Waldensian Winery

Hours of Operation: Thursday through Sunday 1:00pm - 6:00pm

Waldensian heritage is rich with wine (certainly not the worst historic trait to have).

Centuries ago, in the Cottian Alps, west of Torino, Italy and in the Western Piedmont of Italy, the Waldensians learned the craft of creating great wines. One reason that Historic Valdese was favored by Waldensian setters is the terrain, climate and soil composition here was similar to their homes in Italy.

And today, these wine-making skills of are preserved by Waldensian Heritage Wines, located a couple of miles north of downtown Valdese. The processes visitors can witness at the Winery reflect a combined 250 years experience in the making of wine.

Built in 1930 of local field rock and timbers, the Winery is a 4,000 square foot building exemplifying life in the 1930s and a look at the manual operation of producing quality wines by using old world technologies, coupled with some modern equipment and innovations that produce wines that have a "true taste of the grape."

The grape-wine process is mostly manual – a year-round cycle that includes crushing the grapes, fermenting, filtering, blending, bottling, and labeling. No wine is bottled from bulk storage until there is a need or sold until it has at least one year of aging because, to quote an old adage, "Life is too short to drink bad wine."

Specialty wines include Concord, Niagara, Seyval, Vudal, Cayguga, Delware and Catawba. Three of their bottles are original and five wines are blends from dry to sweet.

The Winery has available a presentation vineyard and an outside covered "boccia" (lawn bowling) court with an adjacent covered seating area.

There are no salaried or paid workers at the Winery. All production, distribution, marketing and tours are with volunteers. Of course there are some side benefits to working in a small winery. Besides the free wine-tasting held after production runs, there is the camaraderie and fellowship found only through a cooperative effort such as this.

Visitors are welcome to join a conducted tour along with tasting various wines and an opportunity for purchasing. The Winery is available for parties, meetings, reunions, wedding events, or any scheduled gathering of friends. It is located at 4950 Villar Lane, NE in Valdese.

Please contact our Tourism Director, Barbara Hefner, anytime with questions about any facet of visiting Valdese. Phone 828.879.2126 or e-mail at bhefner@ci.valdese.nc.us.