Biltmore Estate – Asheville, NC

It’s sunny and 75 here in Asheville this time of year and it is absolutely bea-u-tiful!! Shane and I had not been to the Biltmore since we were both children, so we decided to have a date weekend and go explore the fabulous “America’s Downton Abbey”. The Biltmore is the largest home in America and it is absolutely breathtaking. I have withheld sharing photos of the rooms inside of the home to leave it a mystery for your visit!

Tips before you go:

Buy your tickets in advance. You can save $10 per tickets if you get them a week ahead of time, shop the Biltmore Website.
Spend the extra $10 on the audio guide. The house is full of so much history and secret doorways. The audio guide allows you to self pace your tour but also know what you are looking at and what the significance is of each part of the rooms. The information about the swimming pool and construction was particularly interesting to me.
We booked the 3:00 tour,shopped the gift shop, toured the gardens, and did wine tasting and ended the day with an 8:00 dinner reservation. Make sure you allot enough time to not be rushed. We had plenty of time and could have made a 7:00 reservation if needed.

Visit the Biltmore Gardens

After visiting the beautiful home we proceeded to the gardens to enjoy the beautiful mountain views and thousands of flowers. The tulip garden was only a fraction of the beauty that is available to walk through. You could spend an entire day just walking the trails and taking in the beautiful scenery.

Winery and Bistro

After the gardens, we went to the Winery and dinner at Bistro at the Biltmore Antler Hill Village. The winery has a complementary tasting and a premium tasting for $3 each taste or $8 for a flight. The complementary tasting includes about 15 different wines including sweet wines. The premium tasting includes about 10 dinner wines including 4 sparkling wines. We did both and our favorite was the Vanderbilt Reserve Pinot Noir.

These are our picks for purchase!

The Bistro offers all the wines from the winery at the restaurant as well. Shane and I both enjoyed a glass of the Vanderbilt Reserve Pinot Noir that we had also bought a bottle of at the winery. The atmosphere was very romantic and the food was delish! I had the scallops with spinach and coconut chickpeas and Shane had the french onion soup and the Ribeye with potato puree and asparagus. It was the perfect date!