Sunshine Ridge in Gainesville was opened in Spring 2021 by owners Maria and Tom Rafferty and Tom Schrade. They had recently bought the property and are new to the wine business. The winery is reached off of Route 15 on Buckland Mills Road, some 10 miles off of Interstate 66. Sunshine Ridge also serves beer, made for now at a nearby brewery.
Wine: Tier II. While Sunshine Ridge is obviously a new endeavor, with its first Vidal Blanc plantings just established, it is leaning on support from the high-end Winery at Bull Run in its early years. Grapes are being purchased from Bull Run and other sources, and Winery at Bull Run winemaker Ashton Lough is Sunshine Ridge’s winemaker. Highlights of the first-year output from the winery are the Meritage, Norton and Chardonnay. Unusually for Virginia wineries, Sunshine Ridge also offers bottles of out-of-state wines for visitors. The winery has yet to enter tasting competitions.
Setting: Two stars. The winery takes full advantage of Lake Manassas, which is only now opening up to wineries along its edges. Sunshine Ridge has the lake on three sides of the property, and superb views of the water. There is a large lawn with picnic tables for good weather, from where the lakeview can be admired. Indoors windows from the tasting room also provide Lake Manassas views. As a professional landscaper, partner Tom Schrade went to great lengths to maximize sight lines to the water. For beer drinkers, a separate room is made up as a pub. There are snacks for purchase, and food can be sourced from food trucks often on the property. Dogs are allowed, though only outside, and children are not allowed.
Stories. Lake Manassas – artificial, like all Virginia lakes. Visitors to the Winery at Sunshine Ridge Farm will certainly enjoy sipping their wine while admiring views of Lake Manassas. Unless one lives in one of the many developments surrounding the Lake or is golfing at one of the two lakeside resorts, it is otherwise hard to see: the only marina allowing access shut down decades ago, no boats are allowed, and there is no public shoreline. Lake Manassas was created as a drinking water reservoir for Manassas and surrounding towns, with a dam blocking the flow of Broad Run from the west; the dam was completed in 1969, covers 800 acres, and stores 5 billion gallons. It makes for a nice sight, and it is completely artificial. Few Virginia residents realize the fact, but the same artificiality of Lake Manassas is true of 99% of all the many lakes in the states. There are only two truly natural lakes in Virginia, Lake Drummond by the Great Dismal Swamp, and Mountain Lake in the southwest. Every other lake in the state, whether large (like Lake Anna or Smith Mountain Lake) or small, were created by the building of dams. In fact, good luck finding a river somewhere in the state that hasn’t had a dam built on its at sometime in the last four centuries. Dams were built to provide power for mills in the colonial era, whether gristmills or sawmills; later, they came to be built to create drinking water reservoirs like Lake Manassas, and eventually for electricity – either for hydropower plants or to provide cooling water for fossil fuel or nuclear-powered generation plants. The smaller and older mill dams have for the most part fallen into disuse and eroded away. But a lake created by nature? Very, very hard to find in Virginia. Which doesn’t make the artificial ones, like Lake Manassas, any less enjoyable.