Mo's Wine & Spirits

Back in 1999, Dave Matthews decided that he wanted to take his attitude towards organic foods and bring it into the realm of the grape; he decided to design his own vineyard. However, not being a master vintner himself, he asked for the assistance of Brad McCarthy, who had been working at Acacia, a winery in Canernos, California. Both Brad and Dave had similar outlooks on how they wanted the vineyard to be constructed and, upon combining their ideas, created Blenheim.

Brad believed that the best way to produce a wine is to be as gentle as possible with the fruit by not using hydraulics and motors to move the grapes through the wine production process. What he came up with is an ingenious design that relies on gravity alone to transport everything through the fermentation process to where it is aged in barrels. The winery itself is built into a hill so that this gravity flow system could be made possible. While many winemakers feel that using hydraulics to transport the fruit instead of a gentler gravity system yields little difference in the wine, McCarthy feels that his way enables him to produce a “purer product.”

The real purpose of Blenheim is to produce a wine that exemplifies the characteristics and taste of a true Virginia wine and so all of their grapes are grown in the state. Blenheim has its own four acre vineyard where they grow three different varietals, but they also purchase grapes from other Virginia vineyards as well. Blenheim offers Chardonnays, Merlots, a Meritage, and a couple other varietals that have been recently released. While their operation is small compared to others, their focus has been, and will most likely remain, to produce quality and not quantity. With their unique approach to wine production, Dave Matthews and Brad McCarthy, along with everyone at Blenheim, will surely be turning out sweet music for your palate for some time to come.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Green Wines, celebrities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.