8 Crazy corks: August 6, 2011

After a quick stop back at Wendy’s house to eat some real food and get our poop in a group, we headed out to Kimmel Orchard & Vineyard, the place that started it all.

Last summer, Jessi and I had ventured to Nebraska City to visit Wendy and she took us out to Kimmel because Jessi wanted to pick an apple. As we wandered around the grounds (and picked our apples), we ventured into the main building to check out what they had to offer, we were also after apple doughnuts because Wendy said they were awesome. We were attracted by a bar set up at one end of the building so we moseyed over to check it out… and discovered wine tasting. As we were told about the tastings and wine, the nice gentleman behind the bar told us about the Nebraska Wine Tour. We took passports, with our very first stamp in it, and made a goal of attempting the entire tour the next year when we could start as early as possible.

Full circle.

So, Jessi, Wendy, and I parked ourselves at the bar once again and got down to business. Kimmel had many of the same wines as Arbor Day Farm but there were enough for us to pick mostly new choices and extra tastings of the ones we enjoyed. The lady behind the bar had just started out at Kimmel and we had fun telling her about our experiences so far with the tour and giving her some tips on different wines that she might like.

I enjoyed most of the wines that we tried with my favorite being the Vignoles, which seems to be showing itself as one of my favorite types of wine.

After we finished with the tastings, we wandered around the shop a little (still haven’t gotten any of those apple doughnuts) before heading out to the event that we had found about earlier in the day.

Kimmel Orchard & Vineyard Specs:

      4 tastings for $5

      Apples and other fruit products for sale

      Fruit picking and vineyard tour

      Souvenir wine glass included with tasting

Lucky 7th cork: August 6, 2011

It is rather advantageous for our wine tour adventure that my sister, Wendy, lives in Nebraska City. The majority of the stops are within an hour’s driving distance from either Lincoln or Nebraska City so we have somewhere to stay while hitting multiple places.

When my weekend plans fell through, I planned a trip to Lincoln and Nebraska City… well, I planned on driving the two hours to Lincoln, Jessi had the rest of the weekend plotted out…. Potentially seven places in two days!

Random Bit of Advice: If you are doing the wine tour with a friend, make sure one of you is really good about planning stops, getting business hours, and finding out awesome events going on at potential stops to enhance your experiences. I would not have had half the amount of the fun on this trip if Jessi hadn’t been awesome at all of the above.

Our first stop of the whirlwind weekend was going to be back out to Glacial Till for the Blessing of the Harvest Festival… until we found out that it was $25 and an all day affair. It is something that we would love to go to some year but with all the stops we had to do, there was no way we could fit that and everything else in. So, we hit the road to Nebraska City to hook up with my sister and venture to the real first stop, the tasting room at Arbor Day Farm.

The poor lady behind the counter was just getting slammed with people wanting tastings so we didn’t get a real chance to talk to her about the wines, but we did get to try some new ones. The surprise one for me was the de Chaunac. It is a dryer red but they had accidentally chilled it so it was much more palatable to us than the de Chaunac we tried later that was room temperature. They had some great fruit wines (not a surprise since Nebraska City is the birthplace of Arbor Day and it is all about trees) but my favorite for the stop was the Morton’s Reserve.

When we finished with our tastings, we got to try some awesome sangria that they made with their apple wine and cherry cider (I’ll put the recipe up later).

We did not take advantage of the tour of the orchards and other offerings of Arbor Day Farm, but while we were there, we found out about a festival that was happening that day at our next stop so we were more than ready to move on.

Arbor Day Farm Specs:

      4 tastings for $5

      Apple and other fruit products for sale

      Tree and orchard tour

      Souvenir wine glass included with tasting

First 6-pack of corks down: July 15, 2011

When we found out about Cedar Hills Vineyard in Ravenna, Jessi and I were rather upset with my roommate, Puffy. He grew up in Ravenna and didn’t even mention to us wineauxs that there was a vineyard in his hometown (which is a long half hour from Kearney so the closest by far). Jessi was coming to town for a visit so we asked Puffy if his mom and grandma would be interested in going to the vineyard with us. He asked for us and found out that his grandma would be if she wasn’t busy that evening.

