2018 Weekends 6 & 7

So after getting a late start on Saturday the 10th, we headed to Hamptonville, NC. We stopped at Windsor Run Cellars first. We did the distillery tasting there first. They have 3 different spirits that are made from grappa and one from honey. This is the second time we've been to the distillery and we now have a bottle of the Killer Bees (made from honey) and a bottle of the Shadow Hawk. We will add the third one (whose name escapes me) the next time we go. Kelvin was our bartender and he is a lot of fun as well as a wealth in information.

We left the distillery and then went to the winery. They have a lot of lovely wines and it was too difficult to chose what to take home. We had such fun doing the tasting with Teri. We will go back again soon and make that tough decision.

 We left there and quickly darted over to their sister winery, Shadow Springs Vineyard where sweet Buddy the poodle greeted us when we walked in. Buddy has recently, since our visit, celebrated his 16th birthday! Again, we had a difficult time deciding what to bring home, but we decided on a bottle of the Dark Shadow which is a heavenly dark chocolate wine.

We left there and started home and realized that we were close to Randy's BBQ in Troutman. This is a quaint BBQ place and the BBQ is fantastic!

Sunday after church and lunch on Sunday, we went to Russian Chapel Hills Winery and had a glass each. I had the Sauvignon Blanc and Dennis had the Kagor.

We left there and went to City Scape Winery for their annual Valentines Chocolate and wine paring. We had a blast! The chocolate was made especially for this wine paring and it was amazing. Josh and Deb do such a great job with all their events!

This past weekend, we took some friend up to Biltmore House to celebrate their anniversary. We toured the house, did wine tasting and had dinner.

We stayed the night in Asheville and after a lazy morning, we headed to the Grove Arcade area in downtown Asheville. There we found something new to do a tasting of... honey! We went to the Asheville Bee Charmer store. We each tried several and then we brought a sampler box home of the 3 that we really liked.

From there we headed to Addison Farm Vineyard. The lovely Arianna did our tasting and told us a lot about the family, how they came to own the Farm and about the different wines. They have 3 mead wines and we brought a bottle of the Love Herbal Wine home with us. Can't wait to get into that some night soon.

We left there and went to Noble Cider. We each did a flight of 5. It was a lot of fun and we got to meet some fun people as well. There were a lot of ciders that we really enjoyed.

With Monday being a holiday for us, we wanted to go winery escapading, but not a lot of wineries are open on Mondays. After stopping at a couple of RV dealerships, we finally ended up at Dennis Vineyards and Winery. Lauren, who is the owner/winemaker's daughter, did our tasting. She is also the graphic designer for their labels. Most of their wines are muscadine. They do have some that are different vinifera. We bought a bottle of their Snow Boots, had a glass there and had her re-cork the rest to take home.

2018 Weekend 5

So Dennis and had a long and much needed weekend in Savannah. We left Friday morning and headed south. We first stopped at the Angel Oak Tree in Charleston. I have never seen a tree so huge and beautiful.

We decided to go to Deep Waters Vineyard in Charleston and it's a lovely place. Most of the wines are muscadine or a muscadine blend. The blends are muscadine with CA imported grapes. They use two types of muscadine that we had not heard of before, the Tara and the Ison. They have all sorts of animals on the property. Lots of chickens, roosters, ducks, pigs, a goat and bunnies. The goat (who's name I have forgotten) will climb up a spiral staircase in his enclosure to get you to put some food in a little bowl that is attached to a pulley and you send it up to him & he'll eat out of the bowl. We brought a bottle of their Magnolia, just the name of the wine not the varietal of muscadine home with us. This wine is actually made from the Carols grape.

Much to our surprise the Firefly Distillery is on the same property as the winery. So more fun there! We brought some of the Coconut Cake Liquor home. Our other favorite was the Apple Pie moonshine.

We left and headed on down to Savannah. Our hotel was amazing! We had a river view and got to see all sorts of HUGE cargo ships. They have wine and cheese every evening so that was always our appetizers before dinner. Friday night we went to B. Matthews on Bay Street for dinner and then over to Savannah Smiles for dueling pianos. To say that Savannah Smiles was not quite what we were expecting would be a vast understatement. I've been to a few dueling piano shows before but this one was very different. Now, just because I say it was different does not mean it was bad or that we didn't have a good time because we did. It had just been quite the while since either one of us had a hand stamp. LOL! I had also not been to one that the players changed out periodically. There were 4 different pianists and one drummer who played on select songs. We experienced our first bicycle taxi to and from the bar and it had not been SO cold, it would've been a lot of fun. Both of the "drivers" were super friendly. We also brought a bottle of the Southern Duck White home.

Saturday morning after an amazing breakfast at the hotel, we headed out to explore a bit. Again.... if it had not been so cold it would have been terrific! We both ended up buying ear muffs of sorts. The wind was brutal. I had looked at the forecast before we went and thought it would be great weather for Saturday. Not realizing there would be wind. Let me tell you, the wind coming straight off the river is COLD! But as always, we made the best of it. We then headed to Butterducks Winery. They us a combination of NC and California grapes. We had stopped there on our way home from our honeymoon and wanted to revisit. Since the winery is about 30 minutes from Savannah, it was much warmer and less windy. We had a nice time there and met some fun ladies who were enjoying a mommy's day out. Enjoyed a glass each of their White Merlot and cheese and crackers.

Headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We went over to Tybee Island to go to the Crab Shack. SOOOO good! I had the low country boil and Dennis had the crab cakes. Both of us were STUFFED! Headed back to the hotel to get ready for our ghost tour. We decided to do The Hearse Ghost Tour because it was simply to cold to do one of the walking ones. Each hearse holds 8 people so we met some fun people. Our tour guide was hysterical! But one note. If you ever do this tour, and choose to sit in the very front, don't sit on the left side of the hearse. Sit on the right. EVERYTHING is on the right.

After another great breakfast on Sunday, sadly we had to leave. There is so much to do in Savannah that I'm not sure even a week would be long enough to do everything. Upon checking out of the hotel., we drove around the city one more time and then headed to Hilton Head to go to Island Winery. (We went to both of these SC wineries because a) they weren't too far out of the way and b) we needed to get them the SC Wine competition information). We found one antique store as we didn't want to arrive exactly at noon when they opened. Between the two of us we got to taste all of their wines. They have some really nice varieties. We each enjoyed a glass and a cheese tray. We met a very lovely lady who was headed to Florida for the month.

Sadly, our fun long weekend had to end and we had to head home. Sorry for the picture overload on this one, I just had to post them all!

More fun to come next week!

#DiscoverSCWines