Hill Top Berry Farm & Winery

After visiting four wonderful wineries and great microbrewery, searched Unilocal for a different type of winery. We found Hill Top Berry farm. What a delight! This family winery is actually a meadery, with the most delicious fruit based wines /​meads. Each mead distinctly different– not just a Apple w honey, Cranberry w honey, etc. Every pour was unique. The seasonal meads are sooo good, especially the hickory smoked Dragon’s Breath! Buy a mixed case that includes the Pumpkin Spice, Sangria, Dragon’s Breath.

I can’t believe I had not posted a review sooner! This winery is AMAZING! There’s wine and then there’s hilltops wine! If you love berry favors and don’t want a fake sugar flavored cheap wine you will fall in love instantly. If you like good wine in general you will fall in love. Nelson co. Is full of wineries but no other is like hilltop and that’s just a true fact. The people see amazing they have honestly become like pals. I’m greeted with the warmest welcome and always remembered and feel appreciated. Beautiful surroundings if you wanna spend some time not just the tasting and purchasing. My fav winery hands down! Great affordable prices and a very wide selection to choose from.

We’ve been back to visit Hill Top Berry Farm & Winery several times in the past year.
I’d had the opportunity to take several of my friends here and introduce them to the place and to Meads, Melomels, Metheglins, Rhodomels, Cysers, Pyments, and Perrys. My favorites are the Viking era honey mead, the Pumpkin Melomel, and the Dragon’s Breath Hot Pepper Mead.
It’s a lot of fun to taste beverages that are rooted in ancient history — and are quite tasty!
They also make a number of fruit wines that are just plain amazing! Especially the Red Raspberry wine!

First winery visit on the tour. They only have fruit wines, but sure are good and tasty. Left with a bottle.
The tasting fees are waived with bottle purchase. Didn’t know that until afterwards so it had no influence the purchase decision.
Friendly folks, tasty wines. Put it on your list!

We were staying at Wintergreen resort and stopped by to check out the selection. We did the tasting and we left with a Voyage, Raspberry wine and Dragon’s blood.

Very informative tasting with delicious seasonal wine and mead. Only 4 $ for a tasting or it’s free with the purchase of a bottle. Very friendly staff, beautiful winery

We stopped here on a warm afternoon in November and were greeted as soon as we stepped in the door. There was a tasting in progress, so my group spent a few minutes browsing the retail section — local honey, fun goods, ect.
We lined up for the tasting and got a quick lesson in «true fruit» wines and the difference between wine and mead. Their wines are sweet, quirky, and irreverent. They have fun names and don’t take themselves too seriously. One of the varietals has a donation to a local animal non-​profit built into the purchase price — a worthy cause for sure.
Prices are reasonable and they kindly waived the tasting fee for the whole party when one of us purchased a bottle. They take credit cards and payment was easy and fast. Swing by if you’re doing a Nelson County Booze Cruise!

Our ABSOLUTE favorite! The people are wonderful and the wines and meads are PHENOMENAL! We can’t come up this way without stopping in for at least 6 bottles of pumpkin mead (Hunters Moon) this time we left with a case of variety :-)

Wonderful sweet wines and mead! Attentive staff in a beautiful setting. And the tasting room is dog friendly!

This place is small compared to the other wineries in the area. The owners are friendly and dogs are allowed in the tasting room. This is not your typical winery, they specialized in fruit wines (apple, pear, strawberry, raspberry, BlackBerry, blueberry. you get the idea). The tasting room is small and one tasting at a time, each can accommodate a group of 10 people. Their wines are very light and sweet. To me they taste more like sparkling wine or wine cooler. Not your typical merlot or zinfandel.
The tasting is $ 4 and will be waived if you purchased a bottle. Check in with Unilocal and get a free wine glass.

Hands down our favorite winery in the Charlottesville area! They even make Mead just like the Vikings and Romans! We love this place! Hill Top is fun by a family who are so nice and friendly! Please come here!

Love all the fruit wines and meads. If you like sweeter wines, this is the place for you! Small, family-​owned business with all family members working in the winery. Everyone we’ve interacted with has been kind and friendly. Your tasting fee ($ 4/​person) is waived if you buy a bottle of wine. If you follow them on Facebook, they sometimes post special events where they will do food pairings (cheese, chocolate, sausage, Etc.) with their Wines. They are always introducing new wines too, which I love.