Jessi picked me up from work and we headed straight for Ravenna as fast as her little Rav4 would go, but it wasn’t fast enough. Grandma Liz beat us there. Come to find out, she is friends with the owners of Cedar Hills and was enjoying a glass of wine with them when we arrived.

She helped the one of the owners explain to us how the tastings go and we settled in to try their wines. The owner brought us some homemade foccia bread and olive oil dip to enjoy with our wines before joining us at our table. They offered the most fruit wines that I have seen so far and during our conversation with them, Jessi and I found out that all (or almost all) of the fruit for the wines was grown on the property. They also had a full kitchen for meals and amazing pies (go for the strawberry rhubarb).

Toward the end of our list, Jessi and I struck up a conversation with Paul (Cedar Hills is owned by Paul and Joyce Sears) about the different sangrias he had been making and different vintages of wines they were planning. He was mixing their different wines with various fruits that they grew (his favorite was one made with La Crosse and blackberries) plus thinking about trying a strawberry-rhubarb wine for next year. Jessi and I jumped with both feet into the conversation and I suggested a strawberry-rhubarb sangria with their rhubarb wine and strawberries. He loved the idea and I think it’s something that Jessi and I will have to try on our own sometime.

After we finished our tastings, Joyce offered us a piece of her strawberry-rhubarb pie. Jessi and I shared a piece and enjoyed it with their rhubarb wine… something I suggest everybody try! Cedar Hills was one of my favorite stops and while I liked so many of their wines, my favorite was one I tried on Grandma Liz’s recommendation, Rossa Dolche. I also recommend trying their Elderberry wine. It is like nothing I have ever tried before and I totally agree when they say that elderberry is an acquired taste.

Cedar Hills Specs:

                  5 tastings for $5

                  Homemade Pies and other great food for sale

                  Fruit picking during the summer

                  Wine gift baskets made to your specifications

My Favorite Sangria

I told you that I would share my favorite sangria recipes with you. Here is the first and my favorite by far.

We discovered it at our first Wine and Jazz Festival, it was offered by George Spencer Vineyard of Gibbon as one of the things we could sample. Jessi and I, still being young in the wine world, thought that it was a type of wine that we could buy, so when I went to purchase a bottle, I was informed that it was not for sale but if one purchased a bottle of their white, it came with a copy of the recipe.

         White Peach Sangria

       2-Bottles Pinot Grigeo (any white would work but you'll want a semi-sweet that is on the drier end of the scale so the sangria is not too sweet)

       1-750 mL peach schnapps

       ½- bottle of white grape peach iuice

       ½- cup of vanilla sugar

       Sliced fruit-oranges, lemons, limes, peaches

Mix it all together and let it sit in the fridge for a few hours to overnight so all the flavors meld together.

If you don't know what vanilla sugar is (I sure didn't the first time I made it), it is sugar infused with vanilla. At first, I just used a half a cup of sugar with a few drops of vanilla which worked but not as well as the real deal.

You can make it by putting 2 cups of sugar into an air tight container with a vanillia bean that you slice down the length of and scrape. Mix the scrapings with the sugar, bury the bean in the sugar and store in a cool place for 1-2 weeks. Shake every couple of days to mix up. (recipe from Good Eats w/ Alton Brown).

Or you can buy it. The only place that I have found it is at Savory Spice Shop in Denver but there are a lot of places that sell it online (including Savory at http://www.savoryspiceshop.com/).

Sláinte!

Chilled is one thing....

There has been more than once in my short time as a wineaux that I have purchased a bottle of wine from the grocery store and wanted to drink it as soon as I got home. I am not a huge fan of room temperature beverages (which is probably one of the reasons that I don’t really care for dry reds) so the wine usually finds its way into the freezer to speed up the process. On the should-be-rarer-than-it-is case that I had more than one bottle that needed to be chilled (usually one of Jessi and my’s wine and cheese nights), they would both go in the freezer and we would drink which ever one chilled fastest first.

This lead one poor innocent bottle of strawberry wine to meet a horrible end.

After our first Wine and Jazz festival, Jessi and I popped our two bottles into the freezer to drink as soon as they were chilled. We managed to get to her bottle that night, but my strawberry wine was forgotten. It wasn’t until the next morning that I remembered the bottle in the freezer. I raced to the kitchen and threw open the freezer door to find the remains of my wine.

