Family and I are gonna be staying at Lake Anna in a couple weeks. I was tasked with finding wine/wine tastings/something thats not beer to do during the trip. Wondering if the hive mind has any suggestions??
also, unrelated to the wine question: should I bring my road bike? is there good places to ride around the lake?
Willing to come as far west as Charlottesville?
I live about 2 hours from Lake Anna and have bene there a handful of times. So my recommendation is to bring your own wine. There are no good vineyards nearby nor any restaurants nearby with good wine lists or good enough for for a paired dinner. You can drive 1-2 hours to Charlottesville, Richmond, or DC but it’s not worth it (IMHO).
For a summer visit like this, I would bring some awesome sausages for the grill and a bunch of great white and rose wines to enjoy at the house outside. YMMV.
Yeah, not much immediately around the lake. My folks keep their boat there and we always bring our own wine when we go.
Fredericksburg is not too far, might be a Total Wine there for supplies but but not a tasting or winery.
Isn’t Barboursville close(ish) to Lake Anna?
(Early Mountain too but they seem so overpriced.)
Barboursville would be a fun day trip if that is what you are looking for. Nice barbera and sangiovese wines; have not had their whites. As noted elsewhere, these aren’t going to challenge CA/Italy for best value but one of the better VA wineries.
Barboursville is about an hour from there, same drive as Richmond or the DC suburbs. It’s our favorite Virginia winery to visit. I like the Italian varietals and they have a sit down tasting with library wines now.
Barboursville might be our best bet then. Thanks for the reccs everyone! We’re all driving there so I plan on being the major wine supplier, we’re just hoping for a good day trip as Stephen mentioned. some of the group is coming FROM dc so I doubt they’ll wanna go back home for the day lol.
am seriously debating a stop in Bassin’s on my drive up though. worth the time out of the way if I’m coming from a wine desert traveling to another wine desert?
You’re driving up from South Carolina? Coming up to DC just to go to Bassin’s after driving 6 or 7(?) hours (adding 3 more hours round trip at least) seems like a lot, and they close at 7pm. Don’t get me wrong, Bassin’s is great – as are Calvert Woodley and Schneider’s (especially if you want to buy aged stuff because they buy estate cellars and the like*) – but I’d recommend you order online or by phone and have whoever’s coming from DC pick it up. (Keep in mind there’s a 10.025% sales tax for in-store wine purchases in DC which will probably apply for pick ups too.)
Another option is checking out the offerings at Domaine though their website is a pain to search.
Aren’t there stores in Richmond you have to drive by anyway?
Last seating for the Barboursville library tasting is 3pm, I believe. Last time we got there at 3:30 and had to do the machine pour tasting. Weird but you can try a lot and only the varietals you want to try (current release ony though). The library tasting is the one you want though.
They also have an outdoor pavilion but we’ve never done a tasting there.
Walk the grounds though. It’s beautiful. The walk to the willows through the pollinator garden is great.
For going back to the lake, their rose is pretty solid and a good value. About $18. They also have a dessert wine called Paxxito which is done apassimento style. It’s different and is one of our favorite stickies.
Good luck and enjoy your trip to VA!
We did the Barboursville library tasting a couple years ago and was thoroughly unimpressed. Unripe and harsh tasting reds. Mediocre whites. It’s not worth the drive even from our house a lttle west of Charlottesville. The regular tasting was no better.
In general, IMHO, the reds produced in this area mostly not worth the consumption of the alcohol. Some places do OK.
ordering and letting my BIL from DC pick up/local delivery was gonna be my plan. I agree, adding time to a 6.5 hour travel day is not ideal.
It is what it is, man. I don’t think anyone comes to a Virginia winery expecting Tuscany, the Rhone or the Loire Valley. Maybe Barboursville isn’t “the best” Virginia winery, but it’s up there among the top and the few that could arguably be better either price their wines like second growth Bordeaux (RdV) or at least higher than it should be (Early Mountain, King Family); and/or are not that close to Lake Anna (RdV, Linden, King Family, Glen Manor). RdV doesn’t even make whites that I’m aware of and I do think whites/rosés in general are better than reds around here, regardless of what the scores say; and especially in July. I think the only one that’s truly better in terms of quality is Liden, but YMMV. Are there any other places I’m missing? Please note that I refuse to recommend a certain (in)famous person’s winery. In short, I think Barboursville is a good/fun day trip given the constraints.
If the question had been a winery anywhere in Virginia, purely based on quality, I would have picked Linden (and probably still would have been criticized). But that was not the question. Are they even open for visitors?
Keep your expectations in check and you should enjoy the barboursville tasting. Haven’t been in years but the wines are all competent. Horton, another pioneer, is right across the road—no idea what their current reputation is— but you can try some Norton! Good barbecue between the lake and barboursville here: https://www.bbqex.com/
unrelated to the initial question: should I bring my road bike? is there good places to ride?
Very much so. One of my best friends lives at Zion’s Crossroads and the company he works for does a lot of renovations/carpentry around Lake Anna, and is a life-long cyclist probably averages 150-200 miles a week. The Lake is a bit flatter and you get more terrain change the further West you go, but I’ll reach out to him and PM some preferred loops. How many miles do you want to do?
thanks!
less than 50… its a wife’s family’s trip so ill probably get in trouble if I’m out much longer than a solid two hours. I appreciate anything he can suggest!
I’ve heard good things about Michael Shaps near Charlottesville…