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

2018 Weekend 4

This weekend we got a late start partially because we knew we weren't going far because we decided to stay in SC so we could talk to a couple of the wineries about our up coming SC Wine Competition and partially because we had some errands to run before we could start the weekend fun. Our first errand was of course the standard grocery trip everyone has to make once a week. We then headed to Brown's Meats on Union Street (formerly Eastside Meats). We were thrilled that at meat market had open back up in Spartanburg. We purchased some pinwheels - pork lion sliced long ways and stuffed with Italian sausage and rolled up. We also bought some pickles to take to a friend of ours that loves spicy pickles. We left there and headed to another meat market in Spartanburg County, Foster's Meats, where we met Jennifer McAbee who is part of the Foster family. We found out all sorts of fun stuff from Jennifer. They are producing sausage for a couple of farms using local to the farm wines, some using beer from local breweries and also some from local distilleries. This information was very intriguing to us and we are going to follow up on these and hopefully go visit the farms in the near future. She also told us of a Cidery that is hopefully going to be open to the public in the near future as well. We hope to get to speak with the cidery owner and do a feature blog on him when it gets close to his grand opening. So stay tuned!

First winery stop was Enoree River Vineyard and Winery in Newberry. We drove up we were greeted by the three dogs, Dusty, Tipsy and Maggie. We had a nice visit with Richard and they have some lovely wines! We shared a bottle of their great Gewurztraminer. We also got to sample a couple of wines that we had not had there before Saturday. The Sweet Tipsy Rose is 1/3 Carlos, 1/3 Vinifera White and 1/3 Vinifera Red. While discussing this wine with Claudia, Richard's daughter, she couldn't remember the exact varietals that were used and Richard and Dennis were deep in conversation and we didn't want to interrupt. This is a very lovely wine that would be great to have on a warm summer day sitting on the porch. Another I got to try was the Curiously White it is named that because they are not certain of the muscadine varietal. The reason is that they had thought that they purchased all Carols vines and when the grapes matured they discovered several vines were something else. Again, it's a fun wine that I think would be great in the summer or possibly make a terrific wine slushy. The wines are great, everyone at the winery is super nice including the dogs, apparently they have a cat named Robin, but I don't believe I've seen her. We missed seeing Laura on this trip though. But Pack the Porch will be returning soon so hopefully we will get to see her then!

Dusty

Tipsy

Magg

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We left Enoree River and after a stop to pick up some dinner we headed to Old Rock Quarry in Enoree, to visit with Debbie, Linda and Lindy. They were rather busy but we had a nice visit with Deb and Lindy. Poor Linda was stuck inside. Debbie & Lindy were in and out but we were still able to discuss the wine competition with Debbie. We had our dinner and shared a bottle of the Snap Apple Sassy (and brought one home). There was a birthday party outside and I'm not sure what the ladies inside were celebrating, but they sure had a good time! Sadly it was time to go home. If you have not been there, you really should. These 3 really make everyone feel like old friends and family.

Sunday after church and family lunch, we headed to Overmountain to take Sophia her pickles. We were pleasantly surprised at how busy they were for a rainy Sunday afternoon. We shared a bottle of the Camilla, which is their white table wine. Got to talk to some lovely people from Gastonia and hope we get to see them again! I kept thinking when I saw them that I knew them from somewhere. Turns out they had been at Cat's Paw a couple of weeks ago when we were there. Was so great to see them at another winery we love. 

Upon leaving Overmountain Dennis wanted to go to Biltmore and since we're pass holders he didn't have to twist my arm very much. We thought they were open until 9 but winter hours are only until 7. Our very nice and super fun waitress Jyll totally helped make the trip there for us and we hope that we get to see her again when we go back to celebrate some of our friends anniversary. Regardless of the earlier closing time, we were able to have a nice dinner and a bottle of their Riesling before having to bring this weekend to a close.