Leigh is getting married in a month so a group of us decided to spend the weekend in Charlottesviille and celebrate her bachelorette-hood. The weather was perfect, the wine tour was fun, we had delicious food and just a good time with friends!
We used Blue Ridge Wine Excursions for our tour and we highly recommend them if you want a great tour. Chris, our driver, was super knowledgable and funny plus he packed us an awesome lunch. We started the day at Bleinheim Winery (aka Dave Matthews’ place) and it is gorgeous. The views on the property were perfect and we had a nice lesson in grapes and wines. Plus, we each bought some bottles home to share with family and friends.
Next stop was Albemarle Ciderworks and I think this was my favorite because it was so unexpected. Honestly, I thought it was a cider beer place (obviously I did not do enough research) but was pleasantly surprised by the cider like wine. We learned a lot about apples, had delicious peaches and plums from the orchard and then sat down to our fabulous lunch. Technically, it was a ‘snack’ but it was the best snack I have ever had. We had local cheeses, great bread, an assortment of salami, olives, more fresh fruit and great local chocolates. We were all very happy 🙂
Next we visited Pippin Hill Farm and Vineyard and this place looked like it belongs in a movie! It is one of the newer vineyards in the area and I see why it is so popular for weddings. We enjoyed sitting on the lawn and just enjoying the view.
We never made it to our fourth stop because we enjoyed the history lessons, fruit lessons, wine history and people watching at our first three stops! And we needed to get back to Charlottesville to meet Leigh’s friend from college for dinner.
We enjoyed more great food at West Main in downtown Charlottesville. The shrimp and grits were delicious! And the other half of our table thought their food was equally good.
Since it was so nice and we needed to walk off some of our day- we walked the downtown mall and them ended up at Miller’s. Since Leigh was wearing her Bachelorette sash we got some funny attention from an assortment of characters. All nice characters but definitely characters. Around 11:30, we decided it was past all of our bedtimes and we headed back the the hotel.
No road trip would be complete without greasy brunch so we opted for Waffle House. Why don’t we have Waffle House on DC? We need one or many.
Then it was time to hit the road and head home. In a random small town about halfway between Charlottesville ad Alexandria is the Moo Thru. This might be some of the best ice cream I have ever had. I had dark chocolate and banana and I wish I had packed a cooler to bring more home!
Miss H and Kerry were happy to see me and it was nice to get big hugs from them! Miss H insisted we all head to the pool and that was a nice way to spend the rest of the afternoon. Hope everyone had a great weekend!
all three of us 
Leave a Reply