Wine Tasting Black Friday in North Carolina!

 

This year for the Thanksgiving weekend we decided to stay local and promote the small biz (An excuse to explore the nearest vineyards).

Our Black Friday started at 11:00am in Adams Vineyards & Winery. If you enjoy Muscatine and Fruit Wines this is a great place to visit. They have a great variety of wines, most of them are North Carolina awards winners. Among of those are: Papa Johnny’s Reserve and Mathew Red Reserve. Check their website here: adamsvineyards.com.

We are more dry wines drinkers. Adams has 3 different dry wines: Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc, and Beulah. We chose the Beulah as the one to take home. It is a well balanced white wine. Ahh!! the owners are super sweet and easy to talk to….that’s what I call the true Southern Hospitality.

The second stop was Chatham Hill Winery in Cary. These guys export the grapes from the NC mountains and complete the wine process in the facilities in Cary. They have a large wine menu, checkout the website: chathamhillwine.com. We did the DRY Wine Tasting, where we tasted 8 (eight) different wines from the Dry Wine list. This list includes 12 (twelve) wines. They have also a Semi-Sweet Wine Tasting (but as I said before, we are more Dry wine drinkers at this point of our lives). I recommend the Perfect Harmony, Malbec and Cabernet Franc. If you are not in the mood for wine tasting go for a glass of any of those three.

Our third stop was a failure. We went to Cloer Family Vineyards to find out that it was closed. So, we headed to our truly third stop of the day: Doyle’s Vineyard. They were hosting a Wine and Painting event at that time but that didn’t stop Doyle to meet us in the Wine Tasting Room.  Doyle has six (6) whites and seven (7) reds going from dry to semi-sweet. No fruits wines in this place…just as an FYI. This place deserves you open a bottle and relax enjoying the view (if the weather permits). The Kaleidoscope’s Gold or Red or the Zinfandel (100% Zinfandel) are my top three, mix it with dark chocolate for a sweet treat.

I must say the best part of our wine tasting tour was the people we met… and skipping the Black Friday chaos in the Mega Stores!!!!

MB

Black Friday Road Trip

 

 

Adams Vineyards and Winery

Adams Vineyards and Winery

Chatham Hill

Chatham Hill Winery

Doyle’s Vineyard

Doyle’s Vineyard

Year comes to an end (Part II)

Well, last trip of the year…Charlotte, NC!! What a beautiful city!! Certainly one of the most beautiful metropolitan area of the US and the largest city of the NC. I was used to think that Charlotte was the capital of NC, but no, Raleigh is.

We arrived on Friday Dec 5th and stayed at Matthews (known for the short drive to Uptown Charlotte). We hit Uptown, Charlotte on Saturday. For our surprise, Charlotte was hosting the NCAA Football ACC Championship “Florida State vs Georgia Tech”. Uptown was packed and full of colors…gold and white, garnet and gold. We couldn’t get into couple of bars and restaurants because of the multitudes.  We ended up in City Smoke (Great choice!), great Pulled Pork and bourbon.  There, we wait until the football game started and moved to Mortimer’s Pub at the Epicentre.  We hit the lottery…music, football, beers, drinks, shots and another round of shots.

On Sunday, we went back to Uptown to visit the major attractions and take some pictures. Check them out at the end of the post!!!

I should add two more things to this post:  1. We have learned a lot of things in our trips.  On this one, I would say that the most important thing we learned was: check your luggage before hit the road. Ensure you have the appropriate clothes for the destiny you are heading to.  2. We are more than glad for the 2014 year adventures and looking forward for a new year full of health, life, food, and traveling.

MB

Georgia Tech Car

Charlotte Uptown View

Georgia Tech Car

Nascar Hall of Fame

Nascar Hall of Fame

Bank of America Stadium (Home of the NFL Carolina Panthers)

 

City Smoke

 

 

Year comes to an end (Part I)

Well my friends a fun year comes to an end. As I said in my previous blog we wanted to visit Blowing Rock and Charlotte before say goodbye to the 2014 and we did it!

In our way to Blowing Rock, we stopped first at Raffaldini Vineyards. We arrived around 1:00PM and we did the wine tasting. Eight (8) different types of wines, all locally manufactured and bottled. We are more like red wines kind of persons, although we are learning to enjoy white wines. Having said that, we bought a couple of red wines bottles and opened up one of them. We mixed up wine, cheese, salami (sold at Raffaldini Vineyards) and the stunning views from his backyard (See pictures below).

After that amazing stop at Raffaldini’s, we made it to Blowing Rock Downtown (It was too foggy that day so we skipped the Blue Ridge Parkway road in our way up). We arrived to the hotel (Hemlock Inn, Recommended!! Everything is walking distance from the hotel. Clean, hot water, and very comfortable), then we went to the Local Brewery. You should try the IPA and Belgian, they are so good!!! After that little snack, we spent the rest of the night at The Town Tavern watching college football and drinking local brews. People is really nice, there is a mix between college students and locals that makes the town really interesting.

The following morning we were trying to find a place to have breakfast but cafes open at noon. So we ended up in the only place open, had a coffee and hit the road. We visited the Moses H. Cone Mansion. In my opinion it wasn’t impressive but they have couple of handcrafted things really, really nice. I would add that the fog didn’t help to make justice to the place.

For the second part of this blog I will tell you about our trip to Charlotte.

Please feel free to comment. What we missed? Any recommendation? Any question about the places?

MB

Raffaldini Vineyards

Raffaldini Vineyards

Raffaldini Vineyards

Raffaldini Vineyards

Raffaldini Vineyards

Raffaldini Vineyards

Moses H. Cone Mansion

Blue Ridge Parkway view