Lauren Jean's Wine Blog : Winery Visit: New Kent Winery

Panoramic View of outside the winery.

I visited New Kent Winery in New Kent, VA (right outside of Richmond) with my friend Caroline and her mom. We had a great time at the visit and the space was so unique and welcoming. New Kent winery is a 17,000 square foot facility that was open in 2008 with the first vines being planted in 2001.

Caroline and I inside production facility

They produce Chardonnay, Merlot, White Merlot, Meritage, Vidal Blanc, and Norton (native to VA).

What I found most interesting about this winery is the "green" construction. For example, the brick on the exterior of the building was originally made by hand for a mill in Richmond before the Civil War. They are the third users of this brick. One cool fact the tour guide shared with us is that the white bricks scattered throughout the walls used to spell out "Lucky Strike" on the side of the second user's building. There are also 150 year old cypress on the exterior siding that were cut down in Florida and sank while floating to mills along the river. This same wood was also cut into 72,000 handmade shingles for the roof. What I found most interesting and neat was that antique railroad trusses are featured in the production room that date back to 1901. They still retain all of the original hardware! I know that was some text book type information, but I think they way they used reclaimed building materials was really neat!

So on to our tour. When we got there, we were a little early for the tour, so we hung out in the waiting room for a while. It was stunning with it's large wooden beams and really amazing wine bar. I bought my mom a coaster because it was the only thing semi reasonably priced that had the name of the winery on it haha. Our tour guide began outside even though it was really chilly that day and told us all about the architecture and the building materials I mentioned earlier. Then we proceeded into the productions facility. She really didn't give us any good information on making the wine or anything like that but I was able to locate and know what the equipment was for because of taking this class. The pictures below highlight some of my favorite features of the productions room and the waiting room.

After the tour, we participated in a tasting (best part of course!). My notes are below for each of the wines (what they said about it is in italics):

Chardonnay: "fruit forward, lively, and expressive" I thought this Chardonnay was very clean and crisp. It smelled buttery and almost like a cake. It was nice but nothing too remarkable about it.
Reserve Chardonnay: "well rounded, creamy, yet youthfully aged" HELLO OAK! I could absolutely tell the difference between the chardonnay aged in stainless steel and this reserve that was aged in oak! It smelled and tasted like a piece of wood and was spicy to me.
Meritage: "versatile, approachable Bordeaux-style blended red" This one was definitely dry and had a spicy finish. I couldn't detect any fruit on the nose or in the taste. (Made of cabfranc [60%], merlot [30%], and cabsav [10%]). It was a nice blend, but nothing to write home about.
Merlot: "hand selected with mild color, tannins, and flavors" NO ME GUSTA! it had a strong aftertaste and I couldn't really pick out any distinct flavors. It was definitely not fruity to me, but I don't know what it was. I guess it had mild tannins like they said. Sorry I'm not being very descriptive I think I just wrote it off because I didn't like it so I was trying very hard to analysis it.
Vidal Blanc: "clean, fruity and subtle white wine" SUGAR! Refreshing but taste like sugar water. I've had better Vidal Blanc.
White Merlot: "a truly white wine made from the red Merlot grape" <<<< LOLZ NO SHIT.... They said to drink it with spicy food to cut the spice and dry it out (much more helpful than their description haha) I thought it was very refreshing and would be perfect for summer time. I could see myself drinking this with a bowl of jambalaya out of the porch in June.
White Norton: "an extraordinarily complex Norton rose" I thought this was great. The spiciness of the finish really helped balance the sweetness. Good, solid white wine (and the grape is native to VA, sweet!).
Sweet Virginia: "romantic and sassy sweet red wine" This literally tasted like grape juice... like welches. Sassy.... mmmmmm don't think so.
Mulled Wine: It was a white norton with the spices. It tasted like Christmas in my mouth! LOVED it. Like drinking apple pie. I want to make some for the next wintery day which hey, even though it's almost April would totally work out for today. ... No one told Blacksburg it was spring apparently.

All in all, this was a wonderful, unique winery with nice wines. They won a lot of awards for their wines but I wasn't particularly wowed by any of them. However, if they were on sale, I'd pick them up.

XOXOVINO, LJ