Winery Visit- "Attimo Winery"

Attimo Winery was absolute beautiful!

On Saturday, March 24 I went to visit Attimo Winery to see what their history was and how they make their wine.  Luckily we were able to learn so much from the owner of the winery and he gave us a tour and so much information about the vineyard.   This winery is the most awarded winery in Virginia and they only opened one year ago.  However, they got the idea about 10 years ago and have been working on their dream ever since.  The winery is completely green; the owners have a passive solar building, use recycled corks, compost all extra food, and recycle all of their wine bottles.

Attimo is the Italian word for "In the moment".  All of the wines that Attimo produces is named after a moment of someone's life or a moment of history.  The owners have trademarked this idea so no one else can use this idea.

Sydney and I posing at the Attimo Winery.

Because it was is the very beginning of Spring, there were only buds on the vines.  However, Attimo Winery has about 10,000 vines at their vineyard.  All of their vines come from New York and from California.  Attimo Winery is the only vineyard on the east coast with Saperavi vines.  This is from the Republic of Georgia and they like to try and keep the growing conditions as similar to Georgia as they possibly can.  In order to do that, they ferment this wine in clay. 

Inside the building where the tour began.

They make their wines based on style, not efficiency.  Because of this, they do not just throw everything into a stainless steel tank and then into oak to age.  Instead, different styles have different means of fermenting.  For their white wines, they put the wine into oak immediately.  For their red wines, they bin ferment and then put into oak to age it.  For their sweet wines, they use stainless steel and cold temperatures.

Where they make their wines was a huge question for us.  The building that everything took place did not look large enough to hold the entire wine-making process.  The Attimo owners make some of their wines in the basement of their home.  The other wines are made at their Charlottesville vineyard.  They have 2 more vineyards other than the one in Christiansburg; they also have a vineyard in Charlottesville and Roanoke.  As for the bottling process, most are hand bottled with recycled cork.  The rest of their wines are bottled in Charlottesville at a place where a few companies share for bottling wines.

The building that is on the grounds at Attimo Winery.

The company has really grown in size and notoriety in the past year.  The winery is getting their wines to restaurants for distribution.  Zeppoli's and Preston's now have their wines on their menus.  The goal of the winery is to have all restaurants in Montgomery County and Roanoke County to have their wines on their menu.  From there, the owners will decide how they want to continue with distribution.  In 2009, the winery only had about 200 cases to sell.  In 2010, they made about 1700 cases.  In 2011 they have 3200 cases.  In 2012, they plan to have about 5000 cases.  This is great process and I am excited to see some of their wines get distributed.

Attimo Winery is going to be the host winery at the Fork and Cork festival in Blacksburg in April.  The owner that we met will be teaching the food and wine pairing so I will be sure to see his class.  I absolutely loved this visit and learned so much about different processes and techniques that different wineries do.