Visiting Chateau Morrisette
From the Early Spring 2004 Issue
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Chateau Morrisette is a study in delightful contrasts. Its two massive buildings belie the great attention to detail going on inside them, with the result being both sumptuous food and exquisite wines. And the friendliness that is pervasive everywhere you go on the property is not necessarily something you’d expect from one the largest employers in Floyd County. Nor do the winery’s big silver tanks and its European bottling machine match up automatically with the friendly Black Labrador retriever who gleefully romps the property. The one ingredient that ties all those ostensible contradictions together is summed in just one word – family. The Morrisettes have extended the closeness of their own to all who work and visit their enterprise.
The winery, near Floyd, Va., and just off the Blue Ridge Parkway at milepost 171.5, is housed in two large buildings that, even given their size, belie all that goes on inside.
Chateau Morrisette’s new winery building is the largest salvaged-timber building in the United States.
As architecturally distinguished and imposing as they are when you come upon them, the two buildings that house Chateau Morrisette’s winery, restaurant and offices don’t really give a hint of all that’s to be seen, tasted and experienced inside.
The newer of those buildings – completed in 1999 – is the largest salvaged-timber building in the country. And the timber, from structures in Seattle and Canada, some of which dates back to the 1300s, is held together for the most part by wooden pegs, the construction technique of the 1400s and 1500s. At the other end of the technology spectrum, the building, sited on a quake fault, is built to withstand an earth tremor and winds of up to 100 miles per hour. Part of the tour of the winery is a visit with a booklet of photographs tracing both the history of the wood and its transformation to the structure that looms above and around you.
Wine-maker Bob Burgin says of Chateau Morrisette’s new reds: “Most are still in barrels [as of last fall], getting a last kiss of oak prior to their scheduled bottling.”
The building is emblematic of the kind of attention to detail that serves a wine-maker well, and the pattern extends to all aspects of the 85-employee operation run by proprietor David Morrisette, son of the founders William and Nancy Morrisette. Temperatures are carefully controlled, oak barrels used only for a specific lifetime, grapes harvested only at the precise time the land proclaims them ready. The subtleties of wine, you realize as you walk with Morrisette, are a direct result of the care given to every phase of its creation, to every moment of its existence prior to our pulling of a cork.
“Chateau Morrisette is really a hobby gotten out of hand,” is Morrisette’s characterization of the business, which includes the winery, retail sales, tours and concerts, the vineyard, and the restaurant.
That “out of hand” now takes the form of 15 wine varieties and a projected 150,000 gallons during 2004. It takes the form of 40 acres of vineyard and lease agreements with 18 other Virginia wineries, for a total of about 250 acres under cultivation by Chateau Morrisette.
“You want to be protected,” says Morrisette of the multiple tracts, which are in places as diverse as Virginia’s Eastern Shore, Charlottesville and Harrisonburg.
Chateau Morrisette's gourmet restaurant, housed in the winery's original building, offers fare from seafood and steaks to duck and lamb dishes.
The product of that part of the enterprise eventually ends up at Chateau Morrisette, in mammoth stainless-steel vats labeled with detailed status information about what’s inside, or in wooden barrels from four different French forests (each imparting a different set of flavors to its contents). The next step for the one-time grapes is in the direction of an Italian bottling machine that has supplanted the labor-intensive hand work of years past.
Chateau Morrisette has its roots in the mid-1970s, when David’s parents began planting grape vines at a nearby site along the Blue Ridge Parkway. They made their first wine in 1979, and soon David was off to wine-making school to begin assuming a larger role in the family business. As things progressed, it became obvious that a new location would be needed.
“No one could find us,” David says. “The driveway was a two-minute drive.”
Serendipity took the form of a huge house built nearby by a Florida couple who ended up living in it only one year. It became the winery and restaurant until the completion of the new building, which rendered it the restaurant and offices that it is today.
Oak barrels come from both French and American forests, with each wood imparting
a distinct flavor to the wine inside.
The restaurant is distinctly gourmet, with an emphasis on fresh, free-range meats and poultry, organically grown local vegetables, fresh bread, and distinctive desserts, in a dining room that has hints of the same scale as the rest of the property.
Chateau Morrisette’s new winery building is the largest salvaged-timber building in the United States.
history of the wood and its transformation to the structure that looms above and around you.
Serendipity took the form of a huge house built nearby by a Florida couple who ended up living in it only one year. It became the winery and restaurant until the completion of the new building, which rendered it the restaurant and offices that it is today.
