Monticello Wine Trail

Jefferson financed Italian winemaker Filippo Mazzei to plant vineyards less than a mile south of Monticello in 1774. Two years later, Jefferson and George Washington dispatched Mazzei to Italy to raise war funds; a Hessian cavalry officer, captured at Saratoga and imprisoned at the Charlottesville barracks, moved into Mazzei's home and turned his horses out to pasture in the infant vineyards. The vines were destroyed. It wasn't until the 1970s that a new generation of winemakers began to fulfill what was left unfinished. Today, more than 40 wineries work the Monticello AVA — the nation's 58th American Viticultural Area, designated in 1984 — across most of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Orange, and Nelson counties. In 2023, Wine Enthusiast named it Wine Region of the Year.