Brian Roeder of Barrel Oak Winery is bringing the tasting room to you while you enjoy shopping and dining in Middleburg, Virginia.  Roeder has joined a growing trend of not only having a satellite tasting room but of also letting the consumer sample other Virginia wines as well.  Eric Bowen, who was pouring wines the afternoon that I was at the tasting room, told me that Roeder is just following his passion for wines and wants to make them more approachable to the public.  I look at it as a chance to sip a wine and purchase some for home.

 

Roeder and his associate, Diane Burket, have created an easy experience by combining art with wines.  Burket runs the two-story gallery of paintings by local resident Armand Cabrera.  “Just like the wines,” she tells me, “this is a fine art gallery consisting the higher end of the market.”  What I observed is that the price of the paintings are reasonable.  Since the gallery/tasting room just recently opened, the artwork is limited to Cabrera, but they plan to show case other in the future featuring mid-Atlantic artists.

The tasting and pouring rooms are on two floors as are the paintings.  There are windows on just about every wall giving a birds eye view of the street below.  You can taste two wines for free, while tasting 6 more will run you $7, which is not bad since it cost them to make the wine.  All of the tasting wines are available for sale by the bottle or the case.  The wines are rotated frequently so each time you go you may have a new experience.  The tasting room is located at 8 East Washington Street in Middleburg and is open Thurs thru Sunday and on Mondays if it is a holiday.

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