Vintage Virginia Wine Festival

Yesterday my friend, Colleen, and I drove 2 1/2 hours to Northern VA to meet up with her sisters and nieces in Haymarket to go to a wine festival. There were 6 of us. The festival was outdoors at Bull Run Park. It was a beautiful day but had rained the night before and the ground was very muddy so they had straw down everywhere.

I have no idea how many wineries were represented but there were many tents set up with someone ready to let you taste 6 to 8 (or more) of their wines. You really couldn't move from one tent to the next and start all over because it was just too much wine. I know, you can't believe I just said, "too much wine", but it's true. You really don't get much wine at each tasting but it still gets to be too much for your mouth to handle and I felt full even though I hadn't had much. Maybe it was all the tiny crackers I ate in between. There were other vendors there selling their wares too and it was nice to browse through their stuff while taking a break from the wine. Colleen and I bought cool earrings and a few others bought hats and other clothing.

I have to say that, besides being with fun people, the most fun was people watching. I would guess the average age there was 40's and under. I think maybe 50% of them had at least one tattoo. Of the 6 of us I saw at least 3 of us did. For an outdoor event on a hot day I was amazed that most of the clothing people were wearing was tasteful. Usually when it's hot you see more skin than should probably be exposed on people who shouldn't be exposing it.

Another fun thing to watch was the way people tasted the wine. You can bet that most of us there probably drink the same wines at home time and again, and cheap wines at that. But yesterday we were all connoisseurs, smelling, sipping and rolling the wine around in our mouths as if we could taste the fruit, the wood of the barrel and experience every other nuance of the wine. We were much classier for just a few hours

I came home with only 2 bottles of wine, neither of which I'd drink a whole glass of. They were more just for fun. One was a strawberry wine I got for James because I think it's something he may actually drink. It really tastes like strawberries, unlike most wines that taste very little like the fruit it was made from. It's too sweet for me and tastes a little like strawberry jam. The other bottle was called Hot Jazz. It had less than 1% jalapeno peppers in it. It definitely had a kick. I thought it would be kind of fun to have others taste so that's why I bought that one. Colleen and I agreed I should make Mexican pizzas one night and serve this wine.

Before I left that morning I was wishing I wasn't going so I could stay home and work on the fence that I'm so excited to get up. I'm glad though that I went. It was a wonderful day and the fence is still waiting for me just like James told me it would be.