Over the summer we had planned to take a mini-summer vacay to the beach.  Due to unforeseen circumstances, and some aggressive wedding dancing, wino #1 (Amy) broke her foot showing off her dance moves at a wedding to “shout”.  Lets just say she put her hands up and shouted too hard.  While the doctor originally ordered her to be in a cast, she respectfully disagreed and talked her way into a much more manageable boot.  However, she was not able to convince him to let her go to the beach, so we switched our plans around and decided to enjoy a few days in Charlottesville hitting some wineries instead.  As it’s only 2 hours away from the Northern Virginia area, we’ve taken a few trips there before, but this was our longest stay.  We were able to get away for 2 nights, a Sunday and Monday which made for small crowds and a lot of time to sit and relax. We navigated ourselves from winery to winery with Robbie in tow (we didn’t have Oliver yet) enjoying the beautiful tasting rooms, the gorgeous settings and scenic views of the mountains and vineyards, and of course– the many varieties of wine!

We hit 6 wineries in our 2 days and enjoyed almost every one of them (we’ll get to that later).  The wineries we visited were:

Veritas

Afton Mountain

King Family

Barboursville

Horton

Trump

Now for the deets on our first day:

Veritas Winery: This winery is home to the famous “love” sign made out of corks. It has beautiful grounds, but the definite highlight in the tasting room is the sign and the colors.  It also has a superb patio with plenty of peaceful outdoor seating and the walk to the tasting room is through a vine-covered path with grapes hanging overhead (nice touch!). The downside here was that we had the pup so we weren’t able to enjoy the tasting indoors (dogs allowed outside only).  We settled for a bottle of the Chardonnay and had about half the bottle and saved the rest for later.  Another highlight here was the cute rustic bucket the wine came in and the glasses that read “in vino veritas”. Overall, good views, pretty outdoor space, and we were fans of the Chardonnay.

Afton Mountain: See pic below. Check out the view. That is all.

JK but seriously– we just don’t get views like this in Northern VA.  Unfortunately we also could not bring Robbie inside so we were left to enjoy another glass of Chard.  It actually ended up being great because we spent our time relaxing on the patio looking at this, AND, we had the pleasure of listening to a super fun Long Island couple argue about how for his 50th birthday gift he got a Harley and for hers she just wants to go to Europe… Come on man, you bought a fancy motorcycle that you probably never ride- take the woman to Europe!

King Family Vineyards: Our last stop of the first day was our favorite! We pulled up to King Family Vineyards while they were finishing up a polo match. Yes, that’s correct, a polo match.  Apparently they host matches most weekends when the weather cooperates.  It adds a nice touch and for parents it probably keeps the kids occupied so they can drink wine!  We went in the tasting room (weren’t positive of the dog policy) and proceeded to start a tasting.  After about 3 wines a manager approached us and asked us to take the dog outside (she was not overly friendly- we may have “missed” the no dogs inside sign).  Our pourer was very kind and agreed to finish our tasting outside- two thumbs up for her!  The wines were good and the tasting had a good mix of whites and reds. The views were also quite incredible as it’s surrounded by mountains and horses.  It’s definitely one to see, and possibly swing by for some polo on a nice weekend!