Winery Tour - Whitebarrel Winery

This past Friday I toured the Whitebarrel Winery, located in Christiansburg, VA.  It was only about a half hour drive from the VT campus.  The weather was not very pleasant that day - it was pouring rain and I was concerned that the tour would be cancelled.  The below pictures I snagged from the internet, as the rain prohibited me capturing my own photos.

Whitebarrel Winery
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Main tasting room. Very home-y and casual environment.

My tour guide was a 2014 graduate from the Pamplin College of Business, and I enjoyed talking with her.  She started me off on the tour (which is $5 - totally reasonable for the amount of information they provide and the overall experience.  I also personally love supporting local/regional businesses) by describing how they grow their vines.  There was a "mother vine" attached to the main building that they used to graft/grow new vines.  She explained the different flowering-stages of the grapes.

After that, we moved to what was described as the barn.  This featured the processing unit.  There was a section for where the grapes were stripped from the vines, where the grapes were juiced, the fermenters, and the oak barrels.  My tour guide explained that the oak barrels came from a variety of places but were generally American oak.  The average cost was $1500 for a barrel, so she stressed how wine making is not a cheap venture.  

Where the grapes are juiced and let sit so the skins impart their color.

Oak barrels.

The barn also had a huge stock of vines - the winery was preparing for their planting ceremony on Sunday, April 24th.  

Vines for planting ceremony. 

Currently Whitebarrel does not bottle their own wine (unlike some of the larger wineries), so they make a reservation with a traveling bottling company.  The company has a giant truck they'll drive on-site and bottle all the wine for Whitebarrel.  It's a very tight turnaround and nothing can go wrong, because these companies book up rapidly and usually have appointments back to back with other wineries and distilleries.  

After the tour, I wound back up in the tasting room.  I chose not to taste wine that day as I didn't have a buddy with me to drive back if need be (I'm a lightweight).  I listened to a bit about their wines though and examined the labels.  

Part of Whitebarrel's stock of wine.

I really enjoyed Whitebarrel.  They are a much smaller operation than some wineries I've visited as a kid or more recently as a college student.