Sunday, July 8, 2012

A Vino Vacation: Part Two

In continuation from the first part of our weekend, this part actually contains the Vino!  And again, we opted not to bring our Canon so all photos are taken with my phone.

After our morning breakfast at our hotel we made our way back downtown Hendersonville to meet up with our tour guide, Kimberlee, from Travels in Wine tours.  There were seven couples in our group, four of us celebrating our wedding anniversaries this weekend.  <3  Love was in the air!

We all jumped on the party bus and made our way to the first stop, an Urban Winery right there in downtown Hendersonville.

Falderal Winery was a great introduction to our tour.  We learned what a small-scale winemaker looks like and how they operate.  Out of the four wines we tasted I loved the first, called Sandburg's Goat White.  We even left with some to-go glasses and a bottle to take home.


We had to brown-bag our to-go glasses.

The next stop was a 35 minute drive out to the Green Creek Winery which has its own vineyard.  There we were greeted with some snacks to start, cheeses and crackers and some shrimp with a yummy lemon chardonnay sauce.  We also tasted four wines as well.  I swear to you that the second wine smelled and tasted just like liquor.  I think we determined it tasted like a whiskey or bourbon.  Wooh.  We were also served the owner's signature Chardonnay cake, and YUMMY it was. 

I had to snap a shot of the sign in the bathroom about employees washing their hands AND their feet.

After the tasting we were served our BBQ lunch and I was so excited to see the western Carolina tomato-based sauce as opposed to the eastern Carolina's vinegar-based.  It was delicious.  Green Creek also offers some wine ice cream too.  We tried six different flavors.  I like the raspberry and chocolate flavors the best.  Unfortunately we didn't prefer any of the wines at this vineyard so we didn't leave with any bottles.


The third stop was also a vineyard/winery and it had the most beautiful scenery.  Overmountain Vineyards not only produces and sells their own brand but they sell majority of their red wine grapes to the Biltmore.  We tasted a new grape known as the Petit Manseng as well as some Muscadine wine.  Again, I wasn't too fond of the wines offered.  I prefer a dryer red and this is the point where we found out that most of the reds in the area won't be available until this Fall because they tend to sell out quickly.


The final stop of the tour was considered the "comic relief".  The husband/wife team from Parker-Binns Vineyard were, in fact, hilarious.  And they had a beautiful garden!  Hubby enjoyed the Pearidge Red so much that he got a to-go glass along with a bottle to take home. 


I enjoyed the blackberry wine mostly because it was paired with yummy chocolate.  And since Hubby doesn't care for chocolate I got his!  I also enjoyed browsing around their wine room. They had these cool cork boards made from real wine corks. Now I know what to make from all the corks I've collected!


Once the tour ended we had made some new friends.  We exchanged our information with another couple who are locals and plan on being in our area next month for another drinking event.  Needless to say that went into our calendar.  :)

We headed back to our suite to freshen up and then trekked back to Asheville to make our dinner reservations that night.  I had booked dinner at The Admiral which was recommended to me by our tour guide.  Apparently it is really hard to get in without a reservation in advance.  The restaurant itself is downtown and looks like "a dump" from the outside, and to be honest it looks like a dive in the inside too.  But a dive with linens and an upscale atmosphere.

We were shown to our table for two which we found had a lovely card wishing us a Happy Anniversary, a nice sunflower bouquet and some cocktails they called Pros and Poms {Prosecco and Pomegranite}.



Now I have to mention that I allotted two hours for us to spend there because with most fine dining restaurants you wait forever for your food.  But we were in and out in less than an hour!  And that was great.  I ordered the duck breast and Hubby the steak.  Both were DELICIOUS.  You can tell the chefs were classically trained based on the food and the presentation.  We opted not to get a bottle of wine or any other alcholic beverages since we indulged all day long.  But we did treat ourselves to a chocolate torte.  Mostly me again, since Hubby doesn't care for chocolate.  Hehe.

And with it being such a long day we ended the night there.  We headed back to our room to call it a night.

...Brown Chicken Brown Cow...

All in all, we had a lovely weekend.  A very much needed vacation, just the two of us.  But we were eager to get home the next morning to see our boy.

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