by Kristen Wile

This year’s North Carolina Wine Competition featured more than 300 wines, meads, and ciders from across the state, each tasted by panels of experts seeking to honor the best products from across the state. The annual awards include NC Wine Cup winners for four categories, this year given to the following: Muscadine, Hinnat Family Vineyards’ Scuppernong 2025; Cider, Noble Cider’s Porter’s Perfection & Mill Camp Pommeau; Mead, Honeygirl Meadery, Strawberry Guava Mead; and Vinifera, Sanctuary Vineyards’ Wildflowers Rosé 2025.

Because Muscadine is a popular, native grape in the state, these wines have their own category, with the remaining wines falling into the vinifera category. This year’s Best Of in the vintner categories are the following: 

Dessert Wine: Shadow Springs Vineyard, Mistelle de Petit Manseng 2024
Sparkling Wine: Biltmore Winery Chateau Reserve Brut Red 2022
Orange Wine: Sanctuary Vineyards Handcrafted Orange Alberino 2025
Rose Blend: Biltmore Estate Reserve 2024
Single White Varietal: Stony Knoll Vineyards Harvest Delight
White Blend: JOLO Vineyards Golden Hallows 2025
Single Red Varietal: Point Lookout Vineyards Petit Verdot 2023
Red Blend: Curran Alexander Vineyards Meritage 2022

See the full list of honors, including the muscadine, mead, and cider best of winners, here.

Josh Villapando, owner of Assorted Table Wine & Shop, has judged state-wide wine competitions regularly over the past decade and a half. When he first started taking part in North Carolina wine tastings, he says he assumed the red wines would be good, but never great in the state.

“Most viticultural areas have a harvest time which lines up with when the fall rains come, but North Carolina also has hurricanes they have to deal with,” he explains. “So basically it’s like, OK, we have hurricanes, we have to gamble. Are we going to do it or not?”

While a winery can recover from rain with some sunshine, hurricanes can cause you to lose a crop entirely, meaning most vineyard managers would err on the side of caution and pick fruit early. 

“You’re never going to get complete phenolic ripeness on red wine grapes,” he says. Because of that, Villapando says he’s always believed North Carolina’s white wines would be the ones to show off what the state is capable of. Petit manseng, a white wine grape that produces notes of tropical fruits, fits well with the state’s climate. The past few years of tasting red wines, however, have started shifting Villapando’s opinion.

“What I’ve discovered is that the red wines are great,” he says. “The red blends are great.”

He cites Sanctuary Vineyards, this year’s NC Wine Cup vinifera winner, as an example of the red wines the soil of North Carolina can produce. 

“Sanctuary is now my new favorite out of North Carolina, period,” he says. They’re amazing. Estate grown right there on the beach. Fourth generation winemaker. John Wright had so many failures. He’s laughed at himself and the types of bonfires that he’s worked with, so many disease pressures that he thought he wouldn’t have to contend with growing in sand, including Pierson’s disease. But what they knock out is amazing. They’re great. They deserve it.”

Assorted Table carries several North Carolina wines, including Sanctuary’s albarino and red blend.

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