Chatham Vineyards & Winery

Wine: Winery: Ambiance: Dec 28, 2011

We visited this winery in August 2011 as part of a kayak / winery tour. It was a neat experience, but in retrospect I'm not sure it was a great value for us. We have kayaked several times before, and may have preferred to just rent kayaks for a few hours in the morning and then spend the afternoon visiting Chatham and maybe other wineries on the Eastern Shore. But if you've never kayaked before, having a guide may be beneficial. Ok...on to the winery. The grounds are gorgeous (as are all vineyards!). It was so peaceful--a farm on a marsh--seriously, what could be better? I found myself wishing I lived there. (And maybe that was a benefit of the kayak / wine tour--we actually got to walk through the property, which we may not have been able to do if we were just visiting the winery.) The tasting room itself, however, left a lot to be desired. The lady doing the tasting was not very personable at all. It wasn't really busy--just my husband and I and two other girls--and yet she seemed somehow overwhelmed by it. I don't know. The owner, however, was very friendly and very nice. I liked him a lot. The red wine was good; we didn't care for the white wine. We got a bottle with our kayak / winery tour, and we bought a second bottle. It was fine, but I remember thinking as we drank the bottles that they weren't as good as I remembered from the tasting. I think we ended up throwing out some of that wine. I need to take better notes so that I can better remember, but my (fuzzy) memory is that the wines were young and just very one-dimensional. Overall, however, it's worth seeing if you're in the area. I think the vines are relatively young, so maybe with time they will improve.