Most Beautiful Virginia Winery Settings

[Joe H]

We went to Barboursville's vertical tasting today which included the release of the 2013 Governor's Cup winning 2009 Octagon. Afterwards we unintentionally decided to get lost on some back roads leading up into the Blueridge. West of Madison we found a sign for Ducard Vineyards and followed a narrow road three or four miles which wound up a mountain. Fantastic setting! While there we met several others who had been to "almost every winery within fifty miles of Charlottesville" and compared notes on which we thought might have the most beautiful setting of any.

I suggested Bluemont and Delaplane, neither of which they had been to. However, they were passionate in insisting that Stone Mountain which is literally halfway or more up the side of a mountain as unequalled. They also noted that the road leading to it would rival some in Bolivia.

This is their website: http://www.stonemountainvineyards.com/#

One of the photographs which will come up shows an aerial view of the winery in the middle of the mountains. It is absolutely breathtaking.

Has anyone been to Stone Mountain Vineyards?

We also heard that Veritas was beautiful, too along with Ankara Ridge. And Ducard, where all of this discussion started, is worthy of a wedding or two itself.

[Joe H]

I can't resist adding this description of the road to Stone Mountain Vineyards from (excuse me), Yelp:

"You know you are in trouble when the car navigator basically tells you good luck - that's right, my navigator puts a big message on the screen "entering unknown area, use caution" Those bastards in Japan must have known that the "road" up to this place was about 3 feet wide - either that or the computer just couldn't compute how the road could go from sea level to 2400 feet in just a few hundred yards...

After a bunch of tracking back and forth on rainy country roads, we found the turn off and started heading almost straight up. The pavement ended and from then on it was hard packed dirt and gravel. After a few more minutes spent in the car, sitting at an angle of 55-plus degrees and approaching a hairpin turn, my occupants started whining and getting nervous. There are no guardrails and you are literally looking over the edge of a cliff. Of course, it was raining and the fog was setting in- perfect.

The road just keeps going up and up and there is no way to turn back or god forbid, if someone is coming down there is going to be a problem.

After a lot of sweating and praying we made it - we found this place, parked and went in. Trust me, you will need a drink when you get up there.

...If you go, make damn sure you have good tires and brakes. Better yet, take your friends piece of shit pickup truck."

[Joe H]

I did not realize that Early Mountain suggested by several others is the winery owned by Steve Case.