Coming attractions - Morais Vineyards

I followed up on a rumor of a new winery opening up in the area.  I discovered Morais Vineyards.  Morais Vineyards is nearing completion of their beautiful winery.  They are new, so no web page yet but they do have a Morais Vineyards Facebook Page..  The embedded You Tube video showed a vineyard with some fairly mature vines, and a very nice tasting room.  I contacted Morais Vineyards and asked if we could arrange a visit before their grand opening and, if yes, could we bring along some other Virginia Wine Bloggers.  Morais Vineyards quickly agreed and had me contact  their Venue Coordinator Maddie.  Maddie arranged for a visit which included a tour of the nearly completed winery and vineyards.   I invited some other Virginia Wine bloggers to visit with us. Many could not make it, but Amber and her husband Ryan from The Unofficial Virginia Wine Tour and Frederick Meixel and Allison from the This is Wine livejournal were able to join us.

Maddie met us in the parking lot out front and took us around back to go into the wine cellar first.   Morais Vineyards has a nice pond and fountain behind the facility.  There is a small tasting room next to the wine cellar.  It is one of two tasting rooms.

 We met Victor, the new vineyard manager & winemaker, in the cellar.  Victor just arrived in the US from Portugal.  His father has been making wines in portugal for over 30 years.  So the current bottles and barrels of wine are "pre-Victor."  The wine cellar is really beautiful.

 Yes, they are going to do things Old World style like in Portugal.  See that granite vessel?  That is where they crush (as in stomp) the red wine grapes.  Like the old world wine press? 

 The Morais family is Portuguese.  Much of design is inspired by Portugal.  The wine labels are of the Portuguese ships that the great discoverers sailed.

The main ballroom has 4,000 square feet of hardwood floors, stage, dance floor, and 6 chandeliers. A wrought iron balcony overlooks the ballroom and leads to the private bridal room.  There are 2 terraces off the ballroom, and a patio off the tasting room. This is one nice venue!  Maddie said she already has 2 weddings booked and a few other events.  The contractors are scheduled to be done in 3 weeks.

Victor and Maddie behind the tasting bar

Here is the main tasting bar.  As in the rest of the facility, the tasting room is a place of beauty, with large arched windows and a floor to (high) ceiling  stone fireplace.  After touring the winery and seeing the vineyard (mature and producing Merlot and Cab Franc, yearling Albarino and Muscat vines) Victor opened a few of the new Morais wines for us to taste.  We tried a 2010 Rkatsiteii (RKats for short), and 2009 Touriga National, and 2009 Merlot/Cab Franc blend.  Victor's predecessor did an acceptable job.  The Rkats was acidic, with a full flavor profile and good body.  Lots of floral and spicy aromatics up front on this unique white wine.  The 2009 Touriga was a mellow red wine, but had good acid and a long finish.  This wasn't complex, but was easy to drink.  The Merlot/Cab Franc blend was decent enough, with a touch of vegetable flavor though.  Victor was eager to put his stamp on the 2011 vintage.

Blogger previewers at end of Morais Vineyards tour: "Thank you Maddie and Victor"

Maddie and Victor said Morais Vineyards and Winery will open in late September for events and weddings, but that public tasting will probably not happen until January.  We said our farewells to Maddie and Victor.  They are two great people to meet.

It was nice meeting Amber, Ryan and Allison for the first time and Frederick once again at a new winery.  All agreed we should try this again at one of the new wineries opening soon, if we can.