Closing Notes for the 2022 Monticello AVA Wine Trip

We are now home after our second annual excursion to the Monticello AVA.  Over 320 traveling miles took us to eleven wineries or vineyards in three and a half days.  We sampled 51 wines and brought 11 bottles back with us.  You’ll see those wines listed at our year-end round up of best wines.  We dodged innumerable rain drops but got caught by just as many.  We met some interesting folks along the way working the wineries and customers relaxing like us. 

On the last morning of our trip after checking out, we needed to kill some time until the first winery opened.  Kim and I drove to the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Museum on Pantops Mountain, about 15 minutes east of downtown Charlottesville.  This gem of a museum is the only one dedicated to Australian aboriginal art in the United States.  It opens at 10:00 and is free.  You will be startled by the intricate beauty of native art, and it will get your brain moving again.

It is a perennial problem having some time on your hands because most wineries won’t open before 11:00 or 12:00.  There are few that open earlier.  And hours may get even shorter in the colder months.  Assuming that you are awake in the morning and recovered from the previous day’s sampling visits, you too may have some time to kill before getting back at it at the next winery.  Instead of sitting around contemplating your navel waiting for wineries to open, please get out into the local area wherever you are and visit some other places.  Get your brain and your legs moving.  With Kim’s background as an historical interpreter for National Trust and other historic properties, here are some of our biased suggestions for you (check the times before you go):

In Loudoun County and Leesburg, try Morven Park and Garden.  The grounds are free and open at 7:00AM.  The House opens at 10:00.

Going west into the Valley, try the Frontier Culture Museum in Saunton.  It opens at 9:00AM.  This open-air museum features reconstructed villages with reenactors covering the indigenous culture and the European immigrant cultures that moved through the Shenandoah.

In the Culpeper area, try the Museum of Culpeper History that opens at 10:00AM.  This museum was featured in Off the Beaten Path, Reader’s Digest Books 2009. 

In the Richmond area, try the Edgar Allen Poe Museum in Shockoe Bottom, which opens at 10:00AM most days, or the Tredegar Iron Works down on the James.  Tredegar is free, opens at 9:00AM, and is part of the National Park Service.

In the Roanoke area, try the Virginia Museum of Transportation that opens at 10:00 – also in Off the Beaten Path.  Roanoke has the stunning Taubman Museum of Art, that features top American artists like Eakins and Sargent, and others.  Nota bene - it is only open Friday through Sunday.  It opens at 10:00AM Friday and Saturday; 12:00 Sunday.

In the Charlottesville area, there are the prime tourist sites of Monticello (opens at 8:30 in the Summer); Ash Lawn (opens at 9:30), and Thomas Jefferson’s Rotunda at the University of Virginia (opens at 9:00AM).  And of course, the Kluge-Ruhe Museum.

It’s a beautiful state.  Enjoy.

Cheers!

 

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