The Dining Room at High Hampton
Mountain Hideaway With a Serious Wine Habit
Cashiers · Cashiers · American · Visit Website ↗
Reviewed April 9, 2026
Wingman Metrics
First Impression
You're deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains, wood beams overhead, firelight flickering — and then the wine list lands and it's actually thoughtful. For a resort dining room tucked into Cashiers, North Carolina, this list punches well above its zip code. Wine Spectator handed them a Best of Award of Excellence starting in 2023, and you can see why.
Selection Deep Dive
The list runs 200-350 bottles with a clear emphasis on France, California, and Italy — the holy trinity for a certain kind of confident American fine dining. You'll find Château Léoville-Barton Saint-Julien sitting comfortably next to Stag's Leap and Antinori Tignanello, which tells you someone is actually paying attention. The California contingent leans heavily on the greatest hits — Caymus, Jordan, Opus One, Duckhorn — crowd-pleasers, yes, but executed with enough range that it doesn't feel like a hotel wine list on autopilot. Where the list thins out is in discovery: you're not finding much outside the classic regions, and adventurous drinkers may find themselves orbiting the same familiar names.
By the Glass
Twelve to twenty options by the glass is a respectable spread for a mountain resort dining room, and it means you can actually explore without committing to a full bottle on a weeknight. The Wednesday half-price wine night is the most interesting programming they offer — that's a genuine reason to plan your week around dinner here. Rotation details are limited, but the glass pours appear to mirror the bottle list's California-France-Italy focus.
Rombauer Chardonnay 2021 — $68
Rombauer retails around $35-40, so this is marked up, but relative to everything else on this list it's one of the more accessible entry points. It's crowd-friendly, full-bodied, and won't give you sticker shock when the check arrives. On a Wednesday, it's practically a steal.
Château Léoville-Barton Saint-Julien
In a list dominated by California Cabernet, this Left Bank Bordeaux tends to get overlooked by guests reaching for the familiar. Saint-Julien delivers structure, cedar, and old-world restraint that the big Napa names simply don't — and it's the kind of bottle that makes a mountain dinner feel genuinely special.
Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon
Caymus is everywhere, marked up everywhere, and the restaurant has better California Cabernet options on this very list. You're paying resort premium on a wine you could grab at Costco. Reach past it.
Antinori Tignanello + Filet mignon with truffle demi-glace
Tignanello's Sangiovese-Cabernet blend brings enough dark fruit and savory backbone to stand up to a truffle-forward demi-glace without bulldozing it. It's one of the few bottles on this list that earns its price through genuine complexity rather than brand recognition.
Wednesday — Half-price wine night every Wednesday — the single best reason to time your visit mid-week.
🎲 The Bottom Line
The Dining Room at High Hampton is the best wine list for thirty miles in any direction, and on a Wednesday it's a legitimate destination. Just go in knowing the markups are resort-priced and steer toward the Old World selections to get the most out of what they've built.
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