Review: Vintage Virginia Wine Festival

Posted by Stacks (Follow Me)- Stacks was born in DC and raised in VA. That's about all you need to know about him. - To see more posts by this author click here

Last week in my “local ish” post I mentioned that the Vintage Virginia Wine Festival would be taking place at Bull Run Park outside of Manassas, Virginia. Well, I didn’t just pen the date for posterity, I was actually there.  In addition, the Megalomaniac was there and we met up with Miss Pavla and had a good ole time.  Where were you?

Now regarding wine, the breadth and depth of my knowledge is summed up by stating simply that I prefer reds and I don’t so much prefer the whites.  And Blake . . . well Blake may be one of the few people who possess even less knowledge on this topic than myself.  All he knows is that he isn’t finicky. So let’s just say that running into Miss Pavla and having her two ravishing friends as our guides for the day was quite the blessing (plus, when attractive chicks cut to the front of the line no one says a thing).

So, driving to the event was not much of a problem at all, but as we got closer to the venue, the traffic did snarl a bit as I believe there are only one or two ways in and out of Bull Run.  As soon as we entered into the park, we could see that there was a very high turnout as Sunday proved to be an almost perfect day for wine sippin’.  I have to say that given the sheer volume of people, the attendants directing the traffic showing people where to park and even the people running the entrance line did a very fine job of keeping everything moving.  We didn’t expect them to accept credit cards at the door, so we made certain to have cash on hand ($30 entrance fee) but with two lines, one for CC’s and one for cash, there was no wait at all to get into the event.

With no previous wine festival experience to draw from, we didn’t know what to expect so we just proceeded to the first tent with a shortest line and waited for our turn (our motto quickly became “towards the wine with the shortest line”).  Once our turn came up, the gentleman pouring for us started telling us about his vineyard and about what flavors to look for in each sample.  Needless to say, all of that went over my head as I greedily slurped up my three samples and was ready to move on.  Luckily, Blake was there to ask the guy some follow-up questions about the vineyard so we didn’t look like quite the alcohol-starved yokels that we are.  (Here’s a tip:  Take the little sheet that they have on the table with the different varieties.  This is what people use to rate the wines so that they can decide what bottle to purchase.  Even if you’re not planning on buying a bottle, if you at least act interested, you’re less likely to catch dirty looks and more likely to get a generous pour).

Since neither of us had eaten, or next stop was over to the food vendors.  Blake chose a good ol’ American burger on the grill…I unfortunately elected to try something a little different.  $16 later, I had a “steak” pita and a mound of kettle-cooked potato chips that was so heavy from the grease that it nearly snapped my styrofoam plate.  If I had one complaint about the festival, it would be my food experience.

After “dining”, we came to the obvious conclusion that it was time to actually experience this glorious event and sample the various offerings and that’s when we met up with Miss Pavla.  It immediately became apparent that this was not their first wine festival and that they actually knew what they were doing.

After our first hour in which we sampled one vineyard’s wines and ate some over-priced food, we then proceeded to hit up somewhere between 5 and 15 booths over the next 2 hours (I can’t exactly tell you how many booths we came to because some offered 15 unique wine offerings).  It was astonishing how quickly we got to the front of the lines when we had those of the fairer sex with us.  Plus, they actually had the aforementioned rating checklists and were interested in learning about the wine.

Now while the number of “10′s” being handed out seemed to grow exponentially with every place we stopped; I can say with certainty that I picked up enough wine schooling to feel adequate ordering a bottle at BLT or The Palm.  I would have to say that once I got into the groove of the atmosphere that this was an exceptionally fun time and something that I would recommend to others whether you’re a connoisseur or just someone who wants to do something a little different.

udothedishes…

Related posts:

1. Wine rocks: 2010 Vintage Virginia Wine Festival
2. 2010 Vintage Virginia Wine Festival Recap
3. The Virginia Wine Festival Part Deux
4. 2009 Virginia Wine Festival Recap
5. 2009 DC Hip-Hop Theater Festival

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