Like the proverbial carrot dangling from the stick, it was the prospect of sipping chardonnay while drifting through tranquil marshes that gave me the incentive I needed to clean out the dead snakes from my long-stored kayak.
Virginia’s Eastern Shore is a paddler’s paradise, and, being a twenty-year resident of the Shore, I thought I had seen and done it all when it came to exploring the region’s great outdoors. But when I heard about Southeast Expeditions’ kayak winery tour, I thought, who can resist experiencing the ruggedness of the Shore’s marshes while enjoying the elegance of local wines? Not I.
The tour, the brainchild of Dave Burden, owner of the Cape Charles-based ecotour and outdoor recreation company, is typically held on Sunday afternoons for groups of four to twenty. Kayakers leave from the village of Bayford Landing and make the forty-five-minute paddle on Nassawadox Creek to Machipongo’s Chatham Vineyards, where owners Jon and Mills Wehner host a wine tasting. Kayakers then paddle forty-five-minutes along Church Creek to Rabbit Island. The only details paddlers are responsible for are their swimsuits and sunscreen. Burden provides the kayaks, life vests, and the all-important corkscrew. “The tour caught on because it’s really different—and it just sounds like fun,” says Burden. “People take their friends who like fine dining along with their friends who like the outdoors, and they all do it together.”
I arrive at the winery at 2 p.m. (this was before the trip departed from Bayford Landing) and am greeted by Dave, whose surfer-boy good looks make it easy to see why his monthly women’s kayak clinics are so popular. Standing by his truck, I meet my fellow paddlers, a group of four city refuges: a young couple from Philadelphia and two gals from Washington, D.C. Although all hands rise when Burden asks who has paddled before, I have my doubts when I notice one of the urbanites’ not-so-marsh-friendly shoes, a pair of dressy black flats.
Stretched out before us are arrow-straight rows of grapevines that occupy the vineyard’s twenty acres. Standing sentinel in the distance is the winery’s namesake 1818 Federal brick beauty, Chatham, the residence of Jon’s parents. One of the Eastern Shore’s three wineries, it opened in 2005 and has already won more than a dozen awards, including a gold and silver medal for its 2002 merlot.
Inside the vaulted, steel building, which serves as both the winery production facility and the tasting room, Jon greets us from behind the horseshoe-shaped counter, where he pours us each a glass of the vineyard’s four varietals—two chardonnays, one rose, and a merlot—explaining the flavors we are experiencing and what foods make for perfect pairings. “[The tour] is a clever way for people to check out the land and the water—and our wine,” says Jon.
I mention that I’m glad I had a hefty lunch at the Eastville Inn before I started sipping to prevent being so tipsy that I tip over. But Jon assures us that, by the tasting’s end, we’ve drank only one glass.
With our glasses empty, we follow a shelled path past the Chatham estate to a woodland trail that leads to Church Creek. Here, Burden hands out life vests and gives us a brief lesson on how to move forward, reverse, turn, and “brake.” I’m invited to join him in his two-seat kayak and am only too happy to have him paddle my posterior around—especially since our kayak serves as the “bar,” complete with wine and cups. “This is one of my favorite kayak tours,” Burden says. “Yeah, the wine’s great, but this setting has the most diverse environment—old-growth maritime forests, salt marshes, and century-old farms.”
The group stays close enough to hear our guide’s comments on the roughly quarter-mile-wide creek’s thriving ecosystem. He points out that the salt marshes are remarkably more fertile than farm fields, annually producing four to ten tons of organic matter more per acre than farmland. There’s really no bad season to kayak on the Shore, but late summer is a stellar time; everything is still green and bustling with wildlife. A slight plop signals a turtle slipping from a log into the water. The patterned wings of a mother osprey float silently above us as she makes her way to her nest in a towering pine tree. Save for a few homes tucked away on the banks, it’s easy to feel miles away from civilization out here. “The stillness is just amazing,” says one of the Washingtonians.
An hour drifts by, and we push our kayaks onto Rabbit Island’s beach, an uninhabited spot with a canopy of oaks and hollies. A fallen tree serves as a fine bench for us to while away the next 45 minutes, as Burden keeps the wine flowing. As the afternoon light begins to fade, we raise our plastic cups and make an Eastern Shore-style toast: “Here’s to marsh mud in your eye!”
Donna Bozza writes from Cape Charles.
Contacts
Southeast Expeditions
611 Mason Ave.
Cape Charles, Va.
757-331-2690, sekayak.com
Wine tours run every Sunday
and cost $80 per person.
Chatham Vineyards
9232 Chatham Rd.
Machipongo, Va.
757-678-5588, http://www.chathamvineyards.net
