Wine Tours Monday thru Saturday typically at 11:00 am, 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm or by special appointments.

Your wine tour starts in the Wine Cellar of our 1892 building. The grapes are delivered to our back door on Trinity Street direct from the vineyard. In order to construct our winery in 2002 a midlevel floor was removed and the cellar floor excavated to allow for the height of the fermentation tanks. The wine grapes are in harvest bins containing around 1,500 pounds. The grapes are sorted in the field during harvest so only the most outstanding grapes are picked at the peak of perfection and used to make our wine. The harvest bins are transported by fork-lift and are dumped into the crusher de-stemmer using a rotator device.

The grapes are separated from their stems and are crushed to release the juice. After crushing the grapes for white and rosé wines are pumped into the press. The press has a bladder inside that inflates and squeezes the juice out of the grapes. The juice is then pumped to a stainless steel tank for storage and to allow for solids to settle to the bottle of the tank. The grapes used to make red wine are crushed and de-stemmed and then pumped into the stainless steel tanks to ferment on their skins.

Winemaker Ben Webb decides which yeast to be used for each type of wine grape after extensive testing. Old North State continues to lead the way in quality control and testing from the vineyard to the bottle. Our wines are tested extensively so that you will be able to enjoy the same quality wine year after year. Our varietals, with the year of harvest on the label, will vary slightly in taste from year to year due to the weather and other factors controlled by Mother Nature.