After our visit to Elk Island Vineyards we headed down the road a few minutes to Byrd Cellars for some more locally grown Goochland, VA wine. It is another very lovely and homey set of buildings divided into a tasting room and a winery.
The winery is painted a gorgeous shade of purple and catches the light beautifully. There are mentions of this being a subterranean winery on the website and the phrase was bandied about in the tasting room. But I didn’t ask at the time. I would really like to know if they do tours!
But the tasting room is the place to be. It’s so picturesque from the outside but the inside takes your breath away as well.
In fact, the tasting room was hand built by a minister who lived there with his wife for years. After his wife passed he decided to move on to travel ministry and rents his home out to Byrd Cellars. The place is beautiful inside with large windows overlooking the mountains and elegantly exposed beams. But, onto the tasting!
The wines they have on offer for tasting rotates and they have it listed behind the tasting bar. There were some sweeter wines that I usually prefer but overall it was a very good selection. A surprising was the “velvet” I thought it would be syrupy sweet but instead it was lovely and dry and the bitter dark chocolate hit you right at the end.
The staff was so friendly and knowledgable I could have stood there and sipped for a lot longer. But they were busy and I didn’t want to hog the bar. Instead I took a wander around the tasting room while we finished our glasses off.
The exposed beams held all the glasses from the different wine festivals that Byrd Cellars has attended and I thought this was such a neat touch and really gave you a sense of how vast wine making in Virginia is. I also loved these twine and button wine bottles!
It was a very successful girls’ day! Cheers to Virginia Wine!
The Llavender Llama 