Visiting Georgia Wine Country...Who Knew!

Feb 25, 2024

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Have you ever heard the term, "I'm not outdoorsy, I'm outsidey"? It's in reference to a friend or family member who would love to sit on a nice covered patio with a glass of wine and a nice appetizer and hear all about your camping trip last weekend, but they never, under any circumstances, have any intention of going, camping, hiking, kayaking or otherwise exploring outside with you at all. I have many people like this in my life ( and I value them), but when I find true outdoorsy people I hang on to them tightly. In the last few years two of my girlfriends and I have started a tradition of planning a long girls weekend in the fall. The only parameters we set are it must be some place we've never been and there MUST be wine tasting and vineyards!

So needless to say in early 2023 when my friend Rhiana texted to say she had found our next girls trip location in Georgia...I was surprised. Georgia? Wine Country? Add to that, she'd found a cute little Bavarian town with a cabin we could rent for the weekend which happened to also coincide with their annual October Fest celebration! Georgia October Fest? Bavarian Village? Sounds good to me! So off we went on the earliest Southwest flight we could catch to Atlanta and by 11am we were seated at a restaurant in ATL downing our first adult beverage of the weekend! We'd decided this pit stop was necessary after spending a slightly embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out how to operate the Tesla we'd rented for the weekend. The car we'd originally rented was not available at the moment and it would be about a two or three hour wait. So when the woman at the rental car desk said she had a Tesla available for us to take with no wait, our stomachs got the better of us and we went for it. Turns out we probably should have asked a few follow up questions such as, how do you open the doors? Where is the key? How do you turn it on? And maybe the most important of all, are there any charging stations in northern GA? Fast forward to 11pm that night and us driving down the dark creepy back roads of the Blue Ridge Mountains looking for a Tesla Charging station. We would find out later in the weekend that there is an app for that kind of thing, lol.

Despite our Tesla tribulations, we did indeed find ALL of the wine in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia. We moved from one amazing vineyard to the next, stopped and enjoyed the smaller mom and pop tasting rooms, went on a wine cave tour with the Don Corelone of the Georgia wine scene (100% true, mostly), partook in the local October fest celebrations and perused the local antique shops. And if that's all the weekend had turned out to be, I would have been perfectly happy. But unbeknownst to me, Georgia was hiding one last little secret that would turn out to be my favorite part of the trip... well other than the secret underground tasting room with the Don...of course.

Remember earlier when I said how much I value friends that enjoy outdoor activities as much as I do? Those activities can vary from friend to friend. Some enjoy the extremes of outdoor adventure like skiing, backpacking and swimming with sharks. Some enjoy the more leisurely pursuits of garden tours and nature walks. The friends I was on this trip with, turned out to be the exact two people I needed to be with while exploring these beautiful landscapes.Turns out the blue Ridge Mountains have about a million waterfalls, some pretty remarkable views and beautiful flora to be examined. We went on a few different hikes that weekend. All involving multiple waterfalls. We stopped and looked at every cool mushroom that looked it was right out of Super Mario Brothers, we took pictures of wild herbs and flowers and more than one picture of scat to be identified at a later date! We scrambled up the sides of the tallest waterfalls and down the sides of smaller ones hidden from the main trail. We really just explored. Like we were young girls just bopping around in the woods playing make believe. Nobody was in a rush, no one got impatient or annoyed when someone else stopped to take a photo of yet another mushroom. We were all on the same page that weekend and it relaxed and rejuvenated me completely.

Needless to say, all three of us would highly recommend visiting Georgia wine country for any girls weekend. Whether that involves wine tasting, antiquing, hiking and camping or renting a cozy cabin to hole up in with your favorite book, Georgia certainly has All The things you need to have the perfect weekend getaway!