So, long story short, we arrived in Grapevine at the right time, on the right day, just a week early. Grapevine was (relatively) dead. I checked the tickets and saw that on the left side, it said September 11. I hadn't even noticed that before. So, I said, "Well, we need sparkling wine, anyway" (we drink a lot of sparkling wine--the alcohol content is not as much, most of our friends will drink it making scrambling for the right wine easier, and I often serving it with crackers and cheese or breakfast, the two times we most enjoy wine at home.)
I suggested we head for Homestead first. This is a small house with two rooms, a front porch, a side patio, and tables in the front yard (in the picture, obviously decorated for Hallowe'en). The actual winery is further north, this is just a venue for serving and selling their wines as well as some of the other wines of North Texas. Homestead has carried a wonderful sparkling (Celebration) in the past, but they ran out in the winter. I was hoping they had gotten more. They had not, but were still hopeful. Since we have a club membership there, we sat down and sampled the two new wines they had, then ordered a glass each of our favorites.
This is (or at least was) one of the main draws at Homestead--John, now retired much to our sorrow. He is always a friendly and charming soul--probably the soul of Homestead Grapevine, in fact. We affectionately called him "the undertaker" because he looked like he'd stepped straight from a horror movie (though not so much with this hat which was not a usual accoutrement. I think he bought it for golf, something he intended to do a lot after retirement.) Of course, John wasn't there (though we may be lucky enough to catch him next week at Grapefest)--he is retired of course, but still shows up for parties and events--on his schedule. We had a lovely conversation with the lady who was working there...all of Homestead's people are friendly and knowledgeable.
Next we went to Cross Timbers Winery, as far north as you can go on Main Street in Grapevine. Since this is somewhat off the beaten path, we don't often go there, but we will now. The venue is huge, a small house which holds the tasting room is bordered by huge outside areas, including a large barn used for parties and a wonderful trellised terrace in back not even shown here. There are two large parking lots and even room for some grapevines, though most of their wine is neither grown nor made here. We have usually found one or two wines we like here, but have not been really wild about any. We sampled their semi-sweet wines (which would be more to our taste) and found one we were impressed with--their Muscat Canalli (the newer one). This is semi-sparkling and not too sweet, but certainly light and lovely. We bought two bottles of this. The wine clerk would not allow us to sample their new sparkling wine, because the rest of the bottle would go bad. We said we'd buy a bottle, have a glass there, then recork it, and take it home. (This worried her greatly, but not us--we knew that right down the road we could buy a sparkling wine bottle cork.) However, the wine was delicious, and we not only drank the whole bottle right there (Cross Timbers gives you complimentary cheese and crackers with wine drunk on the premises, and we had to finish that--right?), we bought four more bottles of the sparkling and texted Julie about how our day was going and finding this great new wine.
Of course, at this point, we needed something to eat---FAST! We headed to The Main Bakery and Bistro (whose website pictures I can't seem to copy and bring over here). TR had an angus burger with a huge pile of French fries. I had a bowl of tomato basil soup (which was to die for) and a fresh salmon salad. I had expected the salad to be smoked salmon, but it was salmon sushi, which was surprisingly mild. It had an Asian dipping sauce, which really didn't add much flavor, and the overall effect was that it was bland and not what I needed after all that wine, so I helped TR finish his pile of French Fries. We then skipped all those fabulous-looking pastry desserts...and headed to Su Vino Winery.
Had I been in Grapevine with girlfriends, we'd have gone shopping--there are wonderful shops and art exhibit spots on Main Street as well, but I'll do that next week at Grapefest. Then I will be able to park TR at some music with some wine and wine tickets and shop to my heart's content.
Now at Su Vino we sampled their new wines and ordered a glass each of our favorites with a small cheese plate (picture below.) We had a fun conversation with some of the people at the bar--a couple ladies in town for a convention and doing some sight seeing (or drinking) on their spare time. After our purchase of four bottles of sparkling almond wine, we headed home, ready for a quiet week-end.
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