For those of you who enjoy wine, have a special interest in it or would love to have your name stamped on a bottle, let us introduce you to the Virgin Wines Virtual Winery – The Rioja Experience.
Some of you may have been in involved in our first Virtual Winery, which was held at the Pallavicini Estate in Italy last year. The feedback from this project was fantastic, so we have decided to run it again but this time in Rioja.
We have teamed up with our friends at the exciting and extremely innovative Finca Manzanos Winery in Rioja – you are probably already familiar with some of their delicious wines such as Finca Manzanos Seleccion de la Familia Rioja and Finca Manzanos Seleccion de la Familia Rioja Blanco. Finca Manzanos have been making wine for six generations now, owning their own vines, so they are always assured of the highest quality of fruit. Judicious use of wood for ageing, flavour and texture enhancing is a Manzanos hallmark, as is their commitment to sustainability and integration. This philosophy is illustrated by the breathtaking Finca Manzanos Winery, which amazingly has three storeys above ground but another four hidden below for their gravity-fed winemaking, and which lies at the top of the plateau at the congruence of the rivers Ega and Ebro. It’s a mansion for winemaking, a winemaker’s paradise and it’s also the Manzanos family home.
During the project, Virtual Winemakers will be involved in the making of a delicious red wine which will be ready for drinking in April 2013. They will receive regular email updates keeping them up to date on the evolution of their wine, will be able to follow progress via the Virtual Winemaker blog, be encouraged to vote on certain aspects of the winemaking process, be able to sample the wine at an exclusive preview party and two lucky Virtual Winemakers (plus guest) will be invited on an all expenses paid trip to visit the Finca Manzanos estate and help craft the wine firsthand.
Our Virtual Winery is one of the most interactive winemaking projects we’ve launched. We want our customers to be as involved as possible with our wines – whether it be rating on the site, chatter on our blog or sharing thoughts on Facebook and the Virtual Winery project goes one step further. We’ve created our Virtual Winery to invite our customers to be involved every step of the way with a wine; to have an active role in the winemaking process. So this is an opportunity to not only learn more about the world of wine, but to guide a wine from vineyard to bottle.
The Virtual Winery offers an opportunity for customers to become part of an exclusive bunch who create their very own winemaking masterpiece. If this sounds like something that you would like to put your name to, find out here how you can get involved.
