very excited about the wines to come.  We will be doing a varietal Pinot Noir out of this vintage - we usually harvest the Pinot Noir grapes early in the season to use them for our Tete de Cuvee Sparkling wine, but when we think the season's looking good enough to get the finicky Pinot Noir grapes fully ripe and flavorful, we let them stay on the vine longer and take the gamble... and it was worth it last year!  We will be bottling just under 200 cases of this lovely wine.

Wine Club News:

Speaking of bottling... we will be bottling some of our 2009 whites in the next few weeks.  When they are ready, we'll be sharing some of them with you!  Details are not finalized yet, but we are expecting to ship your summer Wine Club shipment about the third week of July, and it will include some exclusive pre-releases of our new white wines.

THE AMV WINE CLUB RECIPE CONTEST!  Send us your favorite recipe and the Afton Mountain wine that you think it pairs with best.  The winner will have their recipe published in our next Wine Club newsletter and Tony and I will pay for your choice of a bottle of wine!

That's the latest news from us.  We are celebrating our second year of ownership and thanks to all of you who have helped us along the way.  It's a wonderful life here at Afton Mountain and we never get tired of our beautiful setting and sharing it with wine-and-fun-loving friends!  Come see us at the vineyard, at www.aftonmountainvineyards.com, or www.facebook.com/aftonmountain.

We're living the dream...

Cheers!

Elizabeth and Tony Smith