One thing that I've noticed about our road trips to new cities recently is this:
we love to drink our way around a new place.
Whether it's a really cool rooftop bar in Charleston, distilleries in Louisville, or breweries in Asheville, our goal is usually to find a good local watering hole to explore.
So naturally, when we went to visit Charlottesville, we had to add a little local drinking to our list of things to do. We were able to visit one brewery {Starr Hill} and one winery {King Family Vineyards} both located in Crozet, VA, just outside of Charlottesville.
Our first stop was to King Family Vineyards which is a gorgeous, small vineyard that has an excellent wine tasting.
For $10, you get to try six different wines. They rotate in and out based on availability but the ones that we were able to try were:
Viognier 2014
Chardonnay 2014
Cabernet Franc 2014
Meritage 2013
Petit Verdot 2013
Seven 2013
I loved this wine tasting because it was small & personal, had a good variety of wine to try, and because it allowed me to try small tiny glasses of red wine. I've been a white wine fan for years but I've hadn't really branched out to red until this tasting. Turns out... I really like red wine!
My favorites were: the Viognier, the Meritage, and the Petit Verdot.
Everyone else? They all loved the Seven... mainly because it was aged for two years in a Kentucky bourbon barrel {specifically, in a Woodford Reserve barrel}. Since we all know that I am not a bourbon fan, it shouldn't be a surprise that I immediately handed that glass over to Patrick after one sip.
We ended up purchasing a bottle of the Petit Verdot to split while we sat around and chatted in their tasting room.
Afterwards, we drove on to Starr Hill Brewery. I really wanted to check this one out because the Starr Hill Love is one of my all time favorite beers. I was pretty excited to find out that their brewery was close to Charlottesville and that we'd be able to visit it while in town.
My favorite beer? Delicious. But they didn't have any other beers there that struck my fancy and the guys weren't too high on the ones that they picked out to drink. It was worth it to stop by at least once but it probably isn't a place that we'd go back to again.
The winery though? Totally different story. We'd love to go back to another one! It's unfortunate that there really isn't one to go to around Columbia... guess we'll need to make another trip up to Virigina soon!
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