Medaloni Cellars

The wine list at Medaloni Cellars reads like someone dared a local winery to stop playing it safe — and they took the bet. You won't find a single bottle from California, France, or Italy here; it's all in-house, all North Carolina, and somehow all over the map in the best possible way. Kerner, Vermentino, Carignan, Petit Manseng — this is not your standard winery tasting room lineup.

Twenty-three labels split across two tiers — the Signature Series and the Flight Series — and the range is legitimately impressive for a single-producer list. On the white side, they're swinging at hybrids like Traminette and Valvin Muscat alongside more familiar Sauvignon Blanc and Viognier, which signals real experimentation, not just crowd-pleasing. The reds are equally restless: Chambourcin and Petit Verdot sit alongside Carignan and Zinfandel, grapes you'd expect to find in a Rhône cellar or a Lodi cult winery, not Winston-Salem. Rounding it out are a skin-contact white, a sparkling red, and a Muscadine Noble — that last one is either a nod to Southern tradition or a trap for unsuspecting visitors, depending on your tolerance for the grape.

By-the-glass specifics weren't confirmed during our visit, but given the winery format, it's reasonable to expect pours available across most of the list — that's typically how estate tasting rooms operate. If they're running structured flights, even better, because this is a list built for exploration rather than just bottle commitment. We'd ask the staff what's pouring before you commit to anything.