Vance Vineyards & Winery

Wine: Winery: Ambiance: Oct 14, 2010

Favorite Wine: Barrel Select Chardonel

Norton Wine Review: Vance Vineyards and Winery is a tasting room and formal restaurant. This is a beautiful, relatively new, facility with tight traffic circle at the front entrance (larger vehicles be forewarned). The setting is accentuated with surrounding vineyard plantings and a silo belfry across a large pond which charmingly rings on the quarter hour. Tasting room hours are variable during different seasons, so double check hours if traveling from afar. The 13 acres of Norton, Catawba, Chardonnay, Chardonel, Vignoles, Traminette, Chambourcin and Riesling vines are only five years old, so realize these young wines are not indicative of what maybe available from their seasoned winemaker in the years to come. We tried their Dry Chardonel which was clear with clean straight forward taste. The Barrel Select Chardonel which had been aged with oak for 12 months seemed to be a bit more creamy and exhibiting riper fruit flavors. A nice first attempt. Having no other dry white wines, we shifted over to their dry reds. The VVW’s Chambourcin was mild and the tastes did not linger in the mouth. Their 2007 Norton was heavily oaked, but came across (in the hostess’ words) as “calm”. Strangely, this Norton had a very distinctive clove aroma that did not carry well over into the tasting. Remember, these were first attempts from very young vines. Not bad, but we felt they were produced to “not offend” and therefore these wines were not indicative of the grapes true characters. Maybe this was an intentional “best to be safe than sorry” approach to the first vintage productions. Offered was a Mollie wine (named after the owner’s dog) which was a Norton blend with a “secret” white wine that was not to be revealed to the public. Bottom line it was non-descript and sweet. We were glad we made the effort to find Vance Vineyards and Winery, but we were turned off a bit by the free tasting sips that were poured in such small dribbles that it was hard to really tell what we were experiencing.