Cavender Creek Grape Farm Wines

 Winery Owners Raymond & Donna Castleberry

On their way to visit some of North Georgia's more famous wineries, tourists have discovered Cavender Creek Vineyards, a little gem of a winery that's producing some of the area's better wines. Cavender Creek Vineyards, Dahlonega's newest winery, produces a line of white and red wines, including best sellers Donkey Hotie Red, Dulcinea White, One-Eyed Jack and Jack Ass Red wines.

While the wine names and the donkey-design bottle labels are whimsical, the wines are serious, delicious, and destined to join the long list of award-winning wines produced in the Dahlonega region. The winery's labels have become so popular that last year four of the ten labels sold out before the end of the season.

The Cavender Creek winery, about eight miles from downtown Dahlonega, is more of a grape farm than a vineyard, says the owners Donna and Raymond Castleberry. The couple, both retired Gwinnett County school teachers, hand-craft their wines, using an old fashioned approach. All the wine making, bottling and labeling take place in the wine cellar below the vineyards' rustic tasting room.

Built next to a centuries old log cabin, now guest house, the tasting room is at the end of a country road off Cavender Creek Rd. As visitors wind down the single-lane dirt road to the tasting room, they drive by acres of grape vines, including the hard to grow petit manseng grapes vines, and a equipment-littered, neighboring farm.

Once inside the Cavendar Creek winery, wine tasters can walk up to the oversize bar for a free wine tasting where knowledgeable wine servers pour tastings and provide detailed descriptions of the wines.

Off the tasting room is a large deck with a view of fields and woods. Here visitors can sip wine and look for the owner's pet donkey( the inspiration for the winery's unique label.) Also on patrol at the winery (and warmly welcoming guests) are the Castleberry's two beautiful white Great Pyrenees.