Drinking in the Yadkin Valley, North Carolina’s first designated wine region
THE EARLY SUMMER CORN is about ve feet tall in the Yadkin Valley as I look out from the tasting room patio at Jones von Drehle winery. The stalks are at the height where you can see them rustle from hundreds of yards away, but can’t determine where in the distance grapes become corn. Occupied by conversation, coffee, and breakfast sandwiches from Amelie’s, my friend Lauren and I made the drive to this beautiful view in just less than two hours on I-77.
We’re greeted in the tasting room with a simple introduction to the wines: They’re dry, French-style wines. It’s a welcome statement for two red wine drinkers, an early indication that, although this isn’t Napa, we may be drinking well. No muscadine here. We taste eight wines, including a selection of the estate’s reserve wines ($16). They’re a great starting point for the young vineyard, planted in 2009, and the varieties—from viognier to cabernet sauvignon—show the area’s versatility.
The Yadkin Valley is an American Viticultural Area, which means it’s a federally designated wine-growing region, thanks to Ed and Charlie Shelton, the owners of Shelton Vineyards, less than 30 minutes away. They began the process of applying for the Yadkin Valley AVA in 2000. The brothers, who amassed a fortune in commercial building construction, found a love for wine during travels abroad. They purchased a swath of land in their hometown of Dobson, an area known for tobacco and dairy farms, in 1994, and planted their first grapevines in 1999.
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