Peaks of Otter Winery is a fine maker of fruit wines, which was representing at the Virginia Wine Festival. Our buddy Mike (to the right of Kim there in the photo) told us that the Peaks of Otter stand was a can’t-miss at the VWF. But even if Mike (who had been to the festival the year before) hadn’t tipped us off, I think we would have recognized the big crowd of happy winos that was constantly formed around the P of O stand.

You see Danny John (if I remember correctly) was a very entertaining guy and also very good at running a tasting. He could take a group of 6 people through the entire P of O catalogue in about 3 minutes… all the way from the uncanny blueberry muffin wine to the explosive Kiss the Devil wine (made from 30 different varieties of peppers).

Danny was very clear that most of the wines were to only be used for cooking, especially the Kiss of the Devil and Chili Dawg wine… both of which cause immediate heart burn. Kiss the Devil was especially hot, and we were awarded cute little stickers for being brave enough to taste it. The sticker was nice, but it was a little annoying to have to wait 15 minutes or so for the spicy taste to get out of our mouths. We took the opportunity to partake of some of the festival food.

We didn’t pick any Peaks of Otter bottles up to take home, but I wish we had. The chili wines would really be great for chili. And the sweeter wines would go well with ice cream or as an after-dinner treat.

Check out the Peaks of Otter wines here at WineLog, or head over to their website to learn more about their awesome fruit wines. They also have an interesting list of wine recipes that presumably taste great with P of O wine in them.