Sipping from the Barrel

The week before Easter the three of us were joined by Grammy and GrampC for a weekend of Barrel Tasting in Livermore.  We loved doing this before and just after we got married in the Sonoma/Kenwood area, but the cost of tickets got a little out of control.  It was much more reasonable in our local wine tasting region.

And the trick now days is to figure out how to keep Drew pacified for wine tasting.  This time not only for one afternoon... but two!

It helped that ever few wineries there would be something of interest to look at.  Like the Clydesdale horse that was resting while it's passengers were inside Murrietta's well wine tasting.  Drew is in love with Clydesdales after watching the Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl - the one with "Landslide" playing in the background.

The first day we hit up about 6-7 wineries.

There were a lot of opportunities for candids at Concannon.  We were in their event center.

For those not familiar with wine tasting and barrel tasting... wine tasting you are at the counter tasting bottled wine. Barrel Tasting you taste wine before it's bottled and still in the barrel.  It goes through a lot of changes before it reaches the bottle. 

So what does Drew do to entertain himself while we're getting our wine on?

He runs through the fields.  Dave and I would take turns checking on him. It was a gorgeous day and he preferred working on his workbooks outside rather than inside where it was often crowded and dark.

GrampC and Drew check out the old set of wheels outside Page Mill Winery.

And at our next to last stop for the day , we went to Las Positas Winery.  We managed to get one family picture.

Drew wants to taste from that barrel in a few years...

So the plan to get Drew to cooperate for two days of barrel tasting was to bribe him with an overnight stay at a hotel with a pool.  Thankfully I had some hotel points and it was a free stay.  This was the best idea I had!

After swimming the next morning, we headed out for another day of wine tasting.  We started at Thomas Coyne and Fenestra.  Drew was climbing the rooftops... begging to go back to the hotel.

I clearly didn't take as many pictures on Day two, but here is a nice shot from McGrail Vineyards.  One of our last stops for the day.

We had a lot of fun, and Drew managed to survive although day 2 was definitely a tough one for him.  Who can blame him?  Perhaps next time we'll give him a few sips of the "juice".