The GRAPE Adventure

As I mentioned ALL week , I had a wonderful weekend planned with my old friend Rhonda , my favorite winery , and some awesome music by a local musician she introduced me to ( I may not have mentioned that part before). What a great time!
She also introduced me to her friend Erin ( now my new friend ) I knew if Rhonda loved her I would too, and I did ! What fun we had !
We left Rhonda's house at 7 am ( which meant getting up at 6 , not so good for me , as I am NOT an early morning person ! ) We needed to be at the winery at 7:30 ( we did make it on time ) , by 8:30 we were in the vineyard picking grapes. When I say "we" , I don't mean just the three of us , I'm not sure how many were there , but their web site  said they took 100 reservations and they were full every weekend !

They sent us out to our alotted acre and we began picking . We were picking Concord grapes , which I guess are one of the later varieties. The owner explained that they are harder to pick because they grow under the foliage and that it would work best if one person lifted the vine and another picked. This was one of the few times in my life  being short payed off.

I climbed right under the vine and started picking. I'm not sure how Erin got under there , she is REALLY tall , especially compared to me . And I'm not sure if she was picking at this time or just taking a picture of me . In her words "  You know I'm here for the wine , I'm not really here to work , right ?"

She was really helpful at lifting the vines though , I mentioned she was tall right ? Anyway, the veiw from inside the vines was SPECTACULAR !

Isn't that gorgeous! I had an absolute ball picking these grapes !

Then came the real fun . The owner arrived with a cooler full of chilled wine for us to sample !

Good stuff !

Then it was  grape stomping time !

Yes, they actually had a big vat of grapes for us to climb in and stomp !

Not quite Lucy and Ethel , but we were close. And we stayed upright. That may sound funny , but there was actually a girl that slipped while stomping . She was grape juice from the waist down ! Too much wine , maybe?
I can't finish this post without mentioning Chad Elliot. He is a local folk singer /song writer we went to listen to that night. He was fantastic. This is the second time I have been to one of his concerts and I enjoy him more each time. I just wish we hadn't been so tired from our adventure , we left before his oncore , we were just beat ! But please check him out at :  

	http://www.chadelliott.net/

And that my friends , is the story of my Grape Adventure !

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