Adapt or Die

Our current tour was planned as our attempt to reach and celebrate the milestone of visiting our 150th winery in VA. Originally planned for early June, circumstances beyond our control forced us to postpone this leg of our quest, but troopers as we are, we carried on. One thing we have learned is to never put our plans in stone. The June trip had us visiting several of the newer wineries in the most northern part of the Northern Virginia region – mostly Loudon County – as defined by our sacred VA wine map and the VA Wine website (http://www.virginiawine.org/regions/northern-virginia/). Potomac Point, although a little distance away, was penciled in as #150.

When we replanned our trip for July, the focus of the trip became Fauquier County and Culpepper. We were debating the merits (wine selection, venue setting, location) of four wineries four this vaulted honor. Potomac Point was still in the running. The Winery at Bull Run is actually located in Fairfax County, but it looked impressive and was located close to where we were planning to spend one of our nights. Morais got good reviews from our son Nathan and his girlfriend Kelsey. Old House was a rare place that Diane and I and Mike and Deb had visited but separately. (A visit is only official when all four of us are there.)

Our itinerary changed more times than the cast of a soap opera. We decided that we would not be able to visit both Bull Run and Potomac Point, so we settled on saving PP for another trip. Mike and Deb came down a day early for work-related reasons (yes, we have jobs), and because of convenience, we chose to spend the first night in Warrenton and make our first visit (#144) Bull Run. Then we would do a small cluster of wineries to the west of Culpeper, spend the next night in Culpeper, do a small cluster of wineries to the east of Culpepper, and that would take us to 150.

The next roadblock was the lack of hotel room availability in Culpeper. Apparently horse show aficionados take precedence over wine lovers. Luckily, the horse trail didn’t go southwest, for we were able to find rooms in Orange. By this time, we had decided to stick with Bull Run on day 1, four more on day 2, and #149-150 on day 3. We were now down to either Morais or Old House as our final destination.

 Bull Run was marvelous (more about that on another posting), and we kind of wished we had saved that for 150. There’s a bit of a Catch 22. We can’t count a winery that we have already been to, but we usually don’t know how worthy a place might be of a milestone celebration until we’ve been there. As we met in the late afternoon, this was our one and only stop for the day.


That night, we settled on saving Old House for #150. We would hit Morais first, eat lunch in Culpeper, and then finish off with Castle Gruen, Brightwood, and Early Mountain . . . in that order. In the morning, we realized that Morais wasn’t open on Fridays. No problem. We swapped out #149 – Rogers Ford – with Morais. After the obligatory pancake breakfast, we arrived at Rogers Ford about 15 before they opened, and had a lovely visit (again, more about that on another posting).


We lunched in Culpeper as planned and then head to Castle Gruen. We had met the owner/winemaker, Dean, at a couple of festivals and were excited about this stop. When we pulled up to the entrance there was no sign and a rope across it. (Point of interest. The entrance had two, low castle walls, so we knew we were in the right place.) Upon further investigation, it turned out that they were only open Saturdays and Sundays (my bad), but even if we had arrived a day later, they were occupied with an event and weren’t open at all that weekend. This was a minor disaster. Would this keep up from reaching our milestone this weekend? Upon even further investigation, we discovered that Brightwood was by appointment only. Johnny-on-the-spot Mike made a quick phone call and Susan at Brightwood agreed to let us come by. We were only about 10 minutes away.

 Still we needed one more winery to replace Castle Gruen. I left a voice message with Dean at Castle Gruen to see if there was any way he could squeeze us in. We tried reaching Chestnut Oak, another by appointment establishment, but the cell reception gods were not on our side. We were striking out left and right. As I pored over the wine map, I realized that Reynard Florence wasn’t too far off the path, but they were by appointment only on Fridays. One could only hope . . . Mike poured on the charm, and before you knew it, we had an appointment in about an hour. This would give us time to visit Early Mountain first and keep our numbers intact.


 Early Mountain was a real surprise (another posting). We were enjoying Early Mountain so much, we considered cancelling our Reynard Florence visit, but of course, that would have screwed up our numbers again. We decided to make the trip to RF, and then return to EM for more wine and dinner. Well, RF was a little gem (yet another posting), and we did return to EM.

So that leaves us where we are right now. It’s 5:30 AM, and I’m writing this in my hotel bathroom. Our plan is to be at Morais when it opens, and then after lunch, spend the rest of the day celebrating our achievement of tasting wines at 150 VA wineries. Is it too early to start planning #200?