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Cabin Fever Got You? Visit The Newest Tasting Rooms Around The State!
Tired of the snow? Cabin fever finally getting you down? Time to get out of the house and head for one of New Jersey’s 40 wineries where the tasting rooms are cozy, the company is friendly and the winemakers will let you sample their best vintages to your heart’s content.
Many of their tasting rooms are brand new, cozy as home with pot belly wood stoves and fireplaces, warm candlelit corners and post and beam barrel rooms where you can savor an award winning red or white wine produced right here in the Garden State.
For example, Bellview Winery in Landisville opened its new tasting just weeks ago—a 1,600 square foot café with touches of Tuscany. Cozy up to the wine bar or gather at the balcony café tables overlooking the main room. There you can sample Bellview’s 20 different varietals, all of them produced on the 30 acres of vineyard surrounding the tasting room.
The new tasting room at Bellview Winery in Landisville. |
The balcony above the main tasting room
features café tables
and seating to enjoy Bellview’s award winning varietals. |
Literally five minutes away in Hammonton is the DiMatteo Vineyard which has just moved from its original building a half mile away to its newly opened facility with 900 square feet of tasting room. Frank DiMatteo has been working in the family vineyards nearly his entire life. Check out his gift baskets which include a choice of varietals and fruit wines along with homemade Italian pastas, sauces and farm fresh vegetables.
DiMatteo Winery’s new tasting room is a study in rustic knotty pine. |
Head to Hunterdon County and you can experience the international award winning Hopewell Valley Vineyards with its new, dual-level 2,500 square foot tasting room. There you can corner a café table with a vineyard view through a floor to ceiling window, gather at the upstairs or downstairs wine bar or settle in at one of the twenty bistro tables to sample Hopewell’s wide selection of wines. The day we visited the new tasting room there was a local artisan cheese maker, a chocolatier and jewelry maker tucked into a corner selling their handcrafted products.
The new tasting room at Hopewell Valley features
a wine bar and café with plenty of casual seating. |
Guests at Hopewell Valley’s new tasting room and café
try one of the winery’s award winning varietals. |
Not far away in the quaint farming town of Robbinsville, just west of Hightstown is the Silver Decoy Winery. Park your car, head to the brand new tasting room and you’ll catch the scent of wood smoke wafting from the winery’s pot belly stove out and over nearly 25 acres of vines. Inside to greet you there’s a new, cozy up bar, an old shuffleboard salvaged from an Irish pub and Chester, an affable, 13-year-old, black lab who looks like he’s been curling up on the plank floor forever. The giant widescreen TV on the wall seems frozen on sports channels, mutely casting images of athletes on the wine drinking crowd beneath it. The day we were there, customers were sipping the award winning vintages and watching the Olympic curling competitions. Most, however, were at the bar or seated at old oak wine barrels that have now been retired and serve as tables for Silver Decoy’s visitors.
Patrons enjoy Silver Decoy’s award winning wines in the Robbinsville winery’s new tasting room. Wood burning stove at left adds a glow to the cozy room. |
Silver Decoy Owner Mark Carduner at his newly opened
tasting room in Robbinsville. |
Affable, 13-year-old black lab Chester is already a fixture
in the new tasting room at Silver Decoy Winery in Robbinsville. |
Down the road in New Egypt in Ocean County is the baby yet biggest of them all, the 20,000 square foot Laurita Winery, a haven of warmth, light and soft music set in the middle of 40 acres of snow-covered vineyards. Here’s there are two floor-to-ceiling brick fireplaces, one set square between two large wine bars, the other in a large event room with French doors overlooking the vineyard. Both wood fires are crackling and visitors are lounging and sipping wine around them. Upstairs in this massive post and beam structure is another level with a vintage bar salvaged from an ancient Manhattan pub with bistro tables -- and more wine.
The fireplace in the event room at Laurita Winery. |
Guests at Laurita Winery chat while a fire blazes in the tasting room’s hearth. |
These are just the newest tasting rooms. There are more than 30 other wineries scattered around the state, each with its own ambience, choice of wines and vistas that vary from mountainside terrain to rolling farmland. Easiest way to see what appeals to you is to go to the website of the Garden State Wine Growers Association and click on the list of wineries throughout the state. From there you can click on each of their websites for more information and photos of the various vineyards.
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