A Visit with Matthieu Finot at King Family Vineyards in Crozet, VA

On our way to Wineries Unlimited in Richmond, Virginia, we met up with Matthieu Finot, the winemaker at King Family Vineyards. Matthieu kindly invited us to visit him if we were in Virginia when my husband was initially inquiring about Mercier Nurseries. Back then, we were deciding which nursery to buy our grapevines from and Matthieu's name was provided to us by Mercier.

Well, we found ourselves in Virginia and we dropped by and Matthieu met us in the tasting room. Matthieu said that when he came to King Family Vineyards, the trellising style that they were using was the ballerina. We have never seen the ballerina trellising and we wouldn't at this visit because the vines were just in budbreak.
He gave us a tour of the winemaking facilities

and explained his technique including his experimentation with various barrel makers. Matthieu mentioned that the King Family Vineyards are in the process of expanding the winemaking facilities because they have outgrown the current one. Their production has grown from about 5000 cases to 6500 cases. The outgrowing of winemaking facilities seems like a recurrent theme at the wineries that we have visited. At the end of a very instructive tour, Matthieu gave us a tasting of the wines that he had crafted. One of the wines that I especially enjoyed was his Viognier 2010. Usually, I am not an imbiber of Viognier, but this Viognier was excellent. If you find yourself in Virginia, do go to the King Family Vineyards!