Wedding DJ at Unionville Vineyards in Ringoes, NJ

The Space

Unionville Vineyards is a working winery in Ringoes, New Jersey, built around an 1858 barn and farmhouse on land that was once part of the largest peach orchard in the United States. The land was split off as a dowry gift in 1856, planted first with peaches, then hit by a rust blight after the Civil War and turned into a dairy farm around 1900. It was purchased in 1980 specifically to save the farm, replanted with grapes in 1987, and opened to the public as a winery in 1993.

The 1858 barn now holds the working parts of the operation: a tasting room on the second floor, a production floor below it with the winery’s actual equipment, and a stone-walled cave room set with wine barrel tables. The separate 1858 farmhouse serves as a bridal suite and gathering space, and the ceremony lawn sits just behind it, so the architecture a couple sees on a tour is the same architecture still doing its original job.

Capacity & Layout

Capacity varies by which room a couple chooses, and that choice shapes the whole event. The tented patio, available seasonally from late April through October, seats up to 175, which is the number to plan around for a full wedding with dinner and dancing. The winery floor inside the barn holds 60 seated or 90 for a cocktail-style reception, while the cave room and the farmhouse each hold 30 seated or 50 standing, sizes suited to a smaller wedding or a rehearsal dinner.

Because the tented patio is seasonal, a couple marrying outside that late-April-to-October window is working with the indoor spaces by default, which caps the guest list lower than the patio would allow. The ceremony itself typically happens on the lawn behind the farmhouse with vineyard views, and the reception can then move into whichever indoor or tented space matches the final headcount, giving the day two distinct settings rather than one room doing double duty.

Amenities

Unionville requires that only Unionville wines be served, at a rate of one case per 30 adults, though a full liquor bar can be arranged alongside that. Catering is not in-house; the venue works with a select group of recommended caterers, and couples coordinate menu planning directly with whichever caterer they choose, which gives more flexibility than an exclusive single-caterer venue but also means that decision needs to happen early.

The farmhouse’s first floor is set aside for getting dressed, hair and makeup, and photography before the ceremony, so the bridal party has a dedicated space rather than a shared back room. The property includes complimentary Wi-Fi and on-site parking, and at 88 acres of preserved farmland, with the winery managing more than 300 acres across four farms altogether, there is enough open ground that a wedding here does not feel boxed in by neighboring development.

Location & Getting There

Unionville Vineyards sits on preserved farmland in Ringoes, protected under New Jersey’s Farmland Preservation Program, which means the vineyard views a couple sees on their wedding day are not going anywhere in a few years the way they might near a growing suburb. We’ve worked a reception here before, and the rural setting is part of the draw: guests drive out from the surrounding towns into open vine rows rather than arriving at a venue wedged between other buildings.

That same rural quiet works to a wedding’s advantage acoustically. The stone-walled cave room holds sound close and warm for a smaller gathering, the barn’s production floor has more hard surfaces and open air that call for speakers aimed directly at the dance floor, and the tented patio, being open-sided, needs sound pushed a bit harder to compete with the outdoors, so we set up differently depending on which of Unionville’s rooms a couple has chosen.