Muse, briefly
Muse’s proprietors are husband and wife, Robert Muse and Sally Cowal. He is an international lawyer who (as an Arizonan) trained as a barrister in England. She is a former United States ambassador who is now a public health professional.
There’s always a river. Like many Americans, farming is a large part of Robert’s background. In the 17th Century, his French Huguenot ancestors came to America and settled into farming on the banks of the Potomac, where their property adjoined George Washington’s birthplace.
In 2003 Robert and Sally drove to Woodstock, Virginia to look at a property with an overgrown vineyard in a tangle of grape varieties. They bought the property for the vineyard and began working to resuscitate the vines, figuring out slowly which varieties of grapes were growing there.
That was then, and this is now. They next purchased a 200-year-old Mennonite farm adjacent to their property on the banks of the Shenandoah River and expanded to nearly thirty acres of vines. After much research Robert and Sally were reasonably clear about how to combine the qualities of Muse’s soil, its topography, and its proximity to the river to produce a range of exceptional wine grapes.
Muse has planted some fifteen different grape varieties. According to Robert, “The varieties we’ve planted produce interesting wine; for instance, Sangiovese is the grape from which Tuscan wines are made; mid-weight with cherry notes; while the Nebbiolo grape produces the complex wines of Italy’s Piedmont region. It’s wonderfully cerebral stuff.”
- Muse Vineyards sits at an elevation of 1,000 feet and rests on shale bedrock. There are three contiguous vineyards each with a distinct soil type. The top vineyard sits on a terrace formed millions of years ago by the Shenandoah River that today flows one hundred feet below. The soil is a loose loam formed from crystalline rock. Red gravelly clay begins at a depth of about three feet. Gentle inclines combine with the rocky soil to ensure good drainage.
- The middle vineyard, where Grenache and some white varieties are grown, plunges down a steep shale outcropping.
- The lower vineyard is on the river’s bank and consists of silt loam alluvium formed from sandstone and shale.