5 Georgia Wineries to Visit this Year

Let’s face it, being trapped in quarantine for most of the year has everyone feeling a little frayed around the edges right now. Tropical Zoom backgrounds aren’t cutting it anymore, we need some socially responsible entertainment and meaningful escape from our blasé home-office existences. For us here at hftw, the wineries of North Georgia have been the close-to-home destination we desperately need right now. Rolling hills and mountain views, cheese boards, and an excuse to drink wine, finally we’ve found something redeeming about the year that brought us Murder Hornets.

After six months in pajama pants, Chateau Elan is just the excuse we needed to dig out our heels and feel fancy again. Just a 40 minute drive from Atlanta, Chateau Elan in Braselton, Georgia is a 3,500 acre resort and winery in the 16th Century French Chateau style that will have you feeling like you just touched down in the Loire Valley.

The Wine

Chateau Elan Tasting Room
Photo By Katie Adams

The newly renovated wine tasting room is open nightly and has plenty of well-spaced tables inside, as well as a large outdoor patio and lawn to socialize at a safe distance. The wine here is seriously incredible, and I dare say probably some of the best wine you’re going to find being made in the US outside of the west coast. Their wine has won hundreds of awards, and each and every style of wine we tasted at Chateau Elan was well-balanced and easy to drink. If you’re health conscious or have a sensitivity to sulfites in wine, you’ll appreciate winemaker Simone Bergese’s emphasis on reducing the sulfite content of their wines at bottling. Read more about their wine philosophy

The Experience

Paddy's Bar at Chateau Elan
Photo By Katie Adams

There are eight restaurants on-site, and as many times as we’ve visited, we’ve still only managed to find four of them, this place is seriously huge. Their restaurants run the gamut from gourmet to pub food, so there’s plenty of variety for the picky eater. A word to the wise, make a reservation in advance if you have your heart set on eating at one of the more upscale on-site restaurants because they’re typically booked (which, incidentally, is how we found ourselves eating loaded baked potato skins at the pub, not that we’re complaining about that).

We’re not really golfers, but if you are, (or, more importantly, if this helps you bribe a significant other into visiting a place where you can sip rosé all weekend), Chateau Elan boasts 45 holes of championship golf, a number which we’re still trying to wrap our heads around. If you’re staying for the weekend, the Inn also has an on-site café, pool, hot tub, buffet, and sports bar.

Following our theme of closing our eyes and wishing hard to be back to our pre-pandemic globe-trotting ways, we find ourselves (almost) in Tuscany at Montaluce winery. With the warm feel of a small Italian familia winery, this Dahlonega, Georgia destination brings the pretension down a notch and delivers a solid, enjoyable old-world-inspired wine experience.

The Wine

Montaluce is embracing the North Georgia terroir, offering several estate wines including some perfect-for-a-hot-Georgia-day whites like Seyval Blanc and Chardonnay, and Italian-style reds including my personal favorite, the Super Tuscan style Centurio. Oh, and it wouldn’t be a proper pretend trip to Italy without the Sangiovese, a wine whose namesake grape is the most widely grown in Central Italy. At the time of this writing, the wine flight tastings at Montaluce are by reservation only so plan in advance to make sure you can get the full experience.

The Experience

The large outdoor tasting area just steps from the vineyard provides a safe and scenic place to enjoy your wine. We’re suckers for a good cheese board, so we highly recommend stopping into the upstairs restaurant for the local and regional cheese and charcuterie plate. For the more adventurous wine lover, Montaluce offers a weekend 1.8 mile guided hike through nature trails and vineyards, ending with a tasting of five Montaluce wines, which will almost certainly be even more rewarding because you had to walk 1.8 miles for it. If you want to make a weekend out of it, there are a few privately-owned Tuscan-style villas for rent nearby. On a side-note, you can also stop in the market off of the main lobby to pick up some fresh honey produced by their on-site bee hives. This is seriously cool, and we like supporting people who support bees 🐝 Read more about their bees.

If your version of zen is a perfectly manicured lawn and a cool drink, the 200 acre family winery at Yonah Mountain is probably your kind of escape. With the inside currently closed due to COVID, the party has moved outside, but we don’t think you’ll mind. The live music, sprawling patios (featuring plenty of dogs to wish from afar that you could pet), and makeshift outdoor wine serving stations have us feeling like we’re at a socially-distanced neighborhood cul-de-sac party. Seriously, we even saw a putting green, guaranteed you know a suburban Dad whose dreams are made of this place. Add some rosé and you’ve got a perfect mountain escape from the no-hustle and no-bustle of current everyday life.

