Vineyards of Swan Creek Area: Part 1

There are officially five vineyards along the Swan Creek Wine Trail located within the Yadkin Valley area. The groups website is really nice and they recommend particular routes for visiting all the locations depending on the direction you are coming from. We selected a different order for our purposes as we were traveling through the area to another destination.

Swan Creek is the second official AVA or American Viticultural Area in NC (Yadkin Valley was the first). An AVA is a federally-recognized growing region based on geographic locations that have the same climate, soil, and elevation and similar properties that give the wine certain characteristics.  Napa Valley is an AVA so think of Yadkin Valley and Swan Creek  in similar terms of how you know Napa Valley wines tend to have similar characteristics based on the growing environment.

Our first stop was Shadow Springs in Hamptonville, NC. This place has a massive tasting room that looks brand new. You can taste seven wines for $5 or fourteen for $9. We opted for the choice of seven considering the number of vineyards we intended to visit during this one day adventure. But as always we did not necessarily pick the same seven wines and shared tastes when we had different selections in hand. Between the two of us we tasted the following wines:

• Chardonnay (oak) – crisp, minor oak flavor
• Viognier – mineral, bright, fruit of peach and apricot, good wine
• Cabernet Franc – medium body, pleasant tartness, very nice
• Cabernet Sauvignon – mild, light tannin, did not pick up on the black olive, very nice
• Merlot – fruity, just okay
• Meritage (Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot) - nice bold wine, very Bordeaux like
• Crimson Sunset (Merlot, Cabernet Franc) – light, fruity, okay
• Shortcake – Strawberry wine, light, very good
• Dark Shadow (Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Seyval Blanc, Dark Chocolate) – chocolate cherry, too much like a port wine

Shadow Springs

Next we visited Buck Shoals also in Hamptonville, which has a nice little log cabin style tasting room. The tasting fee was only $4 and it covered all ten of their standard offerings. One very unusual offering at this winery is that they make mead and brandy blends, yes; they are a legal distillery as well as winery. Beware of tasting such strong offerings especially since they are all very pleasing. We did purchase two of them and consider them to be rare occasion dessert sips.

• Viognier – very nicely balanced, not tart
• Chardonnay (oak) – a little on tart side
• Buck Shot Red (Sangiovese, Barbera, Cabernet Sauvignon) – decent body, very nice
• Family Reserve (Petit Verdot, Cabernet Sauvignon) – very nice blend, excellent mouth feel
• Chambourcin – very mild, not as clovey as others
• La Gloria (Traminette Brandy, White Grape Juice) – very nice, very unique
• Shoals Creek Blue – pure blueberry mead, very sweet/tart, very pleasant
• Blackberry Cobbler – blackberry mead, strong but good, like eating blackberry cobbler
• Midnight Royal (Chambourcin, Petit Verdot) – fortified with their brandy, very port like, heavy mouth feel
• Cherry Smash (Red Wine, Cherry Juices) – very sweet/tart, like cherry pie

Buck Shoals

Stayed tuned for Part 2 where we cover the last three vineyards in this AVA.