Chateau Morrisette Winery

It has been around since 1978 bottling wines that are made with at least eighty percent Virginia grown grapes, which by law rates the product as true Virginia wine.


The founder, William Morrisette, started the winery with a few acres of vines and bottled the product for fun and friends who started pestering him to make some to sell.


Then David Morrisette, his son took the first viticulture class at Mississippi State and started down the path that has led the winery to become Virginia's oldest and largest, producing 60,000 cases a year, of 19 different wines.


After 20 years in California, with all the wine snobbery inherent in West Coast wine making, I was fascinated to see this massive and very successful winery tucked off the Blue Ridge Parkway at Mile 172. I had never previously seen a crushing operation integrated into the main building and operated as a public spectacle:


I love that idea of having a wine based picnic while watching actual winery operations. I want to go back in September.


Mike was our animated and cheerful guide on the brief tour, showing us the vast fermentation vats cooling the bubbling wines, and rows of oak barrels awaiting their next load.


The winery, all 32,000 square feet of it, is built from salvaged timber found in Washington State. We tasted a dozen of the wines on offer, and though they do produce a couple of gruesomely sweet Mogen David type wines the bulk of the production we found to be sophisticated and very drinkable.


I am rather tired of heavy dark reds and though there was a very dry earthy Merlot the other blends offered a lighter touch and interesting fruity taste. There was an astonishing variety and I could see a red or a white or the crisp rosé on my table for any occasion. I was quite surprised.


Chateau Morrisette Web Page


The winery is located in rural Floyd County to the west of Roanoke.


It is classic mountain terrain, deep clefts, woods and homes scattered alongside the roads.


I found the people we met to be charming and cheerful as usual, in defiance of all the movie stereotypes of surly inbred country folk fearful of outsiders.


Land is abundant and cheap, winters on the high plateau are harsh I am told, though a one bedroom cabin on three acres with a deck and all modern conveniences a few miles outside Floyd itself, was offered at $78,000. Hmm...


The scenery is pastoral in the extreme though 20 miles away there is a movie theater showing Art films not yet seen in Key West.


The roads wind and twist through forests and fields in some most delightful driving.


Who knew Virginia made wine or looked like this?


This isn't high priced California or Key West and all the better for it!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Old Roanoke

Well, Sandra said, if you want to know Roanoke there are a few old places you need to visit. Aesy's is one such.



The woman who owned it originally Josephine Aesy, had a reputation for being rather strange, even for bar owners back in the day. The headline from a 1978 opinion piece in the Roanoke Times explains all:



A Remembrance of Aesy's That Was. Nowadays there is certainly a fountain machine on the back counter and the menu includes all the usual sorts of greasy spoon delicacies and beer is no longer sold. But fried bologna is!



Sandra the vegetarian opted to opt out but I indulged my alien sensibilities in this most southern of Dixie dishes. It was served like a hamburger, fries optional, and was as delicious as I expected. How do locals eat it? I asked the cheerful waitress sporting a pink Aesy's t-shirt (I want one!). On a bun all the way was the answer. Me too!



The cost of lunch for two was somewhere near ten bucks, an experience I would have been sorry to miss. Then there was the oldest whorehouse in town. I mean strip club, located in this innocuous building soon to be demolished.



Papa Joe's story is too long to be told here but is related in exquisite detail by columnist Dan Casey at the Roanoke Daily News. Check the link for a superb telling of a tale worth reading. A Potted History of Papa Joe's In Roanoke

The Texas Tavern is a strange name fora bizarre hole-in-the-wall eatery in downtown Roanoke.



On approach it's clear this is not your friendly new age kind of
welcoming place. Once inside you will understand that three dollars goes a long way in this place and it is far better spent on nourishing food than parking.



The Texas Tavern is a no frills place, a real old fashioned diner.



Sandra was careful to point out that since 1930 the foot bar has been well worn. She wasn't kidding.



I was surprised to see a security camera's unblinking eye, but also check out the ads. "Affordable Septic" was my favorite as I ordered a delicious greasy spoon lunch.



The prices in 2012 are extraordinary, and you will be surprised to learn the beef is locally raised and lean and the food is of excellent quality.



I had a bowl of chili to start, which was meaty and delicious and thus off Sandra's vegetarian menu.



