BurntShirt Vineyards

Location & Atmosphere: You must visit BurntShirt Vineyards- a 27 acre winery with excellent wines, a shopping experience to delight the senses, and a beautiful all-around venue. We call it a “quiet” winery because they do not heavily advertise or participate in large festivals, such as Great Grapes. But their wines are excellent in quality, their shopping is the best we have seen, and the setting is a great place to have a wedding, a banquet, or just stop and enjoy a glass of their wonderful wine.

The Wines: Burntshirt produces three Chardonnays. We sampled the Harvest Moon and Reserve, but did not try the unoaked. They are very different wines, but both were excellent. The Gruner Vertliner, a dry, white Austrian wine is interesting and very good, as is the Altitude 3400, a red blend of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Chambourcin. The Burntshirt Cabernet is excellent, if a bit pricey at $39 per bottle. They sell 21 different wines, all grown on the estate- we don’t know how they do it!

Events/ Shopping/ Other Amenities: BurntShirt is one of the best winery wedding venues in the state, offering six unique locations, including a huge event center, the red barn, and the barrel room. It also provides a fantastic winery-themed shopping experience. Adjacent to the parking area, there is a whole separate building full of items for purchase, many of which are wine-themed. In addition, the tasting building is chock full of items for sale. They have live music, food trucks, and other events occurring weekly.

Tastings & Tours: The tasting room, with two large tasting bars, host wine tastings, which cost $10 to sample five of the 18 wines offered for tasting, which includes a souvenir glass. A glass of wine runs between $7 and $11. While this may be a bit on the pricey side, the wines are excellent. Free tours of the winery are given daily at 2 p.m.

Value: Priced between $16 and $39 per bottle, their wines are a solid value, reasonably priced. There wasn’t a wine here we didn’t like.

Name of the Winery: Owners Lemuel and Sandra Oates named their winery after a mountain lore story of farmers who burned their fields and threw their shirts in the fire for good luck. The beautiful Hendersonville setting for this winery is a wonderful blending of gardens and vineyards.

Rating: The Burntshirt vineyard is outstanding in so many ways: quality of wine, fantastic setting for relaxing, top rate wedding venue, friendly and knowledgeable staff, and a wine oriented shopping mecca. Their event calendar is jam-packed with live music, food trucks, and other goodies. Clearly, this is a five-star winery with five-star wines, not to be missed. While Biltmore Winery (not far away in Asheville) has “tourist” stamped all over it, Burntshirt is unpretentious and down to earth. Make sure you stop by.