Open Daily
10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Additional Hours By Appt.
(Closed New Years, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas)

6190 Georgetown Road
Broad Run, VA 20137
540-347-3475

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"Crush: this one short word signifies the culmination of an entire season of clipping, pruning, and spraying vines. The vineyard harvests the fruit and then the winery starts the months long process of making wine. The winemaker readies his cellar--tanks are cleaned, hoses sanitized, machinery repaired, and costly wine barrels purchased. Out in the vineyard, the grower still worry whether hurricanes, birds, deer, frost, or fungus will decimate his crop before he can gather in the harvest. Yet this year in Virginia, most growers have had little to worry about--except for tropical depression Tammy, the weather has been dry and the fruit, for the most part, pristine.

On a warm sunny day at Pearmund Cellars, an experienced Mexican farm labor contractor named "Jesus" and his crew of migrant workers descend on the Meriwether Vineyard. The men climb under the grape canopies and in only a few hours clip off 12 tons of fruit. Then Chris's cellar and vineyard workers walk behind a farm tractor and trailer loading heavy harvest lugs and haul the fruit to the winery. On this day I have come to help Chris, his minions, his friends, and his volunteers load grapes into the crusher destemmer and wine press. Like bees in a hive we swarm about the winery washing harvest lugs, connecting hoses to tanks, and operating pumps. Whenever one of us drives the forklift Chris admonishes us: Don't knock down the wall! Don't rip out the rafters in the ceiling!

For the next few weeks, growers from across the state show up at the winery. First come the early ripening white grapes, then come red grapes from the more southerly areas of Virginia--and finally those red grapes that were grown in the northern part of the state. Cindy, who is starting up Potomac Vineyards, is on hand to learn how to operate her soon-to-open winery. She watches as Chris sprinkles yeast over a bin of cabernet franc grapes-this is done ever so slowly so the yeast do not die as they are set adrift in chilly 55 degree juice. They have just taken a 104 degree bath where they where brought back to life after being freeze dried somewhere in France. Inside the barrel room, Rick is wearing short pants and waterproof sandals as he climbs over barrels and inoculates them with bacteria to start the malo-lactic fermentation. Chris, Lisa, and Nilou's children drag themselves across the vineyard carrying heavy schoolbooks-they complain that their busy parents forgot to pick them from the bus stop at the edge of the winery. Brian is measuring the amount of residual sugar in some young Riesling wine. Two bemused dogs sit in front of the winery and wonder what do humans do.

I have come to work at Pearmund Cellars this season for a few days to help sort out some confusion. I worked the harvest in 2003 at another Virginia winery and this year at one in Chile--not as a winemaker but as a vineyard worker, cellar rat, and mainly as an observing journalist. Agriculture I understand because I have my own tiny vineyard, but making wine is still something of a mystery. At my house I have made two batches of undrinkable, foul smelling wine so I have come to Chris for help. I am pleased today because 10 gallons of rosé wine I am making are fermenting nicely because Chris showed me how to feed the yeast nitrogen and vitamins so they would not die in the harsh environment of alcohol and grape acidity."

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