Horseshoes and Hand Grenades
When we were kids, my mom used to make tuna noodle casserole pretty regularly. It was quick, cheap, and filling, and with a bottomless pit like myself to feed, it was a good choice. Call me pedestrian, but I love tuna noodle casserole. Anyhow, one night, the casserole just didn’t seem right. It wasn’t bad, it just didn’t seem as good as it should be. Then my little sister, of all people, figured it out.
She forgot the tuna.
Sweely Estate Winery feels like that to me. It has all the pieces of a great winery experience: stunning, gargantuan manor house, expansive grounds, richly appointed tasting and function rooms, sprawling gift shop, and acres of vines. And yet, it doesn’t quite close the deal. We got to taste 9 wines, all of which were fine, just not exciting. Truth be told, many of the wines tasted watery to me. The 2006 Acorn Hill Cab Franc (Sweely used to be called Acorn Hill, before they had to change the name due to a conflict with another winery by the same name) sounded intriguing to me. It’s entirely aged in stainless steel, and never sees oak. I just didn’t get a whole lot of flavor, which kind of describes my whole tasting experience. They’re all wines that I would drink, if someone served them to me at a restaurant or dinner party. But there are none that would inspire me to ask to see the bottle, so I could pick one up later.
So why don’t they get a rant like the one Kluge Estate got? Well, they bought the site in 2004. You’d be hard pressed to find a winery that’s able to rock it out right away. We’ll keep checking back, and hopefully the wines begin to equal their setting. I think they’re worth trying, but don’t go in expecting the best of Virginia wines.
The Horseshoes and Hand Grenades by Swirl, Sip, Snark, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
The space at Sweely is impressive, but it just didn’t seem that welcoming to me; just because there are places to sit doesn’t mean I feel comfortable hanging out there. Perhaps it’s because the space is just so large. My sense is that they’re not really in it for the wine. They might like wine and having a winery, but it seems like this is a statement about what they can do rather than what they want to do. Wine may be secondary to the large scale events the space can host. This is just not what I look for when tasting local wines.
Overall, I agree with Grape Envy Guy that the wines were fine but nothing special. They are no longer tasting their meritage given the limited quantities left. Given my take on the rest of their flight and the price of the wine, I wasn’t inerested in buying a bottle without a preview. If you’ve tried the meritage, I’d love to hear what your take on it was, however.