winery review: cooper’s hawk winery;
This is part two of the Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Restaurant review, focusing on the winery! Read part one here. There was just too much to throw into one post so I wanted to separate out the two to do them each justice. When you first walk into the Ashburn, VA location, you walk into the winery. There’s some cute novelty wine items in the front, including some entertaining wine pourers featuring a variety of animals, and also some zombies. All of the stoppers pour from the subjects mouths are are quite festive. They use their pourers at the bar, which is good retail! Also an important note is that these wines are not made locally in VA. Apparently they are bottled in Illinois, which means that they probably acquire grapes from across the country.
There’s also shelves and shelves of wine, as far as the eye can see! I didn’t get a close up picture of a specific label, but it’s similar to this logo that’s printed on the ceiling. I really love their logo design. It’s a single feather design, though sometimes the color changes depending on the wine. We did a tasting, which was only $7 for eight wines. They have several tastings to choose from: a seasonal one (called September), a sweet wine one, and a fancy wine one. We went with the September which had one sparkling white wine, three whites, three reds, and a sparkling raspberry wine to finish it off.
The tasting was good–the most memorable were actually the reds for me. Notably the barbera, an Italian red with a significant spicy tone, and the lux Cabernet Sauvignon which was a nice blend of earthy and fruitiness. I was curious to compare the Cooper’s Hawk raspberry wine to the raspberry wine served at the Renaissance fair (read about it in my post here). Comparatively it actually seemed more raspberry whereas the Renaissance fair one was more of a sweet tinged with raspberry. I will be interested to go back to Cooper’s Hawk and try the non-sparkling raspberry since I feel like it was too bubbly and that actually impeded drinking. They also have other fruit wines including blueberry, passion fruit, and cranberry, so I might have to take my sister there when she visits for the Bloomsburg Fair at the end of the month!
Also of importance: they have a case of chocolates in the winery area for pairings! There’s actually a wine and truffle flight as a dessert on their Restaraunt menu, which I would have loved to try, but didn’t have room in the stomach unfortunately. The truffles are huge for truffles, and reasonably priced for their size. I think most were between $2-$4, but were nearly twice the size of what I think of when I say truffle. I got the Zinfandel truffle (were at a winery after all), and my friend N grabbed a caramel apple truffle. Both were amazing and big enough to trade bites which is not typical of truffles. Mine was delicious, but I honestly couldn’t tell there was wine in it. N’s was amazing and caramel-y for sure, but surprisingly didn’t have an apple inside. With the stick popping out like a caramel apple, we were both surprised it was straight chocolate.
Overall, for a winery, a solid 4 out of 5 chips (read: stars). A chip knocked off because it’s on the commercial side and not a local Virginia winery, but the experience was fun and I’m definitely looking forward to going again!
Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Restaurant
Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurant Website
19870 Belmont Chase Drive
Ashburn, VA 20147
