Southern Scribes Blog

Stephane at the sorting table

My 2^nd day at Kluge in Virginia.

I woke up at 7am to be sure not be late for the harvest.  The winemaker lives next door  from the cottage and when I left at 7.45am I saw she was already gone.  She’s like a school teacher with so many students and a long to do list!  I arrived just before 8am and the entire winery was ready, everyone got their list, and we started to receive the first grapes from the Beausite Vineyard, beautiful and mature Cabernet Sauvignon. I put myself at the sorting table to select the grapes before they went to the crusher-destemmer: all the grapes at Kluge Winery have been seen by plenty of people.

From the vineyards the grapes are hand selected and the removed from the cluster if quality is not acceptable.  The grapes are then transfered from the small containers which are designed to prevent grapes from being crushed in transit from the vine to the winery. Once at the winery the grapes are brought to a sorting table where 6 people  remove any suspicious grapes; any unripe, damaged or mouldy grapes are cut out and any other matter are removed by hand. After this very important part, the grapes are brought to the crush-destemmer and sent to a stainless tank.

Just before the quick lunch break, Gregory shows me around the beautiful Kluge vineyards.  Now I know why Salamander Hospitality is based in Middleburg, VA, they are in the middle of a wine revolution and are near some of the best wine! The state of Virginia has gained so much reputation with their Viognier and sparkling wines that a lot of people keep a very close eye on any new winery, even the world famous wine consultant Michel Rolland has only one winery on the East Coast and Patricia Kluge has him to be part of her team.

My entire day was spent at the sorting table to observe the quality and to sample some grapes to see how mature and tasty they were. The sorting of the grapes should lasted until 11pm but a piece of the destemmer went loose and at 9pm and could not be repaired quickly. I was so sad to see the team so frustrated but I was reliefed to go early to bed. The message was given to everybody that the next day will be very busy because some heavy clouds were coming to our way. I went to bed at 11pm to be sure I will have plenty rest for the early wake up.