Visiting Charlottesville

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/richmond-and-charlottesville-brewery-tour.660463/

Lotta good recommendations in the link above.

 

I found the winery scene to be much better than the brewery scene in and around Charlottesville.

 

5 years ago I would have said Beer Run was the best craft beer bar in Charlottesville. I think it is still good but probably not the best. They also have a good bottle shop. The owners of Beer Run opened a beer garden type bar called Kardinal Hall which has a pretty good tap list. I would use Untapped once you are here and check out the various tap lists at all the many bars and breweries and see what sounds good to you.

 

With OH and Finback mentioned I'm guess you're into the hazies. If you've got time for a 25 minute drive from C'Ville head to Basic City in Waynesboro. They make, by far, the best Hazy / NE-Style IPAs in the area. Bask DIPA is so good! None of the breweries are going to blow you away but they all do very good beers. I like to recommend the smaller / less well known breweries, which do very good beers, since most of the recs will be the Three Notch'd, Starr Hills, etc of the area. So Decipher, Rockfish and Reason would be my suggestions. Reason has been around 3 or 4 years now and their owner / brewer used to be the Director of brewery Operations at Maine Beer. He's the one who came up with the recipe for Lunch. Deciper and Rockfish both have a wide variety of styles (Barleywine, Stouts, Scottish Ale, Brown Ale, Red IPA, Gose, Kolsch, Baltic Porter, etc) so you won't get a taplist full of IPAs. I will say, however, that the NE IPA from Rockfish is my favorite IPA in C'Ville.

As for craft beer bars, Beer Run is still the best though it doesn't have the luster they used to have. Easily the best bottle shop in town and they do get some rare stuff on draft on time to time but they typically have a solid lineup.

As mentioned above by @lrainey , definitely check Untappd when you're in town or as you planned. Just about all of the breweries are Verified Venues and update regularly so you can see what's on tap. Beer Run is as well and they update their new bottle / can deliveries for what they have to-go for retail.

 

Agree with this.
Went to Cville a few months back and while there are a handful of breweries, nothing that impressive, imo.
I think we enjoyed Rockfish the best, which is very close to Kardinal Hall. Lots of very good food and wine around though.

 

Agreed on both. Do the wineries during the day and then mix in the beer around dinner.

 

Since it looks like wineries are hitting my recs of those would be Veritas, Blenheim, King Family, Pollock.

 

Left out Keswick Vineyard. They are also very good and have a couple beers as well which are contracted through Champion Brewing.

 

We went to Jefferson and Veritas and highly enjoyed both. The former was bring your own food, the latter serves food. Great views at both. We really weren't expecting much from the wine, but it was surprisingly good.

And no Trump winery for us either.

 

I am not into wine but our boys are and they like King Family and Veritas. We just went to Hazy Mountain winery/brewery and the beer was pretty good but the view was worth the trip. It is on Route 151 so once you are out there you have lots of options for beer and wine and you are half way to Basic City brewery which is making some of the best IPAs in the area. I agree with @TomCat11 fresh Bask is outstanding

 

I always enjoy the view from the patio at Blue Mountain, and the beer is solid. However, on a trip a few weeks ago we checked out Hazy Mountain afterwards (5 mins from BM), and the view is incredible up there. Didn't have time to try any beer or wine, but agree that the view alone is worth the trip.