Temecula wine tasting

Sunday a group of us went to Temecula to go wine tasting for James’ birthday. James’ birthday? Yes that’s right, three days of celebration. It may seem like a bit much, but this trip was the only one James’ planned and knew about. I have been to Temecula once before for wine tasting when I took a class in wine at Cal Poly Pomona (about 7 years ago?).

James set-up a party bus to take us down there, which is always the best way to go. I could tell it was going to be a fun trip when I saw two coolers of drinks going into the bus. We got off to a late start, because someone was a ½ hour late and we hit some traffic on the way down.

We started off at Churon because we heard they had a deli and eating before drinking is always a good idea. Unfortunately, the deli was closed due to a family emergency. We started sampling some of the wines and they were nice. It was great to have some good wines again. These weren’t my favorite, but they were good. Somehow, James ended up behind the counter serving wine and joking around with the pourers. Only James.

The lady running the deli came back and made us a plate of cheese, summer sausage, and crackers. The weather was gorgeous, so we ate outside on the patio. It really hit the spot and James opened a bottle of wine for us to all share. Someone at Churon recommended we try a winery named Filsnger. It was about 10 miles away, but it turned out to be a good place. It was much smaller and the 24 (or so) of us completely overwhelmed the small tasting room. They had some good sweet wines (Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Muscat, etc.) Someone made a comment in front of the pourer while we were buying some bottles that made me blush. I won’t mention any names, but her name rhymes with “Reina”.

Some of the people were really starting to feel the wine by now and everyone was having a great time. Our next stop was Callaway. It is a much larger company and they consistently make good wine. The tasting room was huge and was completely packed. I was anxious to get out of there and stop at my favorite winery in the area – Hart.

Hart is a small winery and is next door to Callaway. I was a little disappointed to see how many people were already there. By now, some of our friends were completely drunk, but there was already some drunk people at Hart, so they fit right in. I tried about 8 different wines while we were there and each of them was amazing. We bought 3 bottles.

The ride home was really dull ;-) and that’s all I have to say about that.