Showing posts with label local. Show all posts
Showing posts with label local. Show all posts

Saturday, January 12, 2019

Farm-to-Table Wining......

Farm to Table Dining. It's all the latest rage. Every city boast chic restaurants promoting farm-to-table dining. A social movement focusing on food sourced directly from local farms. 


Sounds great right? However, as the key criteria is locally sourced, wouldn't you agree locally produced wines should also be offered? We think so. Who wouldn't want an excellent wine produced from a local vineyard paired with their farm-to-table meal? Keep it local right! 


Putting aside all romantic notions, a vineyard is every bit a farm. The larger majority of our local vineyards in the Southeast are family owned small businesses.

Josh Jones of CityScape Winery in Pelzer, South, Carolina, said that currently both Saskatoon Steakhouse and Kitchen Sync restaurants in Greenville are offering CityScape wines on their menus. We are further aware of restaurants in North Carolina offering locally produced wines. So it's not unheard of, we just need to encourage chefs to consider locally produced wines the same as they do with locally grown foods. 




Cheers! 

Friday, February 9, 2018

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

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Winery Escapade Weekend #50

Well this weekend due to a family event we decided to keep it local. All the wineries we visited we have written a blog about in the past. With that being said, here's what we did this weekend. 

After the family Christmas get together at my Aunt's house, we headed over to City Scape Winery. We each had a glass, I had the Green Apple Gewürztraminer and Dennis had Müller Two-Goats. We also brought a bottle of the Winemaker's Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon home. 

We then headed to Mountain Brook Vineyards for a little Christmas Caroling. We enjoyed a bottle of the Rambunctious Rosé while singing carols with Brin & Mir. For this vocalist who isn’t getting a lot of performance time these days, this was a lot of fun. Also, while we were there, Ruah was grazing in the vines. We also saw some deer beside the driveway but due to it being overcast, the deer were blending into the woods to much for me to get a good picture. 


From there we stopped to grab something for dinner and then we headed to Old Rock Quarry Winery. As always, the wine and the company was wonderful. Had a nice visit with Debbie, Lindy and Linda. We brought a bottle of the Snap Apple Sassy and a bottle of the Strawberry Kisses home with us.


Sunday morning we went to church and then we finally took some time to do a little bit of Christmas decorating. Better late than never, right? After doing that we decided it was time to go to Biltmore for a little bit as we bought season passes and hadn’t used them yet. While on the way we decided that it had been way to long since we had been to Burntshirt Vineyards, so we made a little detour. We each had a glass of their Apple Wine and brought a bottle home. 



We then made our way to Biltmore Winery and decided to do a tasting again. MaryAnn was our server and she was very knowledgeable as well as very friendly. We met a sweet cute couple who were also doing a tasting at the same time. She apparently likes wine more than he does, but he was a good sport and was trying to learn more about it. We brought both the Christmas White and the Christmas Red, (signed by the label artist – he was there signing bottles – happy coincidence for us!)  home with us as well as a bottle of the 2016 Limited Release Chenin Blanc. After the tasting we went over to the wine bar and shared a charcuterie and cheese board as well as a bottle of Zinfandel Blanc de Noir. 



We drove around the property for a little bit & then headed to see the lights at the Christmas House in Inman, SC. When it comes to Christmas light displays, I swear we are like 2 little kids. We drove through 3 times!




Sadly after that is was time to go home & prepare for this work week. Until next weekend we wish you all a Merry Christmas and as always, good wine!

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Winery Escapade Weekend 46


This past weekend was a lot of fun! Friday night we checked out a new restaurant in downtown Spartanburg called Mezcal. It was really nice and the food was great. We then checked out the new wine bar, Bond Street Wines, also in downtown Spartanburg. We met some fun people and had a very nice Merlot there.

Saturday morning started with breakfast at The Crepe Factory. So very tasty! We then headed toward the Charlotte area. Took a short detour to the antique store in Grover. Found some very nice wine glasses, a neat ice bucket and a lovely antique ring for me.

From there we headed to Newton, NC to meet our friends Will & Pam at Catawba Farms Winery.










The tasting room has not been open very long, only since August, but man do they have several lovely wines, the 4 of us shared a bottle of the Peach for the Stars and the Puh-leezeling - both of which came home with us! We also shared a cheese plate that consisted of pita bread, pimento cheese, a beer cheese, and hummus that was so very good!. We WILL be going back!

On the property there is a lovely bed & breakfast called the Peacock Inn at Catawba Farms. We hope to get to stay there sometime. Room rates are very reasonable.

On the 34 acres of the Farms, there are peacocks, this is Henry


bunnies,


 goats,


pigs,


chickens,




one rooster,


2 cats - Sister Kitty & Lily Mouse



and one horse whose name is Major Tom




Michael (pictured with the rooster), one of the partners, was kind enough to let us meet all the animals on the property & tell us some of the history of the property and the winery.

We spent quite a while here, looking at animals and enjoying time and wine with our friends. I strongly recommend this winery to anyone who loves good wine, fun with friends and animals.

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