Collegiate Times

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Hidden an hour outside of Blacksburg in nearby Floyd is Chateau Morrisette. After taking a left down the narrow Winery Road off of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the winery appears out of the green foliage and hillsides that surround it. Like stumbling upon a giant surveying its domain, the 32,365 square foot winery sits amongst the quiet mountains and hills of Appalachia, casually producing around 80,000 cases of wine annually and maintaining a restaurant on the other side of its parking lot. The European villa look of the winery is colored with tan walls and a darker, brown roof and supported by a timber frame.

"We're believed to be the largest salvaged timber frame in the United States," said Nora Kuper, vice president for marketing for Chateau Morrisette. "It's all made from Douglas fir, some of the wood came from the St. Lawrence Seaway and some came from an old warehouse in Seattle, Washington."

I meet Kuper while passing through the entrance of the winery. She is standing at a booth made of the winery's wine boxes; above her is a large black chandelier, which is complimented by arches of finely polished wood and white walls.

Today is the winery's open house, and everything looks particularly elegant and neat. Bottles, food, books, merchandise and people are everywhere. Further inside the complex, past the foyer, is a stone fireplace and large wooden bar where the wine tasting of some of the 26 varieties of wine made by the winery, not including the Hokie Bird wines from which part of its fame stems, is offered at the end of each of the multiple tours happening today. I notice that most of the lights on the wall have an upside-down, shield-looking plate with an "M" in its center.

When I arrive it is dangerously close to 2 p.m., the time of my tour, and I am instructed by Kuper to stay in the foyer and wait for my tour guide.

My tour guide is Dick Chandler. He wears glasses, green pants and a beige shirt. A white, well-trimmed goatee sits on his face and a black apron with the winery's name embroidered in red hangs around his neck. He meets us in the front room of the winery and, after giving a speech that is a combination of information about the wines and history of the establishment, leads us to the crushing pad.

If one is facing the building, the crushing pad looks out over the hills and trees on the left side of the complex. It is an outside, square, gray platform covered by the brown roof of the building, and it sort of resembles a patio with a high ceiling. Several large bins, which during the mid-August to mid-October harvest season are sure to be full of grapes, are on their sides and stacked against the wall to make room for the crowd. In the distance, the section on top of an adjacent hill has been cleared. This clearing, Chandler informs the group, is a 25-acre plot of land that contains five different types of grapes. Though this is a source of grapes for the winery, it is far from its only one.

"We have 15 growers all over the state of Virginia growing grapes for us," Chandler said. "70 percent of them grow just for us. They're really spread out. We have one of them way up near in Loudon County."

There are two large metal machines standing across from each other on the pad.

One is the destemmer and the other is a crusher. They are named Ethel and Lucy, respectively. Both have metal frames that give a rigid outline to the behemoth machines. The destemmer has a visible cylinder with holes in it, while the top of the crusher looks like a giant bin with the curve of the inside of a conch.

During the harvest time, this is the first stop for the grapes after they have been collected.

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