Music at Virginia Wineries - First in a Series
February 13, 2026. Finally, we are forecast to get some defrosting from the snow and ice and Arctic chills that have shut-down our region for the last three weeks. We have chopped out traffic lanes from the “snowcrete” here in Northern Virginia, but we fear that wineries, which are usually in rural and mountain areas, could be inaccessible for some time.
To pass the time until it's more auspicious to travel, we’re starting what may become a series about music at Virginia wineries. We’ve been thinking about this almost as long as we’ve been writing about wineries themselves. After this lead article and with the permission of the performers and after overcoming technical challenges, we hope to post some snippets of music on this blog as part of our winery reviews over the next year or so.
Our attention is drawn to the live music that wineries feature in their tasting rooms and adjacent spaces to enhance the mood or lift the background atmospherics. Our focus is not on music festivals when the wine is incidental. Instead we’re listening for the live music in the everyday course of a serving day. I think the types of music you might encounter is heartening – from classical, to jazz, to reggae. Many groups that play wineries have devoted followings and are a treasured part of the ambience. I’m going to insert a shout-out here to “The Cold North,” a father-daughter duo in Northern Virginia that hands out their list of over 500 songs and has the audience decide the set – a great concept that means each performance is customized. This is where I first heard “Galway Girl.”
But while there is a wide range of styles that you might encounter in an absolute sense, you are far more likely to hear more than anything else what might be called folk-rock, bluegrass, or rockabilly and music of the 1980’s and 1990’s. Let’s say that Neil Young must be a rich man from all of the royalties he gets every time we’re heard Heart of Gold at a winery. In this sense, the sound of Virginia wineries is more monotonous than the wine.
Of course, one reason, for the dearth of recent popular music at wineries is that songs today are so over-produced and pitch-corrected that they can’t be performed live and certainly not by one guy with a guitar. Maybe you could hear a slimmed-down Taylor Swift song. Going further, however, a lot of current songs have lyrics that focus on activities that are not, shall we say, family-oriented. (Check-out the lyrics from YNW Melly’s Wine for Me or White Wine by Lil Peet and Lil Tracy or Red Wine by N’Shai Imam). Or the songs are mostly beat and bass.
My major pet peeve with many performers is their excessive volume. Call me a curmudgeon but a singer with a single guitar does not – and should not – need to have much amplification at all. No need to attempt orchestral prog rock from a single string instrument. A duo can add some beautiful harmonies but there is no need to add volume.
My plea is to keep it down so that patrons can talk without shouting. We visited one winery where the manager just refused to have any live music in the tasting room for that reason - being able to talk over a glass of wine was valuable. But too few tasting rooms do this, especially on the weekends. Not to go all posh on you, but, to me, wineries should not be treated the same as beer halls. Sometimes, the winery staff will notice a loud performance and take steps to lower the volume. Sometimes, however, the staff may not even notice loudness unless it is brought to their attention – so please do so. Other patrons will thank you. Do not refrain from complaining because you think this is artistic expression.
All artists want to be noticed; no one likes being ignored. I get it. But not all notice is good notice. Is screeching what the composer intended? If the singer chooses songs that complement their instrument, the songs should be on the quiet side. Loudness runs counter to that warm cozy feeling that many smaller wineries bank on. Wineries with larger spaces might believe larger music groups have to play in them. Many of those tasting rooms have high ceilings, rafters and glass, so many surfaces for sound to bounce off of in jarring dissonances and distortion on top of an already unpleasant experience.
I have a couple of lesser pet peeves for winery performers:
- Bands that don’t know the lyrics of the songs theyre playing. I presume someone has paid for a license to perform a cover of a copyrighted song. If so, the band should learn the lyrics. We were at a winery once where it appeared the band had sampled the local fermented product and forgot the lyrics. Fortunately, the audience helped them out. That’s lazy and unprofessional. The audience should have been paid part of the fee.
- Bands that aren’t sensitive to their audience. We happened to be visiting a winery that was hosting a birthday party for an elegant woman of color. The band – a Country-Bluegrass duo – launched into a cover of “Purple Rain.” I do not think it was a request, nor do I think it was appreciated (nor too well performed). More appropriate was a young artist we saw recently who featured songs by Jimmy Cliff as a tribute to his passing and to raise money for Jamaican hurricane victims. That young singer was loud – yes – but at least his heart was in the right place.
- Wineries need to be aware whether a performer complements the winery’s brand. For example, a winery wishing to present itself as refined and cultured should probably swear-off banjo’s and harmonicas. Nothing against Country music, but consider whether classical music or jazz might be more in keeping with the winery brand. We visited a couple of wineries that eschewed the typical country-bluegrass playlist in favor of hiring music students from the local college. We fondly recall a trio of kids who played a refreshing mix of tangos, waltzes, partitas, and original tunes that worked well unamplified in a small space. This was the group “Otra Vez” out of Charlottesville. The kids get valuable performance experience and the winery gets an afternoon when the atmosphere fully complements the wine being served. One winery went so far as to install a concert stage behind the tasting room with a goal of offering Sunday afternoon opera from local music students. (That might get a bit loud and distracting, but at least it’s not another performance of “The Chain.”).
I hope the folks who book acts for wineries take note of these points to expand what is offered. If I’m YELLING at you in a winery, then I have not succeeded.
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*The Cold North photo was taken from the band's Facebook page. The Orta Vez photo was taken from a Youtube video of a performance at WTJU in Charlottesville, VA.
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