Waltz Vineyards Wine Shop

I came here randomly for the wine tasting. A group of us tried 6 wines– 3 red, 3 white for $ 10. The man behind the counter was super sweet and informative. It was a nice way to kill some time on a Saturday afternoon. The wines were pretty good. It was a good way to end our walk around that little shopping area. Definitely worth a visit!

Of the four wineries/​tasting rooms we visited while in PA, this one was the best in every respect. The staff were as helpful and friendly as their counterparts in most of the other places we hit, but the woman who poured our tasting had by far the best wine knowledge of any of the folks we dealt with on our trip. Also, if you’re looking for wines that are made with the same sensibility and style that you’d find in a mainstream West Coast winery, this is where you need to head.
Waltz wines are estate wines, and our hostess talked pretty intelligently about the resemblance between the microclimate their grapes are grown in and that of Bordeaux. That’s actually not nuts; tool around Lancaster County on a nice summer day like we did and you might just think you’re on the Left Bank (if it had been taken over by buggy-​riding Huguenots). To their credit, they try to make their wines with Bordeaux grapes (you gotta play to your strengths, after all), with the reds revolving around Cab and Merlot and the whites around Sauv Blanc. They even take a stab at a white Bordeaux with a Sauv Blanc and Semillon blend, but they add Chardonnay, and it’s fermented off-​dry. On that particular wine, the sweetness is the bigger sin; I think they have the wine making chops to have produced a nice, crisp dry white with those grapes. They make a couple of stand alone Chards, too, both fermented dry.
They have a nice off-​dry rosé (.4% residual sugar, the least sweet of the bunch), and that’s where sweetness did the most good, but in the off-​dry wines we tried (one white, one red), the residual sugar didn’t contribute anything to what was already very competent wine making.
Bottom line: Though I can’t lay claim to having tasted at anything more than a fraction of Pennsylvania wineries, this was the best by a solid margin. I’d also recommend it as a great place to get a bottle for dinner later if you’re some nice, straightforward American or French food.

Very pleasant and helpful tasting room staff. The Tasting room is inviting and well designed. 3 white, 2 red, and 1 rose was available for tasting. The old line chardonnay was very good as well as the baron red.