Winery Visit - Attimo Winery

On Saturday February 22nd, 2013, I went to visit the Attimo Winery with a small group of friends. We only went to do a tour and did not participate in a tasting, but we learned a lot about how the grapes were grown, processed and even bottled. Attimo Winery is located off of Childress Road in Christiansburg, VA, about 30 minutes from Virginia Tech. Attimo was founded 8 years ago, but have only been open to the public for 3 years. They have 17 acres of land with 15,000 vines on the property. The winery also leases 15,000 vines. The only grapes that are not grown at Attimo are Merlots, Zinfandels, and Apples. The winery considers themselves to be about 95% organic because they usually are all organic but have to use normal sprays when necessary. Overall, the winery produces 50-60 tons of grapes per year and are all picked by hand. This amounts to 4500/5500 cases per year. 


Our tour guides name was Rik Obeso and is the owner and founder of the winery. He travels around the world and is rarely in the states during this time since the quiet time for the vineyard is December, January and February, but takes his wine to several wine competitions around the world, which he does very well in. He chose this location in Virginia because of the lack of rain that this particular area in Montgomery County gets per year, which is very good for growing grapes. This location is in a double rain shadow it only receives 16-18 inches of rain per year, which is very similar to the amount that Napa gets in California. Rik explained that the worst part of this region is the frost.

Rik is talking to us about the Vidal Blanc vines that have just been pruned. They try and keep about three buds on each of the vines in order to have a starting point for the grapes for the next season.

The Vidal Blanc vines (above) is twisted with a graft, which is below the soil that is meant to help resist worms and avoid diseases to the grapes. Once the vines have grown and there are a bunch of grapes and leave on them, Rik had said that you would not even be able to hear someone else if they were standing only three rows away due to the thickness and amount of the leaves.

These barrels are filled with wine of different varieties.

Once we left the vines in the vineyard, we went to a building that had barrels that were filled with different wines. Every tank or barrel is labeled with the pH, which is on the blue painters tape, and also the sugar in fermentation. Some of the different pH values include 2.9-3.1 for Riesling and 3.1-3.3 for Whites. Citric acid is added back into wine if there is a lower pH.






Bottling times for whites and reds is different as well. For whites, the grapes are crushed and then pressed. Bottling then occurs in April, so the wine is in the barrels from September to April. For red wines, the grapes are crushed, then they are fermented and use dry ice to cool it. The wine is then bottled in July so the grapes are in the barrels from September to July. To give the wine a more "oaky" flavor, they force oak into the barrels by putting oak chips and shavings in panty hose. This allows them to use the barrels as long as possible, which is about 3-4 years. After that they must get new ones which are about $1300. Rik makes furniture or other things that he can sell out of the oak barrels in order to get some of his money back from buying new barrels. They use American, French and Hungarian oak. They also have plastic containers to hold wine that are cheaper, leave a lower carbon footprint and last about 10-12 years. This is similar to stainless steel but age the wine like a barrel does. Rik explained how they had to follow a cycle because of the Virginia Winery Distribution Company. There are three tiers that have to go in order from manufacturing to the distributor and then to the retailer. It must go in this order instead of just having the winery sell straight to the retailers.

Rik talking to us about the barrels.

Attimo Winery with a lovely sunset.

These are some of the awards that the wine has gotten.

Overall this was a great experience and our tour guide was incredible. My favorite part was actually being in the vineyard and looking at the vines. I think that it would be really neat to stand in the vineyard in about six months to see how much of a difference it is with nothing on the vines to having them full of grapes and leave. It is very interesting learning about how each winery produces their wines because it is a little different at each place. I would recommend going to get a tour and am excited to go back and taste some of their wines.