As the wine froze, it expanded, pushing the cork through the foil and completely out of the bottle. Amazingly, it didn’t break the bottle, but it did make a mess of frozen, slushy wine all over the bottom of the freezer. I reverently pulled the bottle out of the freezer and set it on a paper towel on the counter and set out to clean up the mess… I might have wiped away a tear or two during the sad project.

It was a sad, sad day in the life of this wineaux, but looking back, it was rather cool to see. I would have put money on the bottle being broken when I found it.

“What did you do with the wine after it thawed out?” you might ask me. Well, I did what any good wineaux would do… or maybe it’s more of what anybody who hates wasting alcohol would do.
      
We drank it. It wasn’t good. Lesson learned.

The 5th cork makes a team: July 8, 2011

A random little jaunt on our tour led us to the WunderRosa Winery in Roca. Jessi had called ahead and the owners were kind enough to open a half an hour early so we would have enough time for the tasting before meeting my sister to bring me back to Kearney. We got there shortly after a larger group of older wine lovers and set up shop at a table by a window that looked out over the vineyard. We snatched wine lists and picked out the ones we wanted to try.

Jessi and I kind of kept to ourselves while the larger group did their tastings, only leaving our table when they had gone back to the seating area they staked out before we arrived. They got done with their tastings before we did and settled in to enjoy a glass of wine and the bruschetta bar.

This is when we got down to what we do best. Jessi and I parked ourselves at the bar and chatted with Brandy, the intern, about the winery. We also told her about our wine tour stops and the plans for the rest of our adventure.

We found out that she had been visiting Nebraska vineyards/wineries and tasting rooms also and blogging about them on her own site (amoradevine.tumblr.com if you want to check it out). Another group of visitors put the kibosh on our conversation, but as Jessi and I retreated back to our table with our glasses of wine, we continued to talk about the idea of blogging about our adventure. This blog is, of course, the result of that little chat over a glass of WunderRosa wine… I believe mine was my favorite of the tasting, the HR Blush 2010.

We had a good time at WunderRosa. The conversation was very enlightening and the environment was comfortable. Jessi gets to go back soon, but I’ll let her tell about that adventure.

WunderRosa Winery Specs:

      4 tastings for $5

      Glass of wine $5

      Souvenir wine glass included with tasting

4 makes a cork-tet-May 10, 2011

Our final stop on the first leg of the Nebraska Wine Tour came with a trip to the Windcrest Winery in Raymond. This stop was full of perfect timings and great conversation.

When Jessi and I pulled up, we did not see anybody around, but there was a sign on the door that said “I am out in the vineyard, call (this number) and I will come up.” We were standing there trying to decide what to do when the door opened and the owner stepped out to invite us into the tasting room. He had been working and came up for a quick break when we pulled up (we found out later that Windcrest was a one man operation except when the owner’s daughter helped him when she was home). Not two minutes later, another couple (who were about the same age as Jessi and I) arrived for a tasting also.

The owner (a very personable older gentleman who reminded Jessi and I of farmers that we knew growing up) gave us each a wine list and a glass and began telling us about the wines and the winery. He also gave us two options for tastings. We could do the posted way which was 6 tastings for $5 that were slightly larger samples, or we could do it his way which was slightly smaller samples of all 12 of the wines. Of course we all chose to do things his way. He lined up all the bottles from driest to sweetest and told us about each of them before he poured. He also had of suggestions of food pairings with many of the wines.

His list had the most fruit wines that Jessi and I had encountered up to then and we were impressed with how good they were. I think my favorite was the Edelweiss (which is nothing new, I love almost all Edelweiss) but one other sticks in my brain. The Cherry Nectar wine was very good just to drink, but the owner had all of us try something rather different. He told us to take a drink but to not swallow right away. Instead, he had us slosh it around in our mouths until it was foamy and then swallow a few times. Doing that, it tasted just like cherry pie ala mode.

When we were done with the list, we had him stamp our passports while Jessi and I told the other couple about the Nebraska Wine Tour and convinced them to start their own wine adventure. After they left, Jessi and I acted like crazy people and convinced the owner to take a picture with us, but he was a good sport about it.

Windcrest Winery Specs:

      2 options for tastings: 6 for $5 or His Way for $5

      You can only purchase their wine at the winery

      Souvenir wine glass included with tasting