It's My Birthday and I Can Wine If I Want To, Wine If I Want To...

That's right my birthday weekend was spent wine~ing! ;-)

I decided I wanted to do the local wine trail and stop @ the wineries we had not been to, take pictures, take notes, decide if we'd ever go back to any of them, that kind of thing.

Before I go any further let me just say the winery tour is not all about the wine, drinking and getting drunk. It's a cultural thing, meeting new peeps, seeing beautiful scenery, learning how wine is made, how the grapes are harvested, etc.

On Friday we toured 7 wineries, on Saturday we toured 3 wineries, on Sunday we toured 2 and repeated 2 that we've been to before. Overall good time!

1. Stone Hill (www.stonehillwinery.com):
Very historic, very friendly peeps, great guided tour (about an hour long), wine tasting @ end of tour for only tour peeps and it was only 2.50 per adult! Meant two men from Michigan and chatted for awhile. Also chatted with "Ray" as he stocked the bottles of wine. He told us where to get great pizza near our home! Bring your camera! Bought Kick'n Berry and Cream Sherry (Cream Sherry was wonderful!)

2. Adam Puchta (www.adampuchtawine.com): OK place, outside bathrooms, signature port pretty good ~ gold medal quality. (Traminette)

3. Hermannhof (www.hermannhof.com): pretend self guided tour, won't let you taste the port wines ~ didn't buy anything from them as we know we like the Spring Blush and can buy it anywhere.

4. OakGlenn (www.oakglenn.com): The road in was a pretty drive. Well off the road (dirty car road LOL), beautiful view @ winery, coolers OK, don't tell anybody about this place LOL, port wine tasting, indoor bathrooms but dark, Patriots own the place! Port/White was yummy!

5. Bias (www.biaswinery.com): train = twice! Bad road.

6. Bommarito (www.Bommaritoestatewinery.com):
Nick was great! Very personalbe. Came in off his tractor to pour us a little wine. Great guy to talk to, would go back and take a group of peeps with us! Very laid back, relaxing atmosphere. Coolers allowed. Wood fired pizza sounded yummy!

7. Robller (I don't know how to do that funny thing over the letter o) (www.robllerwines.com): OK, nice taste guy but only part time hehe, on hill over looking vineyard. Liked VILLA ROUGE (semi dry) red wine ~ fruity, chill-able red. A great "getting to know you" wine. Grapes: Chambourcin and Villard Noir. Also liked KASSELFEST (sweet) ~ chilled, sweet red, with rich, berry flavors. Great with dark chocolate (now you're talking my language) Grapes: Steuben, St Vincent and Chambourcin.


Saturday we hit 3 more:

1. Blumenhof (www.blumenhof.com): can bring cooler, OK view, dusty road.

2. Augusta (www.augustawinery.com):

3. Sugar Creek (www.sugarcreekwines.com): Sunset Red was good and we bought LaRustica Red!

Sunday we hit 2 new and 2 old ones:

1. Chandler Hill (www.chandlerhillvineyard.com):
Made me think that this must be what the California wineries are like. Pretty pricey in my opinion. Small taste glass was 5 bucks for 5 tastes. Big (ugly) taste glass was 8 tastes for 10 bucks and you get to keep the ugly glass. They didn't have their own wines ~ mostly CA wines and some MO wines but not made there. They are in the process of growing grapes/making wines/etc. The food we saw peeps eating looked pretty good, view was nice, lower parking lot was gravel and that meant dust on the freshly washed car, shuttle bus to the top. I would go back, planning to eat lunch there, and enjoy but today we had our picnic basket and wanted to go to a winery that would allow it in.

2. Yellow Farmhouse Vineyard & Winery (www.yellowfarhousewines.com):
I almost blew it on this one as it was not on the map and I was thinking they wouldn't have their own wines so when hubby asked me did I want to stop I almost said no but quickly changed to sure why not?! Good change of mind! Paige was our server. You can sample as much as you want for 5 bucks and you get to keep the cute little glass. If you buy a bottle of wine the 5 bucks is waived on the tasting. She talked us right into a bottle of wine haha. She was very informative about wines, grapes, etc. While we were there, a newspaper reporter asked if he could photograph us ~ why of course! When we were ready to leave he asked for our names, address, etc and told us the article would be in the business section of the paper on Sept 4th ~ so we'll see, maybe we will be in there! This winery allows coolers, dogs, etc ~ has bright colored chairs hill side, picnic tables, a covered area and a one man band. I'd repeat this one.

3. (repeat) Balducci (www.balduccivineyards.com): friendly servers, nice winery to sit and relax, enjoy the view and eat from your picnic basket! Liked the SONATA ~ a blend of white varietals Vidal, Rayon and Chardonel. Aged in stainless steel with a sugar level of 3.25%. Also liked: CHIARETTO ~ Light bodied semi-dry red aged in stainless steel. A blend of Chambourcina and St. Vincent grapes, with a sugar level of 2.8%.

4. (repeat) Montelle (www.montelle.com): server very friendly, they stopped giving out chocolate with the Raspberry wine tasting so hubby bought us a little piece of chocolate to enjoy! We've been here several times with friends, great view from the deck area. No coolers allowed here. They were parking peeps into the overflow lower parking area, they asked if we were handycapped and I said "no, but I'm retarded does that count?" and I scrunched my shoulder kind of funny, he smiled and sent us on up the hill into the regular parking lot. Sometimes it pays to cut up with the hired help! ;-) Always like the CHAMBOURCIN, CYNTHIANA, RED RASPBERRY and the FRAMBOISE is really good as a dessert wine.

I will post some more info and pics @ a later date so make sure you check back! ;-)

BTW ~ have no doubt my weekend pushed me away from ONEderland a wee little so this week is journal, exercise, and move the scale down!