Travel: Hometown Holidays in the Blue Ridge Mountains
In Hendersonville, NC, the holiday season builds “community” around holiday traditions.
There’s a Brigadoon-like valley in Western North Carolina that’s buttressed by the Blue Ridge Mountains. At its center is a vibrant main street so robust that it appears as though the pandemic bounced right over Hendersonville like a tornado missing its mark. Henderson County’s outer rings are a lush rolling landscape of forests and farmland whose ever-changing bounty is as reliable an indicator of the month and week as any calendar tacked to a kitchen wall.
Apple blossoms scent the spring, ripe berries sweeten summer’s ice cream, riotous zinnias and cosmos overflow vases, peaches star in cobblers, grapes transform into award-winning wines and dozens of varieties of apples sustain a marathon of feasts and fun from summer
through late fall. Apples are the star of dozens of farm stands, u-pick orchards, ubiquitous apple cider donuts and a hearty hard-cider industry that dominates local taps.
When the apple bins empty in November, Henderson County turns to the next season to welcome everyone “home for the holidays” through a pull-out-all-the-stops celebration that kicks off the day after Thanksgiving and decks the halls until New Year’s Eve. Smaller than Asheville but twice the size of Brevard, Hendersonville with its accredited Main Street USA and surrounding agricultural region is uniquely its own.
Even first-timers will feel at “home” once they visit this urban-and-rural utopia just 20 minutes south of the Asheville airport, because above all, cultivating community is what the folks of Henderson County do best. December temperatures are usually in the 30s and 40s with a chance of flurries, so you’ll have plenty of chances to cozy up beside a fire pit with a festive bevvy in hand.
Photos by Todd Bush; Sam Dean; Scott Treadway and Jared Kay
A Downtown Holiday Takeover
If you’re a Hallmark Channel holiday movie fan, Hendersonville’s “Home for the Holidays” should be on your bucket list. The Friends of Downtown produces a no-idea-left-behind holiday takeover beginning the night after Thanksgiving when Santa dramatically arrives at the towering Christmas tree in front of the 1905 courthouse to literally flip the switch, transforming all of downtown Hendersonville into a decorated, garlanded, sparkling confection. It feels like stepping on to a movie set, but if you’re envisioning a mistletoe kiss, you’ll need to BYOR (Bring Your Own Romance).
Downtown is designed for lingering and packed with restaurants, bars, bakeries and coffee shops. Locally owned businesses are shoehorned along Main Street and its cross streets, creating a tight patchwork of friendly commerce and more, such as the Appalachian Pinball Museum where a wristband buys you all-day play.
During the holidays, the serpentine street design and alternating-side pocket parks are the perfect stage for a dazzling Christmas Parade, pop-up performances, a holiday-themed farmers market, crafts for kids, train rides and even photos with llamas dressed as elves. The Peppermint Bear Scavenger Hunt leads participants through downtown businesses to search for dressed-up bears – a fun way to explore, pick up treats along the way and win prizes. Hot tip for a restorative pause: find the Brandy Bar on 7th Avenue, for a warm welcome at a small bar with a glass of owner Brenda Coates’s holiday eggnog highlighting Courvoisier® and freshly grated nutmeg.
… And Beyond
Expect a small cast and an intimate experience for Every Story Ever Told at the Hendersonville Community Theater. One town over, A Flat Rock Playhouse Christmas is a huge song-and-dance revue performed through December 21 in the historic 424-seat theater whose compound is a worthy destination of its own.
Christmas at Connemara recreates touchstones of rural 1950s holidays celebrated by American author Carl Sandburg and his family in their Flat Rock homestead that is a National Historic Site. You can visit direct descendents of Mrs. Sandburg’s famous goat herd and hike the property’s trails, but the only way to tour the family’s house, left as though they just stepped out, and see three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Sandburg’s 11,000 volume library is to reserve tickets in advance. If you’ve toured and enjoyed Hemingway’s house in Key West, Sandburg’s home is a worthy bookend.
Spirited Holiday Gatherings
A holiday visit to Henderson County isn’t just for families forging festive memories. The surrounding rolling hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains provide exquisite settings for wineries and cideries that highlight North Carolina’s bounty in a glass.
The warehouse-type structure of Bold Rock Mills River Cidery will be packed on a cool night, with overflow spilling across the heated deck and firepit-dotted lawn on farmland where a small stage is often alive with local bands.
Opened in 2018, Point Lookout Vineyards straddles the Eastern Continental Divide, with grapes grown to different outcomes on either side. Owner Mike Jackson built a sprawling post-and-beam pavilion with a central fireplace for guests to taste his wines and meads, enjoy frequent live music and to take in panoramic views atop his family’s multi-generation land on which he grew up when his dad farmed apples. Jackson began planting grapes in 2008, the first step of his big vision. “I knew that I could do something special with this beautiful place, and create a legacy for my kids.” Indeed, he has.
A 20-minute drive from Point Lookout, Otto, an old two-topped oak tree, is wrapped in white lights with icicles dancing off its limbs. Otto stands sentry to an industrial modern tasting room that merges art, architecture, nature and wine at Marked Tree Vineyard, the passion project of proprietors Lance Hiatt and Tim Parks who have learned the business, literally, from the ground, up.
Hiatt and Parks have crafted their own Home for the Holidays weekend programming with modern choral and upright jazz performances on their hilltop oasis. Call ahead to reserve a table at this kid-and-dog friendly destination. “People love drinking wine by a fire,” says Hiatt whose go-to holiday pour is a bone-dry sparkling wine called Bubble Swarm. Named, he says, for “the big bubbles swarming in your mouth when done in the methode’ champenoise.”
Whether you’re seeking a full immersion hometown holiday experience, or to feel a part of a community that is anchored by its agricultural roots, Hendersonville will become part of your own tradition.
Planning to visit Hendersonville?
visithendersonvillenc.org
Hendersonville is easy to reach from Orlando via 90-minute non-stop flights on Allegiant to Asheville, out of the Orlando Sanford International Airport.
Accommodations lean to historic inns and vacation rentals rather than hotels. The 1898 Waverly Inn is on Main Street and offers warm, welcoming hospitality that includes a popular daily social hour. The cozy Echo Mountain Inn is only 10 minutes from downtown but feels a world away, overlooking the valley. Brightwaters Vacation Rentals are a collection of tastefully decorated cabins, a cottage and historic home, situated on a private wooded compound.
There’s plenty of great food to fill every dining slot of your itinerary. In Hendersonville, Mezzaluna is reliable seafood and pasta, and the pizzas shine at West First Wood-Fired. Feeling like fajitas? Papas and Beer is a solid, old-school Mexican restaurant leveled up a notch with tableside guacamole. Save room for handmade ice cream at Celtic Creamery, inspired by the owner’s family favorite on the west coast of Ireland.
In Flat Rock, you can’t go wrong at any of the three-in-a-row restaurants: Flat Rock Village Bakery is behind the Wrinkled Egg gift shop and its menu is focused around the massive brick oven. The struggle between sweet and savory is real; just commit to the Potato wood-fired pizza with its paper-thin potatoes, caramelized onions, walnuts, mix of gorgonzola and mozzarella cheeses and piled with spicy arugula. Campfire Grill is a nod to the region’s tradition of summer camps that have created a shared experience for several generations of families throughout the southeast. Its bacon and onion packed Counselor Burger is a contender for “best burger, anywhere.”
