Each year from the day after Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve, Lanthier Winery in Madison, Indiana is filled to bursting with hundreds of Christmas trees.
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Lanthier’s Festival of Trees draws thousands of visitors each year to their historic building on the Ohio River. The more than 20 year old Festival grows each year, in the number of trees displayed and the number of people visiting.
Special holiday hours for the festival are:
- Monday through Sunday from 9:00am to 6:00pm
- Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve from 9:00am to 2:00pm
- Closed Christmas Day and New Year’s Day
The Trees
Lanthier Winery is located in an 18th century building that at first glance makes it difficult to imagine they’d have room for 5 Christmas trees, let alone hundreds.
But somehow, they manage to find room and the result is a glittering menagerie of trees stuffed into every nook and cranny of the winery’s tasting room and loft.
Not only are there hundreds of trees, the decorations you see this year won’t be seen again for another 3 years. That’s a lot of ornaments, folks. In fact, each year’s decorations fill up a steel shipping container.
It takes 6-8 weeks for the winery staff to unpack the decorations, put up the trees, fluff the branches and decorate them with lights, ornaments, ribbons and elaborate toppers.
I can’t even imagine putting up that many trees. I am a Christmas fanatic but I can only deal with a few hours of fluffing branches and fiddling with lights. Luckily for us the Lanthier staff is more dedicated and patient than I am.
After the fluffing and light-fiddling, many of the trees are decorated in individual themes. Imagine having the patience and organization skills to accomplish this 300 or so times.
Some of this year’s themes were:
Christmas Candyland, a mostly pink color scheme with candy cane and lollipop ornaments, a train themed tree called Christmas Express, one for the doggies called, “The Holidays are Ruff.”
Christmas Candyland 
Christmas Express 
Holidays are Ruff
A particularly creative tree theme was called, “On the 26th,” which imagines that Santa spends this day fishing after his hard work on the 25th. The tree has fishing Santa ornaments, larger Santa figurines and fish ornaments. Several different fish ornaments, in fact. I don’t think I’d ever seen fish ornaments before this.
A Family Friendly Tradition
Lanthier’s Festival of Trees has become a family Christmas tradition for many visitors. Kids are welcome in the tasting room with an adult to look at the trees and enjoy the complimentary cookies. Outside, there is a light display in the winery gardens, with trees, reindeer and large lighted ornaments. In past years, Santa has visited the winery on the weekends for the “Corks and Cookies” event.
Special Christmas Wines
Lanthier also produces 3 limited release wines just for the Holidays- Snowflake White, Saint Nicholas Blush and Rudolph Red.
St. Nicholas Blush 
Snowflake White & Rudolph Red
Snowflake White pairs well with holiday dinners. St Nicholas Blush and Rudolph Red are sweet wines that pair well with Christmas cookies and snowy Christmas evenings around the fire. Rudolph Red can also be served warm with mulling spices.
Click the link to visit Lanthier’s WINE LIST with full descriptions
These wines are very popular and sell out fast so be sure to get there early or order online if you want to try them. I visited on Dec 6th and St. Nicholas Blush was almost sold out then.
Special Christmas Spirits
A new addition to the Lanthier is their distillery which was just launched this past summer in 2020.
For Christmas, they have Holiday Vanilla Vodka and Kris Kringle Vodka, a spiced vodka. They also have a gift set with small bottles of the holiday vodkas and their lemon vodka.
With cookies, wine, vodka and Christmas trees, what more could you ask for? This just might be the most perfect Christmas event. A visit to Lanthier Winery is memorable any time of year with art displays and beautiful gardens but the Festival of Trees is especially magical there.
Put this Madison, Indiana winery on your holiday itinerary this year, you won’t be disappointed.