Monday, August 4, 2008

Down the Wine Trail

To celebrate our 12th anniversary, I wanted to go visit wineries in SW Va. This past weekend, they had a progressive wine pairing at local wineries. Hubby and I visited a lot of vineyards and drank a lot of great wines. It was a beautiful day, as well.

I will apologize because I cannot upload the few pictures we took. Stoopid computer!

The first winery we went to was AmRrien Wine Cellars. It was the closest to Roanoke. Really pretty, and the wine was wonderful I bought a lovely white here. Very yummy! They also have dinners under the stars of Fridays in August. Dinner for two and bottle of wine at a reasonable price. I think we may be back for a date night.

We also went to Villa Appalachia, a cute little Italian style winery. They had some nice wines, too. I bought another white here. Virginia grows better whites than reds, so it is probably not surprising I bought white wine. This was a really cute winery. They had some beautiful gardens.

We also went to Chateau Morrisette, the largest winery in the region, I think. They felt more like an amusement park than a winery. I liked the smaller wineries better. I tasted their wine, which is really nice. I can buy their wine at the grocery store, though, so it was not as interesting as some of the other places we visited.

Some of my favorite places on the tour were not actually wineries at all. Foggy Ridge Cider made hard ciders. I had never had hard ciders before, and Hubby and I were both pleasantly surprised. Very yummy! I highly recommend the First Fruit cider. It was clean and crisp and very delicious. I think we may have to go back again.

We also vistited a meadery. I have never had fermented wine. Hubby and I tend to drink drier wines, so some of the meads were a little too sweet for us. They had one mead which was like drinking honey. Very rich and very sweet. It also had a lovely golden color. The meads were interesting to try. And the name was too cool. Blacksnake Meadery. How cool is that! Their Hoppy Bee Brew was actually quite nice, so we took home a bottle.

All in all a nice drive through beautiful country, with alcohol. What better way to celebrate our anniversary than for me to get drunk, and let Hubby take advantage? Good times!

4 comments:

Jessica White said...

It sounds like you guys had a really nice time: Definitely think you need to go back for dinner under the stars...sounds so perfectly romantic to me.

I love hard cider: I had never had it until I was a student in Ireland...I'm not a drinker but I LOVED! Bulmers (in England and the USA it's Magners). The stuff is delish!

Matt's currently in the process of making his first batch of mead: It should be read by the end of fall. I'm looking forward to it.

I'm glad you guys enjoyed yourselves :-)

Jamie said...

I have always wanted to do that!! You have inspired me to organize a wine trail of my own!

Jessica White said...

I've tagged you on my blog :-)

Happy said...

We LUV LUV LUV wineries! And wine tasting! And wine trails! Too bad you guys don't live closer because we're always looking for fellow tasters to hang with.

We've never made Mead, but we have made beer a number of times. Our plan is to make wine this fall.