La Tanya Eiland is from Compton, Calif. and has a passion for wine. So when she moved to Atlanta in 2013, she asked locals the question she always asks when she travels anywhere new: “Where is wine country?”
In Atlanta, the most common answer was “north.”
About 90 miles north of Atlanta, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the city of Dahlonega has a dozen wine tasting rooms and eight wineries. Nearby communities, including Helen, Cleveland and Sautee Nacoochee, are also home to several establishments that offer local, regional and international wines. In total, North Georgia has more than 40 wineries and tasting rooms in a region that is becoming an increasingly popular destination for day trips and weekends away.
Georgia actually has a long history with vineyards. The state was reportedly the sixth-largest wine grape producer in the United States before Georgia Prohibition came into effect in 1907. When Prohibition ended, Georgia’s wine industry struggled. It wasn’t until 1983, when a Farm Winery bill was passed in the Georgia Legislature, that the state’s wine business began to turn around.
Today, the state has more than 70 wineries, up from about 45 a decade ago. Wine tourism has become so popular that it has spawned several wine-adjacent businesses like tour operators, restaurants and adventure companies that take people on hikes, bikes and more. Winery owners said that the pandemic ushered an increase in traffic from people who couldn’t travel abroad and were eager to be outdoors. As local outdoor travel boomed, wineries benefited.
“I remember thinking that the people in the Atlanta area really don’t know about this beautiful wine country north of us and if they know about it, many, many of them haven’t gotten to visit it,” said Ms. Eiland, who runs a wine tour company in North Georgia called Pop the Cork Wine Tours, with her husband, Chuck. It is one of the few Black-owned companies in Georgia’s wine industry.
Touring troves of wineries
Pop the Cork began operating in 2015 with one 12-passenger van. Today, the company has four vans and an SUV that run tours every day. Thursday to Sunday are the most popular days for tours, which start either in Stone Mountain or a parking lot in the Dunwoody suburb of Atlanta. The Dunwoody location is easily reachable by public transit and by car. Guests can arrange to be picked up at a location of their choice if they book a private tour.
The company’s public tours, where…
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