We don’t drink a lot of sparkling wine here at chez snark.  I’ll be the first to admit that we’re not the most educated sparkling drinkers – after all we’re mostly self-taught and we don’t drink a lot of bubbly – vicious cycle anyone?  It’s not that we don’t like these wines, however.  In fact, [...]

We’ve been blogging about our adventures with VA wine for nearly a year now.  Hopefully, by this point, you’ve figured out that we’re not wine snobs.  We’ll try nearly any kind of wine because you never know when you’ll find a really special one somewhere you weren’t expecting.  This means that we’re happy to drink [...]

A few months back, I wrote about chambourcin as a red wine for white wine drinkers.  Gamay was a very common choice by other bloggers who participated in that edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday.  I didn’t really link the two wines except for being relatively light on the tannin front, however.  The following month, I [...]

Given my title, I bet you’re expecting to hear about a red that we’ve been aging for a number of years and recently opened.  You’d be wrong.  I’m talking about a white wine that we opened and left in the fridge for 4 days before finishing.  This was not a planned experiment – it’s just [...]

Ok, maybe not, but if Breaux Vineyards had my penchant for bad puns that’s what they would call their rosé, which we cracked open recently. Now here’s the deal: I am not a native Virginian. Virginia has beautiful country, great history, awesome wine… and weather that’s like getting fed through a woodchipper, into a vat [...]

Summers in Virginia are hot and humid – and we are definitely into summer at this point.  At this time of the year, I tend to gravitate to crisp, refreshing (cold) whites at the end of the day despite my overall preference for reds.  I still love red wine, however, and sometimes really crave it.  [...]

Okay – we’re not referring to the cult TV show (good by the way).  We’re referring to that time of year when you can sit outside and watch the fireflies light up the night.  Summer is usually white wine time around here (can you tell by all the posts lately?), but a chilled red can [...]

Grape Envy Guy and I recently spent an evening enjoying a fire on our patio.  These evenings often include a bottle of wine, and this one was no exception.  This time we decided on the 2007 Sugarleaf Vineyards Petit Manseng.  We bought this bottle last summer when we first visited Sugarleaf.  It confused us a [...]

I’ve long had a complex relationship with cabernet franc.  When Grape Envy Guy and I first moved to VA and started trying local wines, we found that most wineries offered one.  Cab franc was a new wine for us, however, as I’d never had it as a primary grape before.  This peppery, tannic wine was [...]

Weather this spring has been all over the map.  During one of the swings towards cold temps, I found myself craving a rich, full bodied wine.  Since we’re also trying to make some progress  towards our goal of becoming century club members, I rifled through our shelves looking for a full bodied red with a [...]