We scheduled two tours to Wolf Mountain Vineyards this year. The first on Thursday April 18 and the second Friday April 19. There are two reasons we scheduled two tours. We have so many people who want to go that we exceed the lunch seating capacity at the event center, and during the garage tours we would exceed the ability for people to see and hear as Karl describes the special cars in his collection, and we want everyone to be able to enjoy their visit.

The weather on Thursday was just about perfect, and most who could dropped the top and enjoyed the sunshine and scenic north Georgia mountain roads going up. Friday’s weather prediction had some of us worried we would have to deal with rain and possible thunderstorms. In fact, Karl was a bit concerned he might have to do the garage tours in the wet for the first time. It did rain on us getting to sign-in, but quit around 8:00 and the sun came out and again we had almost perfect weather for the drive to the vineyards.

It is impossible to keep everyone together if you have more than 10 to 15 cars, so we divide the participants into driving groups so that we can try to keep everyone on course without disturbing the rest of the driving public. We have to have leads and sweeps for each driving group and we had so many first time participants that I decided to keep it to two groups each day. That resulted in a little larger groups on Friday than I would typically like. Between Friday traffic and the larger group sizes we had a little trouble keeping the groups together through intersections resulting in the groups getting split up. So, I really want to commend the leads and sweeps for their efforts to insure everyone could stay on the route. If you would be willing to volunteer to be a lead or sweep on future tours please let the tour committee know so we can plan accordingly.

As usual Karl greeted us each day and took us on a tour of his Porsches, describing each in detail. He also described some of the memorabilia that covers the walls in his garages.He has some really unique items.

Karl changes things up a little almost every year and has added three very special Mercedes AMGs to his collection. But when asked which car he liked best to drive in the mountains he still chose his speed yellow Porsche.

The lunch buffet was excellent as it always is. Wine by the glass was available at discounted prices so we could try award winning selections from the vineyards. Of course if you wanted to stay after lunch and do a tasting to sample a wider variety that was available too. We may include a group tasting in the future on our tours.

Karl also has a very large collection of signed guitars and rock and roll memorabilia in the restaurant, and several of us took the time to go up and see them. All of the guitars and memorabilia are from groups you listened to growing up. His latest additions were from Jimmy Buffet and Jimi Hendrix.

Pictures from our tours are in the media gallery on the web site, so check it out, and make plans to join us on this tour as we repeat it in the future.