Barrel Tasting

Although we have attended the Wine Road's Food and Wine Affair several times, we have never gone to it's annual barrel tasting event. We were invited to go by some people from work this year, so took advantage of the opportunity. Barrel tasting is different than regular tasting since you are tasting the wine before it is bottled and aged. You then get the opportunity to buy "futures" of the wine now, often at a discount, then come back to the winery when the wine is bottled, typically 12-18 months later, to pick up the wine. We did not purchase any futures, but we probably should have since we tried some really good wines.

We first hit Dutton Estate Winery. We have purchased wine here before and really like it. The guy on the left is a member of the winery family and is very knowledgable about the wine. Tom likes to chat him up when we visit.

Next, we hit Thomas George Estates. We visited their beautiful wine caves, but were not that enamored of their wine.

We then visited the Davis Family Vineyards. They had really good Pinot, so we bought a few bottles. Here is the group posing underneath the wine goddess.

By then, we were getting hungry, so headed over to Dutcher Crossing Winery for a nice picnic. They had some really good tomato basil soup to go with our sandwiches.

Our last stop was Passalacqua Winery. We got a nice "guided" tasting and sampled some paella they were cooking up on the deck.

Another beautiful day in wine country.