Adventures in Clemmons, NC: Part Four

I'd best finish this up as soon (my sister in law is in labor as I blog this) I'll have two much anticipated little babies to blog about :-)

So, after Buck Shoals, we hit a few wineries that now I don't really remember. We ended up at Flint Hill Vineyards, another newish winery (at least new to us) http://www.flinthillvineyards.com/ . All that we sampled there was tasty, but, in particular, they had an excellent Chambourcin that was spicy and smokey; sort of tasted like a mouthful of cigar smoke. I know that probably sounds gross to some of you, but, really, it isn't. The smoke grabs you by the throat and the wine begs to be drank with BBQ steaks, a hearty lasagna or stew, and, of course, sipped while puffing away on a fine stogie! We bought about 1/2 a case of this. The lady that was pouring (and I think she was part of the family) told us they recently opened up a restaurant at their winery were they serve "fine" food and only their wines. Might be worth trying one of these days.

Next, on to Thistle Meadow Winery http://www.thistlemeadowwinery.com/?www.catchwine.com which is one we've been to before. We like tasting at this one in particular at the Wine Festival because they are ORGANIZED. They have the tasting area sectioned off with sweetie wines on one side and drys on the other. Then, even more so; whites on the left, reds on the right. AND, they have a list of what wines are being poured in what section. Not that 1/2 of the people tasting pay attention, but, we like this set-up and, usually, there isn't a huge line for the dry reds (go figure) so we can step right up. This year, we tasted their gamut and ended up taking home a few of their Shiraz, Old Vine Zinfandel and Carmenere (A LOT of this one!)

Finally, we tasted and bought once again from Round Peak http://www.roundpeak.com/. They have a real well-rounded selection but, in particular, their "Italian" Reds are a stand-out. Unfortunately, we thought we bought and paid for their Reserve Sangiovese; but, when we opened the box the next day, it was their "normal" Sangiovese which was nice, but NOT as nice as the reserve. Luckily, they didn't charge us the reserve price. We also took home a few bottles of their buttery Chardonnay and a Nebbiolo. They were NOT pouring their Sweet Niagra, which tastes, in essence, like very good grape juice (but it's wine). We bought some a few years ago and still have one bottle; keep meaning to serve it a brunch or something cut with some Prosecco.

Mr. B relaxes at picnic time

After pretty much tasting everywhere we wanted, we settled in for a big lunch of burgers and potato chips (and a bottle of Riesling from Rock of Ages). Let me tell you, this was an excellent switch to our process (eating). It definitely helped with the tipsyness and likely kept us from buying more wine than we really wanted (we ended up with enough as it was).

The crowd as seen from our spot under the shade tree

We went over our tasting notes, selected what wineries/wines/how much and, after resting a bit, went and methodically bought our wine. This year, we elected to have the wine "shipped" up to the front gate of the park where they had a tent set up for folks to pick their wine up on their way out. This made a lot of sense to us (especially after the aforementioned cart tipping over fiasco of 2006). After ordering, we went back to our tree to share a bottle of Buck Shoals Gold Mead (but, we only drank 1/2 of it because Mr. B had to "drive" to the tent and then back to the B&B).

Mrs. B enjoys some honey mead

After packing up our picnic gear, we walked to the car, drove to the tent, got our wine (we had our own table so that might tell you how much we ended up with) and went back to the B&B to settle in for the remainder of the evening/night with another picnic of good stuff that goes great with wine!

Ok, I guess I have ONE more entry to go on this; our golfing outting and our excursion to the restaurant Sunday night. But, that might have to wait for a few days!

Mrs. B