INSIDER'S PICK: 2016 'R' WINES HEIRLOOM RED MONTICELLO/ 2016 'R' WINES GRAND VIN MONTICELLO $33.99

At a time like this, it's pretty much impossible to be 'normal'. But it is important to try and keep what you can as close to normal as you can while you can. Even though we will not be doing the public tasting portion of the Insider's Pick until further notice, we will still be offering the wine for purchase with the usual 10% discount on Thursday and Friday. The wines will still be ones we highly recommend, and the tasting notes will still be our own. We hope you are able to come by and get some wines to enjoy.

For our anniversary, not only do we enjoy celebrating our long time relationships with our customers but with our friends in the industry as well. We've known Riaan Rossouw, aka 'The Mind Behind', since his first days in Virginia wines before taking over winemaking duties at Lovingston Winery. Always thoughtful, intelligent, and a man we could talk to for hours on end, he has made the wines at Lovingston subtle and understated, sneaky excellent, but without a lot of bombast and fanfare. His R label is a yearly private project where he truly gets to create with all restrictions taken off, single barrel experiments of theories and flights of fancies with an emphasis on pushing the context of what Virginia wines are and can be. In his words, "authentic, original expressive handmade wines true to the Monticello appellation, the style vibrates; more of a Warhol, Huxley, Bo Diddly, Chet Baker, Vaughn Monroe, Boney M frequency I think!' Simple enough, don't you agree? For his last release he produced two wines from the 2016 vintage, the assemblage for each based on the ph of each lot instead of grape variety to help achieve a desired texture and feel to the wine. Another fun fact; he's not telling us what grapes are in each wine, though we have our guesses. Grand Vin is a single variety built with a French influence, while Heirloom is a multi-varietal blend with an Italian influence. Both wines are made using native yeast strains, minimal intervention, and no SO2 used at bottling. Both wines are $33.99, and you are of course welcome to buy one or the other for the Insider's Pick discount. The fun idea we wanted to promote is for customers to get one of each and take the opportunity to try them side by side, explore the concepts Riaan set forth for us.

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