San Sebastian Winery

After you make it inside and into the shop and tasting area you are greeted by a very friendly and helpful staff. Now, seeing as how I had never been to this winery before I wasn't entirely sure how things worked there (like if you had to pay for the tasting or not). But after a few quick words with the staff behind the counter I was promptly informed that it was all free, you just had to go through the tour first.

This of course was not a problem at all for me, I always love taking tours of vineyards and wineries and seeing how they all work. I was told were the tours met and that the helpful man I was talking too, whose name was Gerald, would be the guide for the next tour.

The tour started out simply enough with a small gathering of people and a few questions here and there, but soon became something quite interesting. After we had all gathered we made our way to the second floor were we went into a small room of what looked like old church pews. Once situated we where told that we would be watching a short movie which would take care of most of the learning portion of the tour. Now, I must say that this is something I haven't come across yet on a tour but was something that I must say was quite interesting. The short film was basically a 10 minute PR campaign but did give a lot of great information on who, what, when, why and how of the making of the San Sebastian Winery (and its sister vineyard of Lakeridge). My favourite part of it was definitely the bit about the Muscadine grape, of which a good portion of their wines are made of. Now from my previous article on Virginian wines you know I love the American varietals, especially Norton, so I was quite interested learning a bit more about this varietal.

After the video our guide Gerald collected us all, after a few more questions of course, and took us into the actual winery portion of the building. We came out on a bridge that went over the floor area of the winery, were we where told of the wineries 6 main and 3 small fermenters and a few more specifics on how they made their sparkling wine on site. The tour then continued into the barrel room, which I must say made me very happy as I always do love being around all those barrels of glorious wine. Here we learned that they used American white oak barrels and also used former whiskey barrels to age their fine Port. After a short range of questions from various tour members we then made our way back down to the shop and tasting room, via another bridge over the bottling area.

This brings me to the best part of the whole tour, the tasting. This was another interesting part of the whole experience there at San Sebastian, most tastings I've been to it's an every man for himself affair where you move from one wine to another with no real contact with others. Here the tasting was a learning experience with your entire tour group, you all shared the experience and learned about their wines together.

This was quite enjoyable, especially when you added into that all the great stories and suggestions that our guide gave us through out the whole thing. My personal favourite bit of advice was to replace the water in a brownie mix with their vintners red wine, I haven't had a chance to try it yet myself but man do I plan to. Besides that wonderful bit of gluttony advice, the group as a whole was led through the tasting of each wine together with the 5 S's of tasting (being see, smell, swirl, sip and of course savour). This made for a time with actually learning and loving wine together with a large group of people I had never met before that day, but all of whom shared that most essential and wonderful love of the grape.

All of this came together for me to make for an absolutely amazing day out with my father, and an amazing new favourite winery for me to visit. Though relatively new itself, the winery is situated in a great historic building in the oldest city in America and has an atmosphere like no other I've been to yet. Beside the old and classic feel to the place they you get the modern feel of an urban winery and of course the unique (at least in my experience) winery video. You also are greeted by helpful and friendly staff who have a lot of good advice and stories they are completely ready and willing to share with every one. And of course, most importantly for any winery or vineyard, the wines they produce there are absolutely wonderful and worth a try for anyone who isn't afraid to try some new and interesting wines (and don't worry I'll be doing some reviews on these wines soon so you have a bit of an idea of what to expect). So, my advice to you is that if you ever find yourself in St. Augustine to just head a few blocks west of the historic district and treat yourself to a good time with some great wines and equally as wonderful people.