Diving into Wine Tasting

Just a hint of a breeze and mild blue skies made Saturday at Booster Park in Orange, Virginia ideal skydiving weather. It seemed like divers were dropping every fifteen to twenty minutes and offered spectacular entertainment for the wine tasting observers below at The Pick of the Piedmont Fall Wine Festival. Every time I set my camera down to taste another cabernet franc or petit verdot, the parachute photo opportunities would slip away as I hastily switched hands!

I finally caught these jumpers on camera and was so inspired that when I have a couple of hundred dollars of mad money I’m headed to the Orange County Airport skydiving! It might take a couple of glasses to get my nerve up, but when I do..!

Of the 14 vineyards represented, a few stood out for their wines or hospitality. WellHung Vineyard gets the award for marketing and originality! Tracy Verkerke, came up with the name and design , Amy Steers, a nurse turned viticulturist and Kathy Rash, business planner are the three women involved in the business of WellHung.They have the additional benefit of expert Virginia winemaker Michael Shaps bottling their dreams into reality!

Cooper Vineyard had the most interesting wine that we sampled, their signature chocolate wine, Noche. Do you think we might ever find this in the feminine section of our local pharmacy pairing two PMS favorites? It does make a great gift and was on special pricing, 3 bottles for 50 dollars!

They are also close to completing the new LEED certified tasting room, possibly opening as early as December of 2010. Hope we’re invited!

Burnley Vineyard is practically a neighbor, situated just a few miles from our home and unfortunately is forgotten because it is so close! After spending a little time chatting with the owner, Dawn Reeder I realized my mistake and plan to stop by soon! We really enjoyed the Rubix port style wine made with Norton grapes and discussed the compatibility of cigars and this particular vintage.

The vendor that really attracted our attention was the Potts Chocolates, Blair and Margo Potts personally handed out delicious delicate samples of truffles and chocolates while explaining the elaborate process of making these unique treats.

Salty caramel chocolate was by far our favorite! They are in the process of developing their website and can be reached at Blair.Potts@PottsChocolate.com to order online. For more on the food aspect of this event and the person who invited us,look for my fellow blogger and friend, Pam who will be elaborating at www.Foode4thought.blogspot.com

4 thoughts on “Diving into Wine Tasting”

The link to http://www.Foode4thought.blogspot from your blog did not work for me. I eventually got to Pam’s blog using
http://www.Foode4thought.blogspot.com
There may be other URL variations that will also work.

Please do try skydiving. Jumping out of an airplane is the experience of a lifetime. My first parachute jump was also my first airplane ride. It was after 4-5 weekends of training and I jumped solo/unassisted using a round military chute at the Waynesboro, Va airport. It was also my last jump – but what a thrill !

Tricia Traugott says:

October 25, 2010 at 5:17 PM

Cool, Mark, thanks for the note re:blogspot, kind of inferred that but I need to edit that so the link will work! I posted at 3 a.m.!
Why didn’t you jump again? I said hello to Chris from Stone Mtn. for you 🙂 he was swamped!

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What exactly is LEED certified? Care to share?

Tricia Traugott says:

October 25, 2010 at 11:49 PM

According to Wikipedia LEED stands for Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design and is an internationally recognized green building certification system, providing third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies intended to improve performance in metrics such as energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts. Thanks fior asking, Jillian!

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