Wine Education Experience with Tasting and Picnic Near Alexandria

A fun, informative tour followed by a relaxed wine tasting of some lovely wines and a picnic in a beautiful setting. Loved it!

It was a lot of fun! Make sure to upgrade to the picnic for $10 instead of $35!

Great time. Learned a lot about the long history of this wine maker and how the wines are produced. Tasting included 9 different wines and the picnic after was nice. Try the sangria!

We thoroughly enjoyed our tour of Philip Carter winery. General manager Nora gave us a wonderful tour full of history and knowledge of the winemaking process. The wines could stand up next to any California or European wines, they had so much depth of flavor. The grounds were full of people just enjoying the perfect weather and the laid back, welcoming atmosphere. Highly recommend!

It was a beautiful location and we lucked out with weather so late in the fall. The tour part was brief, but interesting, and we ended up sampling 4 whites, 3 reds, 1 dessert white, 1 port, and a wine-infused chocolate (also in their gift shop) all on top of the little picnic basket they had prepped for us afterwards which included a choice among 4 cheeses (we did a 4 person tour so each couple got one block of a flavor of cheese which we shared), each basket had a summer-sausage in it, along with two sleeves of ritz crackers, two tabs of Dove dark chocolate, wine glasses and a picnic blanket--although we sat at one of the picnic benches; there is also corn-hole/beanbag toss games set up onsite. Wine you can purchase for your picnic separately either by the glass or bottle, and at the end of the tour we got a complementary wine glass to take home for each of us. Their shop also has really neat recycled parts of wine barrels, either for you to purchase to turn into your own crafts or pre-made into decor or furniture. Overall a really enjoyable way to spend an afternoon! There's a little nearby town (The Plains) with a farmers market, a couple antique shops, tea shops, etc., which was fun to do after the event.

The tour was interesting and wine was tasty, followed by a nice and relaxing picnic. Our guide was excellent.

My husband and I did the private education tour and had a wonderful time! The staff were friendly and knowledgeable and the venue was beautiful! We loved our picnic basket of crackers, cheese, sausage and chocolate!! We would definitely go back again.

Emily was a wonderful tour guide, her knowledge made the experience special.

My husband and I did not know what to expect as we redeemed our gift certificate for a private wine education tour and tasting, but were pleasantly surprised! Even though we did not visit at the optimal time for winery tours (late November), our guide, Lindy, made it all worthwhile. So much so, in fact, that we plan to go back before we are transferred from this area of the country.

The private tour at the Philip Carter Winery was excellent. We were escorted through the vineyards by the wine maker himself and were provided with a very informative and interesting view of wine production in America, Virginia and at Philip Carter in particular. The private tasting that followed was one of the best that we have experienced. Our hostess for the tasting was very knowledgeable and entertaining! We loved everything about this experience.

Tour guide was exceptional, and I enjoyed the experience. Was especially good as winery was in harvest mode, so we got to see the vines packed full of grapes and taste them right off the vine.

It was a lot more fun than we thought it would be. The guide gave a bit of history mixed in with the wine making process. The snack/lunch was MUCH better than the kayak trip lunch. The tasting was personal - actually the overall experience was very personal and quite pleasant without any of the pretension that we've experienced at other wineries. Lovely time - thanks Carter Philip winery and especially Ben, our tour guide! The Burwells

Ben was a very knowledgable tour guide at Philip Carter Winery. There was a very large group of people there for a tasting and we thought we were going to be with all of them. But then our private guide paged us and took us on a behind the scenes tour of the winery starting in the cellar, explaining the process of wine making and the concept behind all the different types of barrels sourced from around the world. Then, we got a tour of the vinyards, with a great horticultural lesson about the saplings and the grafting of two species together to make the vines look the way they do. We then proceeded inside for the tasting where we sampled many wines, including some that were not on the list (we felt VIP). After it was over, we had our free picnic lunch outside on the benches in front of the vines, along with Burt, the cat. All in all, it was an exceptional experience. They ran out of wine glasses to give us our two free glasses, but we are told they will be mailed free of charge to us later this week. Thumbs up from both my husband and myself.

This was our first experience at a winery. It was absolutely FABULOUS! Everything was as stated in the package deal. Very beautiful location and extremely nice employees! We would recommend this tour to others and especially the WINE!!

Lovely winery, wine tour and cheese board.

beautiful day to explore the winery and environs

Very nice experience. Not exactly what I had expected but fun and educational. Our guide was great.

Beautiful setting, knowledgeable hosts, good selection of flavorful wines We would recommend this to our friends

The experience started a little rough with our reservation not being in the system. However, the person who greeted us took care of the situation and just added us to an already scheduled tour. The tour itself was informative and entertaining. The wine tasting itself was great, with a lot of very good red and white wines.

A few things made this not a fully great experience. First, we expected to be a private tour as indicated but we were not. We were part of a larger tour (6). Also it seems the winery is doing their production offsite so most machinery, barrels, etc were covered, dirty spaces or nothing on-site to see. While our tour guide was fantastic at describing and very knowledgeable, the tour felt a bit lack luster. We did enjoy the wine tasting and the picnic lunch. I would caution that this experience is not as advertised.

It was nice but not worth the price and not as advertised. Both this experience and their website says this is a private tour for your party, but we were on a group tour. The “private wine education tour” we paid for was $110 for 2 people and said it was a private tour, but we were on a group tour that according to the website was $60 for 2 people. So we paid $50 more than we needed to. Plus, the picnic was nice but did not include the Virginia chutney and chocolates as advertised. We also did not receive the complimentary cork screw and tasting glasses. Overall a nice place but would not recommend paying for this tour.

I personally don't think this was worth the price paid.