Beautiful pictures courtesy of my wife, Laurie.My wife and I had a great time in the valley of Temecula.  We left on a Wednesday night around 8 at night and had very little traffic; all in all it took only about an hour and 15 or so.  We went to Temecula for two reasons: our anniversary and the semi-annual barrel tasting event.  Our anniversary was very nice; we saw a scary movie (The Crazies, which was surprisingly well done), traveled through Old Town Temecula (this was very unique as they had many old buildings mixed in with the new, including a jail cell from around the turn of the 19th century and an awesome handmade beef jerky shop), and had a nice dinner at the Yardhouse, which has some excellent beer on tap.  We recommend the trip for all things above, plus all the wine which is below.

Barrels of Cabernet Franc at Cougar Winery

The Temecula event was Saturday March 6th & Sunday March 7th, 10am to 4:30pm both days.  We were only able to be at the event on Saturday, so we buckled down, girded our loins, and assaulted 15 wineries in one day.  Everyone we ran into was surprised we managed that, it was pretty funny.  The event included food at each winery, so we never had an empty stomach.  Some of the tapas were excellent, including soups, beef, and handmade raviolis.  This helped us because we didn't have to waste time stopping for lunch and were able to keep right on truckin' through the day. 

Many wineries all very closeThere were a few wineries we wouldn't go back to because they were a little too rude or pretentious.  It can be tough going to tastings as a younger couple because some people don't take us seriously.  My wife had to use the restroom at one winery, so she asked where it was just as she noticed the bathroom.  Instead of kindly pointing her to the bathroom my wife had just spotted, the lady grouchily told her to go around the corner and use the porta-potties.  Really?  Mind you, all the people at the event were spread out across all of the 27 participating wineries.  So there would be only a few people at one winery at any given time, yet they wanted us to use porta-potties?  On top of that, she had the nerve to ask my wife, "are you with someone, Dear?" as if my wife had lost her father or something, not to mention the tone she used.  Anyways, back to the wine :)

My new favorite winery!

We tasted many excellent wines and visited several nice wineries.  Notably, my favorite was Baily Winery.  We went back to Baily on Sunday and had a full tasting.  They were so nice to us on Saturday, we had to go back and see the whole gamut.  Let me tell you, if all wineries were like Baily, the wine world would be a completely different place.  No pretention.  No snobbery.  Rather, passion, genteelness, and generosity.  My wife and I split a tasting, asking to try the reds.  Our pourer joked with us and told us we still had to try the whites, so he gave us two free tastes of their whites.  He was an older gentleman-in fact most of the workers there were older gentlemen- that took us seriously as wine tasters and treated us like we belonged there.  After the tasting, another server snuck us a bit of their port to try also, so we tasted 8 wines for the price of a 5 wine tasting.  They were so good to us that we signed up for their Baily Cellar Rat wine club.  I highly recommend this if you like to consistently buy a couple bottles of wine every other month and live in a state that allows the shipping of wine. 

We had a great time and met several nice couples there.  One couple comes from Illinois every year to attend this event!  Temecula has this same event every spring and every fall, so there are many more chances to attend and taste to your heart's content.

Purple teeth monsters!