The Wine

Vineyards at Yonah Mountain
Photo By Katie Adams

Yonah Mountain has twenty acres of vineyards where they’re growing Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Petit Manseng, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot. They’re producing a variety of classic wines like Merlot and Cabernet Franc, as well as the brighter and fruitier Young American wines. The standout for us was the 2019 Estate Cuvee Rosé, a wine that seems to embody the laid-back, good-times atmosphere of the winery itself.

The Experience

Yonah Mountain Outdoor Patio
Photo By Katie Adams

Sustainability is a clear priority at Yonah Mountain, immediately evident by the field of solar panels and electric vehicle charging stations. They also have on-site bee hives (team bee). In case you were wondering, Yonah is the Cherokee word for Bear, and the bear emblem inscribed on their barrels is an homage to the Native American heritage of the area. Their website explains the entire legend behind the name, and is definitely worth a read. They also claim to have Georgia’s only wine cave. What’s a wine cave, you ask? Okay, we’ll level with you, we didn’t find out about the wine cave until after our visit to Yonah Mountain, but you could say our curiosity is sufficiently piqued. I’m sure the questions you’re asking yourself are the same ones going through our heads…are we spelunking with wine?? 🤞 Do we need a forehead light? (bringing one just in case) We’ll be back with an update just as soon as we can do the tour with answers to all of your burning questions. Promise.

We love a good origin story, and Chateau Meichtry in Talking Rock, Georgia has one of the most poignant narratives of any winery we know of. A grape vine stowed away in the baggage of a Swiss immigrant on his way to America, a passion for winemaking cultivated across generations, and a family dream finally coming to fruition in the hills of North Georgia, the purpose behind what’s driving this family-owned winery is the stuff they make movies about.

The Wine

Vines at Chateau Meichtry
Photo By Katie Adams

The only thing rivaling the power of their story at Chateau Meichtry is the wine that they’re making. Choose between a sweet flight, prominently featuring Georgia’s famous Muscadine grapes, or a dry flight with classic, estate-grown whites and reds. You can’t go wrong with the Seyval Blanc, or the Georges Cuvee.

The Experience

Chateau Meichtry Tasting Room
Photo By Katie Adams

You’ll find Chateau Meichtry down a windy, bumpy, mostly-paved road that at times will have you hearing banjo music in the distance, but the remoteness of this Swiss-German inspired winery, complete with adjacent cattle pastures, is part of what gives it that authentic, Swiss alps vibe. Chateau Meichtry has the casual feel of a provincial pub you might find in old Europe, complete with live music, food trucks, and staff that welcomes you in like an old friend. If you want to stay the weekend, they’ve just opened villas on the property, and also have an event-space coming soon. One thing to watch out for, things in this part of Georgia close early, and wineries are only open until 6pm most nights.

Our final winery on the list has a distinctly Southern Charm, with literal roosters announcing your arrival, and a back yard donkey whose likeness graces the wine labels. But don't let the quaint farm feel at Cavendar Creek Vineyards fool you, the wines they're creating here rival the sophistication of anything else we've found in Georgia. Solidifying the Southern Hospitality, our first tasting of the day was served by the gracious and knowledgeable owner of Cavender Creek, Claire Livingston.

The Wine

Some of the Wines offered at Cavender Creek
Photo By Katie Adams

Every wine we tasted at Cavender Creek had merit, with the standouts being the Symphony and the Syrah, both of which we left with bottles of. The Petit Manseng is an estate wine which also makes for a good choice. And if you like a boozy Cabernet Sauvignon as much as we do, you’ll probably be leaving with a few bottles.

The Experience

Live Music at Cavender Creek
Photo By Katie Adams

The atmosphere at Cavender Creek is friendly and welcoming. Live music emanates from a covered pavilion-style barn where an outside bar serves pitchers of sangria and light snacks (and of course wine by the glass). The tasting room feels like you’ve just walked into a friend’s living room, complete with arm chairs, hydrangea arrangements, and a large bar that was bustling when we arrived. Behind the tasting room is a large outdoor seating area that overlooks the vineyards and livestock pasture. There are a few small cabins on the property that you can rent, one of which is a 200 year old log cabin that sits prominently in front of the tasting room. One thing to note is that Cavender Creek does not allow dogs, so leave your four-legged friends at home.