How to Navigate Charlottesville Wine Country

You guys have seen me chat about D.C. Wine Country in Loudoun County before on the blog, but Charlottesville Wine Country is only a 2-hour ride away from the District — and trust me, it might become your new favorite weekend getaway.

A couple of weekends ago before I left for Phoenix, my friends and I booked an Air BnB in downtown Charlottesville for the weekend and got to explore this wonderful city. I will give you a heads up, it is a little tricky trying to secure a hotel in the spring since Charlottesville has a lot going on this season, but if you’ve got a larger group, an Air BnB is the way to go!

The wineries out in Charlottesville are anywhere between 15 to 40 minutes outside of the city, so I would suggest planning accordingly to maximize your time! Another thing I would suggest? Leaving the driving to someone else! We decided to book Monticello Wine Tour for our trip, and they did not disappoint!

At first, we had a wishlist of three wineries that were highly recommended to us, but we had no idea that those wineries we picked were super far away from each other. Our driver, Anna (who you should definitely request!) emailed us days before our trip and suggested a few wineries that were closer together so that we could maximize the five hours we had in our car. Ultimately, we ended up going to Horton Vineyards, Barboursville Vineyards and Keswick Vineyards. The photos you see here are from Horton, but pretty much every property we visited that weekend was stunning!

You can book a car that holds up to 14 passengers with Monticello Wine Tour, and they also provide airport transportation to and from Richmond, Dulles, BWI and Reagan in case you’re not local and want to fly in for the experience (trust me: this is the East Coast version of Napa, so I would highly recommend checking it out!) All in all, just be safe and book a car for your next Charlottesville winery tour — it will make your experience far more enjoyable!