My friends and I took the opportunity to visit 'Chateau Elan', a small winery about an hour away from Altanta on the 8th of March over spring break to learn about their process of making and bottling (and taste) wines.
We arrived a little early, so we window shopped their wine collection, and I was genuinely surprised to note that they had a huge variety of wines despite being a winery on the smaller side. They ranged over a wide price range, from around $70 ports to flavored wines of just $15 a bottle.
The tour began outside the winery where we could see the grape vines (all Muscadine at this particular winery). Unfortunately, since the grapes are currently in season, all we got to see was the 'dried' vines on their supports. While we were out the winery tour guide told us about how this winery was a passion project started by the owners, and initially they had more varieties of grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir, but since they are not local to the environment, they didn't produce the best wines. In 2012, they hired a winemaker from Italy, and they started growing good Muscadine grapes and use grapes imported from California to create their other blends.
We then went into the building where we could see all the machinery and tools used to process the wine. All the grapes are passed through a de-stemmer initially to get rid of all the actual vine and leaves. This is then passed through a press that juices the grapes and removes their skins for white wine (this is skipped for red wines).
The crushed grapes are then placed in huge steel drums with yeast to convert the residual sugar from the grapes into alcohol. It was interesting to note that the amount of alcohol and sweetness of the wine does not depend on the amount of sugar the wine starts with, but can be controlled by the winemaker. After this process, most white wines except for the chardonnay are done. The chardonnay and the red wines they make are aged in French oak barrels that have a tighter body so that their fruitiness is retained (as opposed to American barrels). The time before ageing is totally up to the blend, harvest and the winemakers preference and they don't have a set schedule for when they are done. The wines are then bottled and sold.
Once we were done with the tour, we were brought to the tasting room where we tried 5 of their wines. The tour guide ran us through the general swirl, smell and sip steps for each wine and we got to write down our observations while enjoying the wine (and conversation with the tour guide who knew about this class!).
The first wine we tried was the Sauvignon Blanc Reserve that goes for $27 a bottle. It was a transparent wine with a slight yellow tinge, that had a distinct grassy and green apple scent. It had a good balance between dry and sweet, and I could pick up apple and citrus notes in the taste, and I genuinely liked this wine (and it was my personal favorite in this tasting). If this was in my price range, I definitely would have bought myself a bottle or two!
The second wine we tried was the Cherokee White wine (2021 vintage) which was a blended wine that contained Moscato, Viognier and Chardonnay grapes. This wine was also a light yellow color and had a very distinct smell that was almost wheaty (like those digestive biscuits) or woody. We were told that this wine owes its distinct taste to the muscadine grape, and if we hadn't tried it before, it would be pretty novel, and I found this to be true. The taste matched the smell and had a very woody/varnish taste (and almost felt like I was sitting in a new car - not in a bad way!). While the wine on its own wasn't bad, it was definitely my least favorite from the ones we tried, and I doubt I would drink it again if given the choice.
The next wine was a Pinot Noir (2021), which was a lighter red in color with barely any legs. It was quite berry like and plummy, and the instant I smelt it, I wished I had a plate of spaghetti with a marinara sauce to go with it! It had a stronger alcohol taste, was dry and a little sour but so wonderfully balanced. The berry taste was distinct with this one and I can even imagine the taste now as I type out this review because it was quite refreshing!
Following the Pinot, we tried the Bin TT Fingerprint Collection which was a blend of Teroldego and Tannat grapes, and I believe this was the first time I tried either of these two grapes! This was a deeper red, and was heavier bodied than the rest of the wines. It was on the drier side. At this point, all the alcohol I had consumed made it so that I was unable to make any tasting observations other than a dark red plummy berry, so I didn't finish this glass of wine since I wanted to be able to enjoy the lest wine too.
The last wine for the day was the Muscadine wine in the peach flavor, which is incredibly fitting for our visit to Georgia! The peach flavoring was added artificially after the fermentation process, and this was a super sweet dessert wine. I loved this wine too and was definitely a second favorite in this tasting! I even bought a bottle for myself to enjoy later with friends.
This concluded our visit to the winery, and I genuinely had a great time! The tour guide made great conversation with us throughout about how he got into wine too. I will admit I was a little worried that I would feel out of place among all the more serious wine drinkers initially but that was not the case at all! I think that this is an experience any wine drinker would appreciate, and can easily fill an evening with more laid back plans, even though this winery was on the smaller end.