She had a Denver which is egg and relish and cheese and pickles on a bun.



I had a cheesy Western which adds a delicious slice of hamburger. There are no fries and no options and nothing to substitute. The cook cooks and makes no small talk, nor does he smile. He doesn't give a shit how you're doing today. Lovely!



Fountain drinks can be refilled for thirty cents and dessert comes in a plastic wrapper.



The Texas Tavern is full of signs and warnings and as much silliness to compensate for the the staff being businesslike and stiff.



Here's a t-shirt a burly hairy mountain man might like to complement his pink Crocs.



And -Heavens to Betsy!- here's a cigarette machine.



No smoking inside though.



I'll be back next time I'm in Roanoke!



I needed to resupply my dog food bag so Jeff said we would go visit the "mickenmac" in the neighborhood. Huh? It is the last survivor of a regional supermarket chain that all Roanoke Conchs remember fondly from their childhood.



For the frugal among us, popular and less well known "soda pop" brands are for sale cheap at the machines outside the Mick-Or-Mack.



Why it is called that I have no idea. What looks like a slightly eccentric supermarket to a stranger is a happy memory for the locals. I remember Pantry Pride in Key West. I guess that was when "mickenmac" was in it's heyday. Who knew?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia

The Blue Ridge Parkway is probably best known as a North Carolina phenomenon, but the road actually starts, or ends, in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.


A chunk of it runs close by Roanoke and I took the time to show it to Cheyenne my Labrador sidekick.


I needn't have bothered as she was so exhausted by sightseeing she declined to get out of the car.


I enjoyed looking out across the rolling hills and deep gorges.


At the farms far below.


The road has a 45 mile per hour speed limit but access is free and easy at numerous intersections and commercial traffic is banned from this elongated National Park.


It is quite lovely and well worth the drive, even in Virginia!



Blue Ridge Parkway In Virginia Link

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Goodbye Secret Garden

I first published this essay in March 2008 and I have re-posted it today following publication of today's Key west Citizen advising the Secret garden has in fact been sold to cover the owner's various obligations and will close this afternoon forever.Key West is not a town one can keep a secret in very easily, and by now I would venture a guess that just about everyone and her brother knows there's a profusion of greenery open to public inspection in the very heart of the city.Free School Lane is not such a weird a name for an alley in a city that boasts innumerable little paths and tracks all over town, Nassau, Love, Gruntbone, Poorhouse, to name but a few. Free School Lane has housed this acre of greenery for several decades, alone among lanes and alleys.Plants have been growing, the collection of parrots is extremely loud in their cages, and they are to be moved to 518 Elizabeth street for continued public viewing, while in the old garden the sunlight is still quite dappled on the huge tree trunks and the enormous dinner plates of green leaves for as long as the garden remians undeveloped. Free School Lane lies off Simonton Street, the artery that parallels infamous Duval Street. There are fewer shops on Simonton, and there is more shade. Fewer traffic lights than Duval and much less traffic making it easier to get from Simonton beach to the north to United street to the south if one needs to get across old town in a hurry. Free School Lane is marked on the cement street light post, halfway between Southard and Fleming Streets, which are in turn the major old town arteries leading onto and off Duval Street. And there is ample parking...designated for motorcycles and scooters. The Secret Garden was a desirable commodity a refreshment tucked away and available for those that want to stay within walking distance of the bars of Duval, Key West's other refreshment.What strikes me about places like this is, aside from the care lavished on the plants that I, a failed botanist with a memory like a sieve, could not hope to name, is how much I value these small corners of extravagant exuberance. Living in the Keys I take no space for granted, I cannot allow myself to overlook any object of interest.Not only is there too little land to do that, everything in a market as overpriced as this, is by its very nature transient. A guesthouse next door to the garden, a modest white wood home was for sale in the paper for one point three million dollars on my visit to the garden in March of 2008, when I originally published this essay. Now the garden itself will be gone in a few short hours, closed to the public awaiting it's fate.Each visit was, in addition to refreshment, a small statement of defiance against the forces of change, of "improvement," of destruction in the name of maximum return on investment.

$10, charged on the rather old fashioned "honor system" seemed a small price to pay to wander in peace for a while.