92 Acres.

Overview

Drive out Taylors Gap Road, past the point where the shoulder narrows and the mailboxes thin out, and the pavement gives way to the kind of country that Crozet people know by heart: pasture folding into wooded ridgeline, the Blue Ridge stacked up blue and hazy behind it. Somewhere along that road is a barn, a bar, and a working farm that has quietly become the birthplace of one of the region's bourbons. This is 92 Acres, a family-owned distillery, winery, and meadery in the foothills just outside Charlottesville, close enough to Crozet that it belongs on any list of places worth the short drive west.

The farm is where Ragged Branch Bourbon comes from, and the tasting room pours it alongside the property's own variety of spirits. That is the anchor of the whole operation. You come for a glass of something that was made, in some real sense, on the land you are looking at while you drink it.

In the tasting room

The room itself is a cozy one, the kind built for lingering rather than turning tables. There is a bar, there are cocktails, and there is a view that does a lot of the work no interior design ever could. The distillery describes it plainly as a great environment with a fantastic view, and out here that is not marketing language so much as a statement of fact: the mountains are right there, and the light late in the afternoon does what it does.

What sets the pour list apart is provenance. The bourbon on offer is Ragged Branch, born on this farm, and around it 92 Acres builds its own range of spirits and a rotating slate of featured cocktails. It is a distillery that also makes wine and mead, which means a table here can accommodate the whiskey drinker and the wine drinker and the person who wanted to try something they have never had before, all in one round.

The hours reward the unhurried. The tasting room is open Thursday through Monday, closed Tuesday and Wednesday, with a run of afternoons into evening: Thursday noon to 6, Friday and Saturday noon to 8, Sunday noon to 6, and Monday a shorter 4 to 8. It is an easy place to point a weekend afternoon at, and the Monday evening window is a quiet, civilized note in a week that has usually run out of good options by then.

Farm, barn, and beyond

Part of the appeal is simply that 92 Acres is a farm, and it looks and feels like one. There is a barn on the property, there is open land, and the whole thing sits amid the mountains rather than adjacent to a parking lot. It is a distillery you experience outdoors as much as in.

The operation runs a regular events calendar, so the tasting room is not the only reason to check in before you go — there is often something on. And for anyone who would rather not turn around and drive home after a few pours, 92 Acres offers a place to stay on the property, which turns a tasting-room visit into an overnight in the foothills. Between the spirits, the wine, the mead, the events, and the lodging, it functions less like a bar you stop at and more like a small destination you set aside an afternoon or a night for.

It is also part of the broader tasting culture out here — 92 Acres is a stop on the Charlottesville Ale Trail's wider orbit of makers, and it sits comfortably alongside the wineries, cideries, and breweries that have made this corner of Albemarle worth wandering through with a designated driver and no particular schedule.

Getting there

92 Acres is at 1015 Taylors Gap Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903, off in the country between Charlottesville and Crozet. You can reach the tasting room at (434) 429-4392, and hours, the events calendar, the featured cocktails, and lodging details all live on the distillery's site at 92acres.com. Given the road and the hours, it is worth a look before you set out — but the short version is simple: a farm, a view, and a bourbon that started right there in the hills.

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