Best of 2023

A look back at the top experiences of the last year

2023 was a great year for wine and beer activities, so I decided to rank the highlights of my beer and wine activities. Here’s to doing even more in 2024!

Happy New Year from North Carolina wine influencers, 2 Winey Friends, NC Wine Guys, Blends & Bubbly, NC Wines, Tarheel Taps & Corks and Wine Mouths

8: Special events in wine, beer and cider
Events at North Carolina wineries, breweries and cideries are getting better all the time. Here are just a few that were memorable in 2023: A wine and food pairing dinner at Gioia Dell’Amore Cellars. They promise more wine dinners in 2024. A Raclette cheese tasting at Botanist & Barrel, because who can resist this melted cheese poured over vegetables, bread and more? So many celebrations at Glass Jug Beer Lab, including a Girl Scout cookie and beer pairing in RTP and a Mardi Gras celebration in downtown Durham. And fellow wine influencer Dave Nershi shared his love for and expertise in South African wines by hosting a food and wine pairing dinner at his home. And Dathan and Jen of Triangle Around Town hosted a fun “Open that Bottle” night in their home.

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  Guests gather around tables in the Gioia dell’Amore tasting room for the food-wine pairing dinner.

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  Mardi Gras celebration at Glass Jug Beer Lab in Durham’s Central Park downtown.

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  Raclette cheese tasting at Botanist & Barrel.

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  South African wine dinner at with Dave Nershi of Vino-Sphere.

7: Mead tasting with friends at Starrlight Mead
I think The Plant in Pittsboro is such a fun place to visit, so I invited some friends to taste mead at the Starrlight tasting room in the beverage district. After our tasting, we toured the production room and strolled through The Plant to see other businesses, including ax throwing. We wrapped up our afternoon with a beer at Fair Game Beverage.

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6: Food and beer tours
I started guiding food tours with Triangle Food and City Tours, which provides tours in Raleigh’s Historic Oakwood and Boylan Heights. I also began working with People1Tourism to offer some beer and cider tours in the Whitaker Mill neighborhood. Please look for opportunities to participate in both of these tour groups!

5: Wine tastings with Merlot2Muscadine
Fellow wine influencer Arthur Barham hosted several wine tastings this year, and I participated in two of them – sparkling wine and Tannat tastings. Arthur is a real expert in planning such events, and I hope he’ll do more of them in 2024!

With candles and lanterns, the tasting continued even without lights.

May wine tastings with Merlot 2 Muscadine

4: NC Winegrower’s Association meeting
This year’s wine annual meeting was a real celebration, and as one participant described it, like a family reunion. The sessions were great fun, including a Reidel glassware demonstration. You can read more about it in the blog or Screw-it Wine (shop for the digital issue).

A Reidle glassware demonstration was part of the wine conference. Nearly 300 participated.

3: Judging the 2023 NC Wine Competition
After a surprise last-minute phone call from Brianna Burns of NC Wine and Grape Council, I found myself with a group of wine experts judging the top wines entered in the state wine competition. And this year’s top pick was a Seyval Blanc from Shadow Springs Vineyards.

Judging the NC Wine Competition for 2023

2: NC Wine Digital Media Summit
Having hosted this event in Yadkin Valley, as well as online during the pandemic, the @ncwineguys took this event to Western North Carolina to explore wineries in the Crest of the Blue Ridge AVA. In advance of the Summit, participants spent two days touring wineries and cideries in the Hendersonville area.

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1: Trip to Napa and Sonoma
A Big Highlight of this year’s wine experiences was visiting wineries and more in Napa and Sonoma. It was a wonderful opportunity to taste some of the best wine produced in the world, but it also left us with a true appreciation of what North Carolina’s wine industry and how accessible it is. You can read all about the trip in three recent blog posts – yes, it took three posts to get it all down! Before Christmas, Arthur Barham and I took the opportunity to trade notes on recent wine trips, including his to the Finger Lakes region of New York.

Arthur, Natalie, Kyle and Mary enjoyed dinner together and swapping wine trip stories.

Napa and Sonoma
Part 1, Northern Sonoma and best views of the region
Part 2, Sparkling wines and things to do off the wine trail
Part 3, Historic and boutique wineries, and tips for your own visit

Merlot2Muscadine on the Finger Lakes region

Napa and Sonoma wrap up

Historic and boutique wineries; tips for your own trip

Two wineries we visited in Napa and Sonoma had a history — one, a historic structure, and one, a history tied to the film industry.

When planning our second tasting day in Sonoma, we needed a place to have lunch and taste wine before our final tasting that afternoon. We decided to check out the very grand Francis Ford Coppola Winery, owned by the Oscar Award-winning movie director.

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  Wine tasting on the terrace

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  Directing Oscars of Francis Ford Coppola

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  Memorabilia from the Godfather movies

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  Swimming pool at Francis Ford Coppola Winery

This winery is so much more than just vineyards and a tasting room. It’s a little like Disney World, with a restaurant, bar, wine tasting areas, a swimming pool where you can reserve your own cabana and even a movie museum. It was also the only winery where you had to call in a reservation (instead of reserving online), and they didn’t even ask for a credit card!

