Wine Dogs To Attend Another Opening, Another Show

Big wine happenings in the Blue Ridge over the Memorial Day holiday, and Munchkin and Pomeroy will be on the scene to check it out.

Barrel Oak Winery opens its tasting room this weekend, and they're pulling out all the stops with everything from live music to Full Moon Alpacas. You just know a winery whose slogan is BOW-WOW has to be pretty doggone friendly. The Wine Dogs can vouch. We met owners Sharon and Brian Roeder at Fox Meadow last year and they told of us their plans to open a new winery just off I-66. We've enjoyed watching it go up, and we can't wait to meet their trusted but loopy golden retriever, Barley, and new fluffy retriever pup, Justice, on Saturday. Look for baby pics!

Not quite new, but with a considerable facelift is the winery formerly known as Stillhouse. It reopens on Saturday as the Philip Carter Winery of Virginia. Celebration includes music, pony rides, a fencing tourney, and VIP vistors including Thomas Jefferson, Charles Carter (perhaps Virginia's first winemaker), and yours truly. This is a winery heavy with hsitoric overtones... Carter is an ancestor of new owner Philip Carter Strother.

Munchkin and Pomeroy met Philip and his wife Danielle and their wine dog Fairfax (as in Lord) last month when we dropped by to inspect the progress on the tasting room and can be seen here supervising Danielle's clean-up efforts. We left Fairfax in charge.