I don’t have to tell you the holidays are quickly approaching. We don’t even have to look at our calendars. If you are like me, you can feel them. We can just feel all the telltale signs: the days get shorter, they usually tend to start getting cooler, oh and yes, and there is the fact that the store shelves have been filled with all things Christmas. Trees, lights, ornaments, garlands, and candles. Have you heard any carols yet? I guess I haven’t been anywhere, because I haven’t, but I’m sure that will happen soon enough. Our local radio station might just start playing them before Thanksgiving this year.
In the meantime, we begin to mentally prepare ourselves for the onslaught of these inevitable holiday events. There are parties to plan, schedules to juggle, dinners menus to create, homes to decorate. Are you feeling stressed yet? Here’s an idea to help you out before these things take over your calendar and make you crazy. Take a weekend or two, get out of town, and relax as you visit some wineries and see how they make wine and holiday food pairings work. Then you can pick up your holiday dinner wines, have holiday dinner menu ideas planned, and maybe a few Christmas presents ready to go under the tree all before the holidays even get started!
How, you ask?
THAT is the easy part! The weekends of November 11-13 and November 18-20 are the weekends set aside for the Way Out Wineries Holiday Wine Trail. Go visit their website and make reservations for the Way Out Wineries Holiday Wine Trail 2016. For $30 per person, you get a special Holiday Trail wine glass that you pick up at your first winery and take to each of the dozen wineries on the trail. Then at each winery you visit on the weekend of November 11-13, you will receive a wine tasting and a food pairing geared for the holidays. Some examples of the foods paired are sausage stuffing with cranberry relish, bacon stuffed dates, smoked turkey bites…you get the gist now? It will be like a holiday progressive dinner tasting wonderful Texas wines paired with delicious holiday foods. If you wait to go over the second weekend, November 18-20, you will miss out on the actual food pairing, but you will still get to try the wines and hear about foods that would pair with them. Both weekends the wineries will also hand out holiday ornaments; one per couple please.
Sound good? Sounds great to me! The wineries participating on this trail range from Lost Oak Winery and Sunset Winery in Burleson to Red Wing Dove in Hamilton; Texas Legato and Pillar Bluff Vineyards in Lampasas over to Fiesta Vineyard and Winery in Bend and Wedding Oak Winery and Old Man Scary Cellars in San Saba; up to Brennan Vineyards in Comanche, Pemberton Cellars and Barking Rocks Winery & Vineyard in Granbury and Bluff Dale Vineyards in Bluff Dale.
Don’t wait. Get your tickets now and plan on visiting the Way Out Wineries for the Holiday Wine Trail. These wineries are OFF the beaten trail. These are wineries you can still enjoy in an intimate environment. These wineries are where you can still enjoy a conversation with the owners and winemakers (who are usually one and the same!). Get some dinner menu ideas and some Christmas shopping done at the same time. Not a bad idea! See you on the Trail!
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