Burnbrae Vineyards
June 21, 2026. In one of our travels last year, we were sampling some wine in Nelson County south of Charlottesville when we encountered a couple who gave us a business card for Burnbrae Vineyards. It’s unusual, to say the least, that people would think enough of a winery to hand out business cards even while visiting a different winery. But it made such an impression on me that we added Burnbrae to our travel plans for this trip. Heading north and east from Roanoke there is a little gap in the Blue Ridge where Route 460 squeezes between the mountains. That is how we left the Shenandoah Valley and drove on to Bedford County and the town of Forest where we found Burnbrae Vineyards. Forest is a close-in suburb to Lynchburg. This old cattle farm had been in the Gerhardt family since the 1930’s before brothers Ed and Paul Gerhardt bought-out “the old people” and re-purposed it as a vineyard. The tasting room and public area fo...