Sperryville is a truly astounding place!

While I knew it was a gateway to the Shenandoah National Park as well as a picturesque little Virginia town, and I should have known it had so many wineries in the vicinity, my extracurricular activities after today’s hike took me to Copper Fox distillery and Mt. Vernon farm.

At the Copper Fox, they make Wasmunds’s single malt and Copper Fox rye whiskey. Their equipment is a cross between your grandfather’s science project and a hillbilly still. They keep referring tongue in cheek on the tour to their ‘state of the art’ equipment but really, what does it matter? Make the mash, heat it up, catch the condensate, and age it. And add art to the process. This place is great.  Some Virginia law prohibits them doing tastings, so they do ‘nosings’. They apparently are on the menu in lots of upscale downtown restaurants. And it’s right here in Sperryville. http://www.copperfox.biz/

Around the next corner, I was drawn down a gravel road to Mt. Vernon farm, advertising grass fed meats and some other organic items. It was not a waste of time. The store is one room in an outbuilding with a couple of freezers for the meat and some shelves for jams and eggs (when they have them). The young lady who owns the farm with her husband is also the photo editor for Flavor, a regional food magazine which, again, is based out of Sperryville. Her husband used to be a chef at the Inn at Little Washington. I picked up a couple of steaks, a dozen free range eggs, and a jar of blackberry jam.

http://www.mountvernonfarm.net/index.html

http://flavormagazinevirginia.com/

The title makes me think of ‘a beer and a bump’, from Lake Wobegone. Down at the Side Track Tap with the Norwegian bachelor farmers. Garrison Keillor was better back in the day.

Driving out to Sperryville for my second training hike I noticed there were a lot of wineries on the way. Wineries that in the 30 or so years of living in Virginia I’ve never visited. So why not combine a long hike with a visit to a different one of them each time on the way home?

The first one was the closest one to Old Rag, namely, Sharp Rock vinyard. They have a B&B too. These are not fancy places like the ones we’d visit growing up in California. I didn’t expect the wine to even be very good. But the fact it was local made it interesting and worth supporting.

After about 15 miles up Old Rag Mountain, down Berry Hollow, part way up White Oak Canyon and then back to the car on a day in the upper 80s, I traded boots for flip flops, put on a clean shirt, and drove over to Sharp Rock. The tasting room was on the second floor of what seemed to have been an old barn, with worn wooden floors, and just the kind of feeling you would hope for. I did the sampling and settled on a bottle of surprisingly good dry rose, reminiscent of the Loire valley ones, good for chilling and drinking with a relaxed weekend meal with relaxed weekend friends. I also bought a bottle of Chamois Rouge (much better than the “Old Rag Red”) which was enjoyable as long as you kept the perspective of where it came from and why you bought it.

Score one for a hike and a winery.