TONIGHT, Friday, JUne20th, 2014 From 5-8PM Come Taste & Meet Owner/Winemaker Gabrielle Rausse Of His Own GABRIELLE RAUSSE Winery In Charlottesville, VA. Here @ Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits 3423 Conn. Ave. N.W. Washington D.C., 20008, Tel : 202-363-4265 Free Tasting, Never Any Charge!

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4 hours ago

Join us tonight with Gabrielle Rausse one of the first pioneers in the Virginia wine business here , started all the way back in April 1976, knows the Virginia wine business inside and out and is the nicest, gentlest owner and winemaker you will meet. Always a pleasure to have Gabrielle here with us, originally from Friuli, Italy we will sample his FABulous dry red Refosco tonight as well as other treats from him. Join us, no charge, bring your friends, enjoy a one-on-one with Virginia that you rarely if ever get. Anthony ( TONY ) Quinn 6/20/2014

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  4 hours ago · Like

It was a tremendous inspiration and an honor to have Gabrielle back in the store last might. Krista came with him and she helped him pour his wines. Gabrielle's  ' big news '  is that  they are building a tasting room so that people may come and taste his excellent wines that are so refined, so polished, so subtle and silky that this may be lost on most or many palates today that are used to being ' hit over the head ' ( senseless?!? ) by heavily-extracted wines that somehow, in my humble opinion, loss track of the grape and the fruit of the grape that the wines started with.

I have a strong feeling that many of Gabrielle's wines may be enjoyed over a period of time once open, and that they also will not give anyone  a headache as they are completely natural with little intervention from him.

Gabrielle learned many things from his father that still lives I believe in the Veneto region of  Italy from where he is from? These lessons of his father's he has incorporated since he started making wines in 1978-79 was it Gabrielle? I know that you helped start Barboursville Winery with the Zonin family back then? You mentioned this last night during our tasting towards the end as Ze and Erica, Michael, Fernando, Kristin and I all listened to you with rapt attention as you had so much to share about the start of Virginia's wine-making so many years ago. Loved all the early references to tobacco-growing there and the initial resistance you found from Virginia to even plant grapes and start making wine there with the financing of Italy's Zonin family. 

It was interesting to hear that you sold Mr. Zonin that even if you did not make and sell Virginia wine at first that you both could at least graft vines and sell various grape varieties through a nursery there in Charlottesville, VA. around the country ; and that's exactly what you did to begin. Fascinating.

We also loved hearing your story about when you arrived in 1976 being invited by faculty and students at the University of Virginia to try the one and the only wine being made then in Virginia ( now there are over 200 wineries )  and your impressions of the wine that you tasted. Sounds like we are lucky that you arrived here in Virginia and that you have helped forge the way for so many other wineries here and that your wines still stand as a great example and reference/ benchmark of elegance and fine wine that Virginia can actually produce to show the world what it can offer.

I loved hearing all your stories, too about Monticello and Thomas Jefferson's home there and gardens and now vineyards that you have been planting and making small amounts of wine to be sold there at their gift shop ( quickly, too from what you said , they do not stay on the shelves there very long as people are eager and anxious to buy , enjoy and share them with family and friends ). 

I enjoyed hearing , and I smiled broadly when you mentioned that you still work in the gardens seven days a week. Bravo to you. We will have to drive down and ask you to give us a tour sometime?

It was a treat also to listen to Krista that has been writing a book on agriculture in Virginia during Thomas Jefferson's lifetime talk about her research in both Virginia and England and how many people depended and read carefully what Thomas Jefferson wrote about it in Virginia and the United States ( in South Carolina I believe Kristin said as well as in the Caribbean islands, too ). I will have to get a copy of it when it is finally published this year. She's been working on it now for at least two or more years as I have been hearing about it when she visits the store with Gabrielle.

There is so much that Gabrielle said last night, so much he says on every visit when he tastes with us. I love hearing all of it. I will write more but have to get to work now to sell more of his excellent wines. I will finish this this weekend when back at home.

The stories that Gabrielle shared are his and so I will just mention some of the topics briefly here as they are really Gabrielle's and his to share. I do not want to steal his thunder, a ' gentle ' thunder that reached near and far and is striking and enlightening, shocking, revealing and reaffirm many of the things I have been thinking and saying now for years.

I will also include many pictures from last night that we / I took with Fernando's phone ( gracias Fernando ), as there were many fun people and moments to record from the tasting.

At the end I did some ' quick pen ' portraits of both Gabrielle and Krista that I gave to them as my ' thank you ' for their time, their energy, their enthusiasm, their passion, and their fine wine that we are able to taste and share with you all. Cheers and stay-tuned for much more, Anthony ( TONY ) Quinn  Saturday, June 21st, 2014   Krista was delighted to find the Pommeau from Calvados here that is made from apples in France and that she has been searching for now for many years. I told her with a smile on my face that we have had it all along, ever since here first visit here almost ten years ago in 2007 was it? All she had to do was ask me then ... oh well, she has some now from the DUPONT Famille ... pas mal mon amie ... sante, grazie Gabrielle e Kristin ...   TONY