At the winery, we chose the reserved tasting on the terrace overlooking the vineyards. But first, we needed some nourishment to keep us going. At the bar for Rustic Restaurant, we shared a salad and a pizza with parmesan, arugula and prosciutto – delicious.

On the terrace, Debbie hosted our tasting that included a Reserve Viognier, Reserve Pinot Noir, 2020 Eleanor, a very smooth red blend named for the winery owner’s wife, and the 2018 blend Archimedes red blend. All these wines had earned medals in the Sonoma Valley Harvest Fair that was being held the upcoming weekend.

In addition to great food and wine, a benefit to visiting this winery is the chance to view historic memorabilia from some of Coppola’s most iconic films, including all the Godfather series, Apocalypse Now, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and films by his daughter, Sofia Coppola. The museum also holds the Oscars that Coppola won for his films.

The pool was closed the day we visited – there was an international pizza-making competition on the deck (I personally think the pizza we ate was a clear winner). But when it’s open, guests can rent a small dressing/shower cabana to change for a swim.

Another Napa Valley winery with a history is Trefethen Winery. The building that houses the tasting room, dating to the 19^th century, is the oldest, wooden, gravity-fed winery in the country. The former Eschol Winery was purchased by the Trefethen family in 1968.

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  Gateway to Trefethen Family Vineyards

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  Wine tasting at Trefethen

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  This map shows the dates of grape harvesting at Trefethen. Fewer than half the sections has been harvested in mid-October.

The winery’s claim to fame is having its 1976 Chardonnay chosen as the world’s best in the 1979 wine Olympics in France. The selection was initially considered a fluke, but the competition results were repeated a year later, so Trefethen Chardonnay became recognized as “the yardstick by which all Chardonnay Is judged.”

The historic winery building suffered structural damage in a 2014 earthquake and had to be significantly rebuilt and reinforced against future earthquakes. We had our tasting in second floor room of that historic building.

The driveway into the winery is long and takes you past acres and acres of vineyards. Like all wineries in the Napa area, they were experiencing a later-than-usual harvest. A map in the tasting room showed areas that had been harvested, and there was still much to be done in October.

The day before we visited Trefethen, we were riding bikes on the Napa Valley Vine Trail and realized that the winery just across the highway. So it would have been a fairly easy ride from the trail to the tasting room. But did I mention how long the driveway was?

Boutique winery
At Unti (Oon-tee) Vineyards in the Dry Creek Valley, we felt right at home. It was one of the smaller, boutique wineries we visited, with about 60 acres of vines.

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  Unti Vermentino vines

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  Unti wine tasting

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  Arbor leading from Unti Vineyards

The tasting room here is small, and we experienced a “standing tasting” at the counter, like what we are more accustomed to in North Carolina. Our host Jerry was very friendly, even offering to print out information about the winery for us.

The vines for this winery were planted in 1991, and the tasting room opened in 1997. They grow Italian varietals, along with Syrah and the Zinfandel that Dry Creek Valley is so known for. 

Though reservations are required for tasting wine, this was another place that was probably a little more flexible than some of the larger wineries. As we were entering the tasting room, we saw several folks enjoying a tasting and picnic outside.

Tips for enjoying Napa and Sonoma
What we learned:

• Winery hours are short! Most are typically open 10 am-5 pm, but some close as early as 4-4:30 pm. To visit three wineries in a day, you should probably start with one before lunch, then follow up with two after lunch. Be sure to calculate travel time between wineries.
• About reservations: Most wineries require them, but it doesn’t hurt to call ahead to see if they can work you in for a tasting if you don’t have a reservation. Weekdays are probably the best time for doing this. Some wineries may not be able to host you for a tasting, but might let you stop by for a glass or bottle of wine, if local ordinances permit them to sell this way.
• The cost of tasting wine may create a little sticker shock to those of us from the East Coast. In Sonoma, tastings start around $35-40 and go up to about $60. In Napa, you’ll likely find low-end tastings around $50-60, though they can easily cost over $100. We were told that most places discourage “shared tastings” since COVID, but we discovered at least one winery that allowed two guests to share one tasting.
• You don’t have to drink every sip you are served. You can spit into a cup or take a few sips of wine and dump the rest. The more you drink, the less likely you’ll be able to enjoy the wine from your later tastings.
• Any winery that sells food probably won’t let you bring in your own. Be sure to ask before lugging out your picnic basket. One winery we visited would allow you to reserve a picnic table for $50. Some sell the snacks you would typically bring on your own; most don’t have full restaurants.
• There’s more to do here than taste wine – riding the wine train, riding bikes, visiting gardens and farmers markets, seeing the redwoods and the California coast. It’s worth the time to hop off the wine trail for a bit and enjoy the scenery.
• We were impressed with the tenure of many of the tasting room hosts. Even when we met someone who was new to a winery, most had already worked for several years in the local wine industry.
• Since wineries tend to get busier throughout the day, schedule your biggest name wineries early in the day and save the smaller ones for the afternoon. Weekdays are certainly less busy than weekends.

Previous posts:
Napa and Sonoma, Part 2
Sparkling wine and other things to do

Visiting Napa and Sonoma
North Sonoma favorites and wineries with the best views