Showed up this morning before they where supposed to open. Was treated to a tasting by one of the owners, fantastic sweet wines. Left an hour later with 5 bottles of fruit wine and Meade. So much fun. Such a good experience.

Stopped here yesterday for a fruit wine and mead tasting. Left with as many bottles as we could justify buying. We will definitely we back.

Sorry, I wanted to enjoy this place. The scenery was quaint (except for the riding mower racing up and down the property). The servers were very nice.
…but here it goes:
–we found the place okay, but they could use a decent sign off of 151.
–the server was nice, but I felt rushed through the tasting… and we were the only ones there.
–the wines… way too sweet… all of them. They seemed to be out of the dryer wines, which might have helped.
With all of the wineries in the area, it was nice to try something different, but I will not be going back of my own volition.

The grounds are beautiful and the wines are delicious! I enjoyed most of the wines I tried and left with a bottle of honey wine and a bottle of melon wine, which is incredibly good and I can’t wait to
enjoy it on a warm evening.

A delightful Medieval themed winery that specializes in delicious sweet mead and offers variety along Nelson 151.
I’m typically not a huge fan of sweet wines, but Hill Top Berry Farm & Winery may have won me over. Just off Nelson 151 Hill Top offers a wide variety of fruit wines and honey mead. The interior has a long tasting bar with a Medieval theme and a large sitting room in the back.
My girlfriend and I did the tasting (tip: Use you Virginia Wine Pass for two free tastings and check-​in on Unilocal for a free glass), which was roughly $ 4 and included 7 – 8 different wines/​mead. They also occasionally offer tastings with food pairings (check their website), which are roughly $ 10 and includes the glass. If you’re not the biggest fan of dry wines you’re going to be very much in luck — I enjoyed the Virginia Raspberry Wine, the Cranberry Table Wine, and the Dragon’s Breath (spicy!). Our pourer was personable and knowledgeable about the wines.
Overall, it was nice to try something new along Nelson 151, and the mead is good enough here to warrant a visit if you’re in the area.

Came here on my birthday, as both my fiancé and I are big fans of their meads after trying them at one of the Virginia Wine Festivals. The staff was friendly and knowledgeable. The tastings were delicious and included some wonderful pairings (not usual practice, but it happened to be a holiday open house that day).
By the glass the wines are between $ 4-​$ 8, and bottles range from $ 15-​$ 22. The $ 4 tasting fee is waived when you purchase any bottle of their selection.
The location itself is smaller, set to hold no more than 100 in the banquet hall, and about 20 max in the tasting room. They had a nice outdoor patio with picnic tables and rockers.

This is one of the few fruit vineyards on the Nelson 151 stretch. Situated amongst the rollings hills the vineyard is pastorally beautiful. I loved the porch that looked over the vines with its rocking chairs and fire pit. Very inviting. It was a bit chilly the day we visited so we could not relax outside.
The fruit wines were good and do not have a grape base. For me the best thing about Hill Top was the mead. I have never been to a vineyard with so many meads. Several are award winning. I decided to take home the Dragons Blood mead which contains pomegranates. Another which peaked my interest was the lavendar mead.
If you prefer fruit wines or mead this will stand out against the many breweries and vineyards in the area.

My husband and I ventured to Nelson county for a wine weekend at a bed and breakfast. We ran out of time on Saturday to get to this gem, but we knew that we wanted to stop here before we left the area. So, we arrived just as the tasting room opened on Sunday morning!
The tasting that was available included 3 fruit wines, and 5 meads. The fruit wines were first, and there were some interesting picks among them. There was a rather dry berry wine (fruit and dry wine in the same sentence? Shocking!). We enjoyed the apple wine enough to buy a bottle.
I will admit that we are not discerning mead drinkers. We had only had the opportunity to try mead once, and it was not particularly to our taste, but we decided to give it a try, and we’re glad we did. We ended up purchasing the Dragons’ Blood and the Pumpkin mead, we enjoyed it so much! The Pumpkin mead tasted just like a mulled wine, which we took a huge liking to last holiday season.
The theme around the winery and tasting room was very medieval, which was highly appropriate, since that is the time period to which I associate mead! There was a suit of armor in the tasting room, and there were rampart carvings above one of the signs outside the door. The dumping containers were these fabulous pottery gargoyles that were both scary and beautiful.
We’re glad we made one last stop before leaving for the weekend!