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Bringing the past into the future
Diane and Mike Canney gave their Amish barn builders three missions and set them to work on their 1830-vintage bank barn just north of Purcellville.First, make it structurally sound. Second, keep as much of the old wood and the original structure as possible.
And third, make it suitable for a winery downstairs and a tasting room upstairs.
It worked, and Sunset Hills Winery will welcome Farm Color Tour visitors Oct. 18-19 to one of Loudoun's newest wineries and what may be its grandest barn.
Mike's Horsepower Ranch-racing Mustangs will be there, too. Now that the winery has moved into the lower level of the barn, the race cars have been returned to the Canneys' garage.
They found Sylvan Stoltzfus and his brothers, barn builders and restorers from Paradise, Pa., to do the work. The brothers found a ride down every week – they can use power tools, faxes and the Internet, but their faith does not allow them to drive – and went to work. They salvaged every 130-year-old flooring plank and hauled it back up to Paradise, near Lancaster, where Sylvan's father planed the boards down and then tongue-and-grooved them. Back they came, ready for another century of service.
The original loft ladders remain, and the Canneys and their crew were able to save enough of the original exterior boards to wall in the bathrooms.
A massive rectangular mahogany tasting bar offers 80 linear feet of ordering/tasting space for visitors. The Canneys learned from other Loudoun wine entrepreneurs that most would have built in a bigger tasting room.
They did. The entire upper floor of the barn is the tasting room. And they added 2,500 square feet of decking on the west end of the barn, in two levels looking out over those "sunset hills," and a gazebo by the pond (under construction) is coming soon. The old spring house is nearly restored.
Their goal, said Mike and Diane, was to bring the barn into the modern world, to use modern technology – high speed Internet, flat screen monitors on the walls, radiant heat in the floor and structural insulated panels under the standing seam metal roof.
Under that roof are the original laths, cut and nailed on 130 years ago.
The Canneys have pieced together 45 acres since they moved into their home on Fremont Overlook Lane in 1997, and planted their first 3 acres of chardonnay grapes in 1998.
He sold his Reston company, Intelligence Data Systems, in 2005, Diane retired from government intelligence work, and they went to work to make some first-class wine. They're up to 11 acres in eight varieties of grapes today, and are planting 10 more acres next spring.
The lower level of the barn houses not work horses but seven stainless steel fermenting tanks, a barrel room for 140 oak barrels, a chiller room that will hold 10 tons of grapes at 35 degrees, and the chandelier room – large enough to seat nearly 50 guests for a wine maker's dinner or a wedding rehearsal.
Mike tried his hand at wine making early on and learned quickly there's more to it than following a recipe.
"There's a certain amount of science, of chemistry," Mike said. "You can measure the pH and the titratable acidity and the sugar levels, but there's also an art to it. You have to be able to do both sides to have any hope of making a decent wine."
He said he spends a lot of time out with the vines at harvest time. He looks, he tastes, he touches.
And the birds know when the grapes are ripe, he said.
With guidance from local winemaker Doug Fabbioli whose Fabbioli Cellars is also on the tour, and Sunset Hills vineyard manager and winemaker Ben Renshaw, the winemaking is at a top level. The Sunset Hills Reserve Cabernet Franc took a gold medal at the Eastern Seaboard Wine Competition.
Also waiting for wine tasters on the tour, or any weekend from noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, are cabernet sauvignon, petite verdot, viognier, one oaked and one cold steel chardonnay, and an ice-wine style dessert wine coaxed from chardonnay grapes.
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