Beat Valentine's Day panic: Where to reserve for the best wine reserves

If you want to hit Valentine's Day out of the park this year, it's best to plan ahead. Especially if you're thinking of a surprise road trip to a winery offering a pastoral afternoon of sips and sweets. Plenty of tasting rooms are offering wine and chocolate pairing events, but reservations are a must.

Sunset Hills Vineyard, a winery in Purcellville with a lovely, airy, barnlike tasting room built by Amish carpenters, hosts a few sessions of its chocolate and wine pairings Feb. 13 with chocolatier Wilhelm Wanders. He'll dish about the dark chocolates he has picked to complement Sunset Hills' four red wines. (Guests also get a little box of sweets to take home.) Reservations for the tasting are required, and they're filling quickly.

In what has become an annual tradition, Breaux Vineyards , also in Purcellville, will open its barrel room and decorate it with rose petals and candles, setting just the right mood for Valentine's weekend. The couples who come through for the special tastings on Feb. 12 and 13 will sip several vintages of cabernet sauvignon and nosh on more than a half-dozen handmade truffles selected specifically for each wine. Although the tastings are all day, reservations are advised.

Gray Ghost in Amissville, Va., just around the bend from Luray Caverns (a great post-tasting excursion), hosts its 16th annual chocolate and cabernet event Feb. 12 and 13, offering unlimited tastes of several chocolate desserts (rather than mere chocolates) to pair with its red wines. Winery tours are also offered several times during the event; reservations for the tasting aren't required.

In Maryland, Black Ankle Vineyards hosts chocolate and wine pairings Feb. 11-13. Housed in an eco-friendly lodge in a clearing in the forest, Black Ankle certainly will charm a date; the tastings feature four Black Ankle wines paired with a chocolate by local artisanal chocolatier Parefections. The tastings are seated, so reservations are required. For a romantic evening, rather than a day trip, visit on Feb. 11, when the winery stays open until 9 p.m.

If you like wine but don't have much of a sweet tooth, you could spring for two tickets to the Virginia Wine Showcase, which rounds up wineries from across Virginia to pour their specialties all Valentine's weekend at the Westfields Marriott Washington Dulles in Chantilly. Like many of the summer wine festivals (without the lovely weather), tastings are unlimited, and there will be cooking demonstrations for foodies, too.