Lakeridge Winery: Florida’s Largest Winery Grows on Muscadine and Hills

Labeled plainly, as it should be: Lakeridge Winery & Vineyards stands at 19239 U.S. 27 North, just north of Clermont in the town’s orbit rather than its downtown — a 127-acre estate in the rolling ridge country that has been making Florida wine since February 1989. It ranks, by its own account and the industry’s, as Florida’s largest premium winery, and it is the most unlikely success story in Lake County agriculture: a serious winery built on the grape the South actually grows. Pair it with the tower and the lake and you have the full Clermont day trip from our Clermont hub.

The muscadine bet

Florida’s heat and humidity defeat most European wine grapes, so Lakeridge built its cellar on the native muscadine — the thick-skinned, bronze-to-black grape of the Southeast — working principally with the Noble, Carlos and Welder varieties for its table and sparkling wines. Alongside the muscadines, the estate also produces vinifera wines including Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Petite Sirah and Cabernet Sauvignon, and the operation has grown well past the home vineyard: more than 80 acres planted at the Clermont estate, with additional acreage owned in the Florida panhandle and under contract across the state. Its sister winery, San Sebastian in St. Augustine, ranks a close second in size; together they anchor Florida wine as an actual industry rather than a novelty.

The visit: tour, taste, repeat

Lakeridge runs its visitor program seven days a week, and it is genuinely the best-value wine education in Central Florida: guided tours and tastings are offered daily, beginning with a short video presentation on Florida wine history and the winemaking process, then a guided walk through the production facility and out to the vineyard view, and finally the tasting itself. The whole circuit runs about 45 to 50 minutes, with tours departing regularly through the day and the last one offered in the late afternoon. The estate also programs events across the year — harvest-season festivals and evening spectacles that draw crowds from across the region — so the winery functions as a venue as much as a cellar door. The tasting room and wine shop close the loop; Lakeridge and Lakeridge Reserve bottles also sell through supermarkets and wine shops statewide, which is how most Floridians meet the label first.

Why it belongs in a Clermont story

The winery is the citrus story’s second act. The same ridge, sun and sandy soil that made Clermont orange country made it grape country first in the industry’s memory — this stretch of US-27 was once a center of Florida grape growing — and Lakeridge is the working proof that the hills still produce something worth bottling after the groves froze. It also completes Clermont’s unlikely tasting triangle: estate wine north of town, craft beer at Suncreek downtown (our Suncreek profile), and the food hall on Montrose for everything after. Visitors driving in from Orlando — the estate sits about 25 miles west of downtown — should treat it as the morning stop, tour before the day heats up, then descend into Clermont for lunch from our dining rundown and the lake by afternoon.

The honest pour

Muscadine wine will not convert a Bordeaux loyalist, and Lakeridge does not pretend otherwise — the wines run fruit-forward and unabashedly Southern, and the sparkling muscadines are the table’s surprise. Judge it as what it is: Florida’s largest premium winery, pioneering a native grape at commercial scale for more than three decades, in a hilltop estate that shows off the ridge country better than any overlook but the Citrus Tower’s. Find it on the Orlando Top Spots Map, just north of the city it calls home.

Filed under Clermont · day trips · Lakeridge Winery · Muscadine · Wine

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