Belle Meade Plantation to market wine

BELLE MEADE, Tenn. - The historic Belle Meade Plantation will begin selling its own wines.

Officials of the antebellum estate hope to begin sales by Christmas.

Belle Meade President Alton Kelley said the wines - a muscadine, a blackberry, two whites and a red - are being produced at Keg Springs Winery in Hampshire, about 40 miles southwest of the plantation.

Kelley said the wine will be filtered, bottled and sold in a plantation building that had not been in use recently. A tasting room will also be set up.

Proceeds from the sale of wine will support preservation and educational programs at Belle Meade.

The plantation just west of Nashville was a famous horse breeding farm and once included more than 5,000 acres.

Kelley said the plantation once made its own wine and distilled spirits, and old records include orders for 200 empty wine bottles per year.