We had so many wine experiences during our summer trip to Pennsylvania that we still have a couple we haven’t told you about yet. Today’s entry is about our wine tasting at 6 Mile Cellars with Aunt Kathy, Marilou and myself. 6 Mile Cellars is just down the road from Aunt Kathy’s house but strangely, we had never visited. That’s likely due to the fact that it’s only open on Saturday and Sunday, so we made a point to check it out during our past trip. Although Aunt Kathy gets to enjoy the wines we bring back from the wineries, she’s never had the chance to come wine tasting with Neil and I. Neil’s sister, Marilou, was in town too so we decided to take a girls day out and enjoy a little vino.
For how many times Neil and I have watched Sideways, we’ve never been to the region to try the wines. We made a point to take a trip to the Santa Rita Hills AVA this summer to follow the Sideways tourist map. We were calling it our Sideways Wine Tour and it would begin outside of Santa Barbara and end in San Jose with us stopping every day or two along the California Coast.
Have you been following through our gift subscription to VineBox? Well this is our last entry of the 3-month subscription. Did you miss our introduction explaining Vinebox? https://wineandcheesefriday.com/vinebox-shipment-one/ We’ve really enjoyed this service and might even start it back up again if we end up staying at the same address for more than a week. Today’s entry has all French wines; one white wine, 2 red wines and another North Carolina cheese by Boxcarr Handmade Cheese.
During my time in Durham, NC, I was keeping my eye out for wine tastings and other wine experiences. When I came across the calendar of events at Bar Brunello, I was so excited to find such titles as Orange wine, South American wine classes and Eastern European tastings. Not only have I never tasted wines from this part of the world, to be honest, I wasn’t even sure what countries would be included in this area. Once I finally made up my mind to attend the Eastern European tasting, the first one was sold out, but luckily there were 2 so I promptly booked the second event.
Neil’s mom, Linda, works at a vineyard in New York, so while we were planning our trip to the Erie, PA area we made reservations to attend the brunch at Johnson Estate. Although we’ve visited the Lake Erie Wine Trail a handful of times, we’ve never done an official vineyard tour there. I was so excited to learn about some of the grapes local to the area and what a bonus to have brunch and a wine tasting included!
When I was approached to be the guest on Just the Bottle we talked through a few ideas of what the theme would be. I had recently done two Spanish wine and Spanish cheese pairings, (https://wineandcheesefriday.com/rioja-with-sheep-cheese-a-little-piece-of-spain/ and https://wineandcheesefriday.com/white-rioja-and-goat-cheese-log/) that were well matched, so I suggested the idea. Christina, the hostess, happily agreed since she is a fan of Spanish wines. This was our chance to get better acquainted with a new region for wine and cheese. We've had Grenache from California and quite a few blue cheeses but neither one from Spain so when we came up with the idea of Garnacha and Valdeon, it was settled.