Loving Cup Vineyard and Winery
September 27, 2024. The remnants of Hurricane Helene were still making the outdoors miserable when we visited Loving Cup Vineyard and Winery in North Garden. We really wanted to visit because Loving Cup is the only certified organic winery in Virginia. How do they accomplish this, and how is their wine? To get to the winery, we drove south from Charlottesville on Route 29 about 20 minutes and turned onto Sutherland Road. We found parts of the gravel road carved with ruts from the heavy rain. One section was washed away, and we had to negotiate around police tape that marked the hazard. On such a lousy weather day, it was no surprise that we were the only visitors, but our good fortune to have the undivided attention of founder, Werner Hambsch, and could spend some time with his son, winemaker Karl Hambsch. What follows is some of their story: Werner is a big, bespectacled, and balding rollie bear of man, who came to the United States from near Heidelberg, Germany as a