|
Sarah & Nate Walsh have been working together for most of the last decade, and our lives have been enriched by their union. Sarah, Nate, and a huge supporting team are Walsh Family Wine. Together they bring to the sorting table the requisite nerdy & artistic qualities needed in their pursuit of great wines. The Virginia grape harvest is less than a month away and everything is in the final stages of ripening and development. These are the winemaker’s last free minutes until the new year, and it is an anxious pause. Everything they can do to provide for a great harvest has been put in place. Now they just must wait for time and the elements to work out this year’s lot. Harvest starts in only 3 weeks! To help their wait we thought we would offer some distraction and a dozen bottles of wine. The whole Locke Store & Buttery team went to visit Walsh Family wines to learn more about wine from Virginia and around the world. We spent a lot of time in the vineyard sampling Viognier, Petit Manseng and Chardonnay ripening on the vines. Then the patio was ours for a few hours of conversation about wine and why it matters so much to us. A brief tasting of wines old & young was followed by a cellar tour and some rosé to round out the day. There is no better resource than relying on our neighbors in wine country to show us how it’s done. There is so much they have thought about before you pop the cork and they say it best in their own words: Sarah and Nate + an amazing team + killer vineyard sites
=
Delicious, Authentic Virginia Wine Their balance favours great grapes and minimal winemaking. Farming 55 acres all within the bounds of the Catoctin Ridge and the Blue Ridge, they have found a great diversity of soils & exposures to offer a full palette of diverse wines. With ¾ of the full time employees working in the vineyards, they are trying to maximize the Virginia sunlight and off-set the humidity to make some of the most interesting wines in Virginia. The act and art of wine making predates any written accounts of it. It may happen spontaneously and naturally, but the careful guidance of the vintner and the winemaker always give advantage to both the wine and the drinker. This is one of our great pursuits in the Locke Store and at the Buttery: not to just bring to every customer a great bottle or glass of wine, but to spark wonder. Wonder as to why so many people would work so hard to share their year-long work, divided up into myriad small bottles, to share with the rest of the world. We want to help open the bottles and the conversation. Wine is the intersection of geography, geology, time, and the desire to express ourselves from where we are. At best it is a transcendent expression of these things, but not every wine or vintage transcends. That is why we are constantly talking about wine and where to find the next great thing. Wine is a conversation from the clay and stones to your glass. Next time you’re in the store, let’s keep the conversation going, we are always ready to talk wine.
|
