Valentine's Day Wine Tasting

This VTD, we decided to spend the day wine tasting. Can I just say that I am LOVING the fact that Brian likes to drink wine now? I see many more wine tasting excursions in our future!!

We ventured down to the Livermore area to do our wine tasting. We had been a couple of times with friends and we really liked the places we've been to before so we thought that we'd try and hit a couple of the wineries that we haven't been to before.

First stop was to Page Mill. At first, we weren't too thrilled. We're not really into whites, but their whites weren't really leaving an impression on us. Their reds were better, the zin probably being their best of the bunch. 

The next stop was Crooked Vine, which also shared with another winery, Stoney Ridge. For the $5 tasting, we could pick any 5 tastings from either list. We actually were there for the Crooked Vine wines, but after some mix and match tasting, we ended up liking the Stoney Ridge wines better. Every singe wine we had of theirs was SOOOOO good! We ended up buying a couple bottles. And the best part? Stoney Ridge wines were cheaper than Crooked Vine!! Score!!

After two wineries, we decided that it was time for lunch. So, we were on the lookout for a winery with a restaurant. The closed one turned out to be Garre. The menu was fairly limited, but boy was it tasty! It was a good thing that we had lunch first before tasting their wines because if you showed your receipt you got a free tasting. Yay! The place was really small, but they had room for two Bocce ball courts. I bet that place gets packed during the summertime. We just might have to go back for some wine and Bocce ball!

The last stop of the day was at Big White House and John Evan. Apparently, John Evan is the son of the owner of Big White House. The artwork on the John Evan bottles is done by John Evan's fiancee. The walls were covered in her art and canvas versions of the wine labels. I really like hearing about small family-owned places. Makes me want to support them over the big hyped up places. Their wines were pretty good too, but by the time we got there, we were pretty wined out. I'd like to go back and give them a proper tasting!

The big winner of the day for me was Stoney Ridge. The big winner of the day for Brian was Big White House. Both places had spectacular wines and they're both definitely on the list for a revisit!