Every spring I am filled with optimism. It’s spring; it’s opportunity; it is change, almost a rebirth as we watch those beautiful green buds burst forth.

This is the spring that we dared to hope for. What a difference a year makes! Last spring, we experienced the shutdown from COVID-19 and then the shutdown from frost. Not just one frost but two brutal events, two weeks apart that very nearly shut us down. This year is the reverse and we can […]

The Continuing Saga of Understanding Sparkling Wine Part 5 Witnessing wine – The Body of the wine The properties we consider when we taste wine come under the following categories, Sweetness  Acid Tannins Alcohol BODY Flavor intensity Flavor identity Finish Getting back to witnessing wine, one of the most difficult qualities to describe is what […]

I thought I would give “ witnessing wine” a break for a week because I recently had the delight to try our latest 2019 release of Viognier as well as experiencing a recent Viognier with Jennie Mcloud of Chrysalis vineyard. I was stoked to witness two superb wines that really are unique to Virginia.The thing […]

With Andrew Hodson, Veritas Vineyard and Winery Witnessing taste components in wine – Alcohol. Just to do a brief recap – to witness the properties of a wine and here although I am featuring sparkling wine in the blog these principles apply to all wines from Asti Spumante to Zinfandel. Each time we taste we […]

By Andrew Hodson, Veritas Vineyard and Winery Brief recap, to witness the properties of a wine we go through the same framework each time. We have covered the appearances of wine and how to adequately smell the wine and in our last few segments we have been talking about describing the tasting of wine in […]

By Andrew Hodson and Veritas Vineyard and Winery Tasting:  Acid/Sugar Balance I’ve spent time in the series describing how best to analyse wine as part of our understanding and evaluation of any wine be it sparkling or still.  We have to, as a first step, witness the properties of the wine we are tasting and […]

“I have a very soft spot indeed for its more charming and more aromatic relative, Cabernet Franc.  -Jancis Robinson Editor of the Oxford Companion of Wine – referring to Cabernet Sauvignon Did you know there is a wine from California called “Marilyn Merlot”? Well how about a Virginia Cabernet Franc called “Franc Sonata” it’s catchy; […]

By Andrew Hodson | Veritas Vineyard and Winery, Charlottesville, VA Believe it or not there is also a grape called Gros Manseng, the “petit” and “gros”refer to the actual size of the grapes themselves, petit is small and gros is big. So Petit Manseng is a grape with small berries originally from the south west […]

This spring newsletter may seem late but I’m sorry  it is still spring until the first day of summer June 21st, so rather like my winter newsletter this is a retrospective look at the spring of 2020. It is hard to imagine that so much has happened to so many people at a local, state […]