Wedding DJ at Grassy Creek Vineyards and Winery in State Road, NC

The Space

In the early 1920s, John Hanes of Hanes Hosiery bought a one-room cabin and more than 1,000 acres around Grassy Creek, and what he and the Chatham family built there over the following decades is the property couples now walk through as Grassy Creek Vineyard and Winery. The Chatham and Hanes families ran Klondike Dairy Farm on the land, raising Golden Guernsey cattle that produced whole milk, buttermilk, and chocolate milk until the dairy closed in the mid-1950s.

Derrill and Lori Rice, with Jim and Cynthia Douthit, purchased the property in 2003 and founded the winery, planting an estate vineyard that April with Barbera, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay, Merlot, Sangiovese, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, and Viognier. The winery now operates out of a 10,000 square foot historic dairy barn, and the tasting room occupies a renovated horse stable with a stone fireplace, so the buildings a couple sees on a tour are original farm structures, not new construction built to look old.

Capacity & Layout

A specific seated guest capacity is not stated in the material on file, so it should not be guessed at here. What is documented is the scale of the property itself: 212 acres in the Yadkin Valley, with an outdoor pavilion positioned between the tasting room and a 15-acre vineyard, overlooking 60 acres that include a small pond.

That pavilion is the reception space couples should picture, outfitted with fans, lighting, electricity, and a fire pit, and set against vineyard rows on one side and open pasture with the pond on the other. Three Klondike Cabins on the property, one with four bedrooms and two with two bedrooms each, add overnight lodging into the mix, which matters for a couple weighing whether to keep a wedding party on site rather than sending everyone back to a hotel.

Amenities

The tasting room’s stone fireplace and the dairy barn’s original timber frame are the property’s signature amenities, both preserved from the working farm rather than built for events. Wine tasting is available on site, with wine and local beer served, and the pavilion’s built-in fans, lighting, and electricity mean a couple is not starting from a bare field when it comes to basic infrastructure.

Grassy Creek was recently ranked the number one winery in North Carolina by Sherman’s Travel, and the grounds include the Grassy Creek Trail, part of Segment 6 of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail with access toward Carter Falls, for a couple or their guests who want a walk through the vineyard and woods rather than staying seated at the pavilion all afternoon. We have DJed a wedding at Grassy Creek, so we know the pavilion setup firsthand.

Location & Getting There

Grassy Creek sits about one mile from Elkin, North Carolina, in the Yadkin Valley, with private lot parking on site. The property was the official guest house for Chatham Manufacturing Company starting in 1929, and one of its Klondike Farm cows, Klondike Nira, was famous enough in her day to accompany Admiral Richard Byrd on his 1934 Antarctic expedition, a detail that says something about how long this land has been a source of local pride.

For sound, the pavilion’s open sides mean a DJ setup there is working in a covered but not enclosed space, similar to a large tent: the roof holds the music down toward the crowd, but the open vineyard and pasture views on either side mean there is no hard wall bouncing sound back, so speaker placement and volume have to account for that open-air spread rather than the tighter acoustics of a fully indoor barn like the one used for the winery itself.