Summer Festivals

This weekend we had the pleasure of attending the Summer Harvest Wine Festival down in Sonoita with our dear friends the Haro's!

Here's a couple things I learned over the weekend:

1.)

2.)

3.) Sometimes you just gotta...

4.) It's always

somewhere

5.)

6.)

 Dually noted. 

With that being said, we had an AWESOME weekend!

We arrived late Friday night to Tyah playing domestic goddess in the kitchen preparing a late dinner for us, and this adorable thing on display in our bedroom for the weekend

 Someday I'll be as good a hostess and Mrs. Haro...someday. 

We woke up Saturday morning, ate a delicious breakfast (prepared, of course, by the lovely and talented Tyah Haro) and were out the door on the way to the vineyards!

Last time we were down there was back in early May and missed the spring festival by just one day. So it was pretty calm, quiet, and certainly not crowded. This time, however, was a different story. There were people directing traffic, all sorts of vans, limos, and buses in the parking lot, and crowds of people. Tyah, who loves crowds was getting amped up at the mere sight of all the action, my husband on the other hand, almost immediately started sweating bullets. Nonetheless, he was a good sport and we didn't let all the extra crowds of people ruin our day.

With it being the Summer Festival they offered all kinds of fun stuff they don't typically have on a regular day. One of these included a few stations of wine samples with food pairings. My favorite was a sparkling peach white wine that was paired with a peach sorbet: HEAVEN. 

  

There was a bunch of other fancy stuff that I don't really remember the names of, but all of them were delicious! It was interesting to hear them explain how the flavors of the food brought out flavors of the wine and all that fancy stuff I never really understood before.

They also offered tractor rides through the vineyards, which we took advantage of. I never would have thought that the vineyards would be organized by the particular types of grapes, but every section was labled as to what type of grape was growing there! I was excited to actually see fruit growing on the vines, because when we went earlier in the year they had had a couple big freezes so the vineyards were pretty much a bunch of sticks in the ground with no growth. But this weekend...GRAPES GALORE! And we were lovin' it!

What's a tour through some vineyards without some wine? Yes please!

After our tractor ride it was off to the next house for some more wine tasting!

Our favorite stop is the Village of Elgin Winery.

It's smaller and not as flashy as some of the others, but I think that's what we like about it. Plus, they have some of the best wines. 

They have a series of wines called "Tombstone", and another series called the "Monkey" series. Last time we left Sonoita we took home a couple bottles of the "Naughty Monkey" (we kept forgetting the name of it and kept calling it naked monkey...teehee), and this weekend we found out they have a new version of this wine, the Naughty Monkey Reserve. It's a white wine and even sweeter than it's original form (we all know how I feel about sweet). This time we also took home a bottle of the Tombstone Rain. It too is a white wine, but the perfect balance between sweet and dry. Yes please!

After our tastings and a brief photo shoot, we were off to the next stop!

On our way to the next vineyard, Nate thought he saw a snake on the side of the road. So, naturally, he made us pull over so he could try and find it and mess with it. ...That's my husband. His search for the snake on the side of the road provided the perfect opportunity for some cool photos. However, his mood went from excited and eager to irritated awfully quick after I interrupted his snake search and made him take more pictures with me...he'll thank me when we're 90.

I must say, our next stop we didn't really stop for the wine. We didn't really like their wine last time around, too dry and too strong. However, they make this dip that is just DELISH! So we skipped the wine and went straight for the dip!

An added bonus was that they're vineyards out in the back were also green, lush, and FULL of grapes!

As we left the main area with all the wineries and headed back up to Tuscon, Abel remembered seeing a sign reading "winery" further up the road. We decided to check it out since we hadn't been to that one before, and boy were we glad we did!

This small property had BY FAR the best view of the area, the most grapes on the vine of ANY vineyard all day, and the nicest British lady there to welcome us! Her and her husband are the owners so they do all the work on it and occasionally get local volunteers to help with their harvests. They stay open later too, to catch all the outgoing traffic from the main wineries further south, which is why we were able to stop in. 

They even had little baby grape vines for sale. So guess who bought a couple to put in their back yard and grow their own grapes? 

WE DID!

You'll be receiving your invitation for the Townsend Summer Wine Festival shortly.

After a long day at the vineyards and a short nap we were off to dinner. I like to take any occasion to dress up a little bit, considering I feel like all I wear are my scrubs to work and then home to my sweats. So I was craving a chance to wear my skinny jeans and some heels! Rawr!

Sunday morning, after a brief walk through the farmers market we headed up to Mount Lemon for some peace and quite and gorgeous views. I've never been on a ski lift in the winter time, probably because I'm not a skier, but I do enjoy the peacefulness of the ski lift in the summer and all it's surrounding beauty, and this was no disappointment!

Once we made it to the top, we did some 'splorin, then made our way back down the mountain and back home to Phoenix.

Leave it to nathan to find all the living creatures

As if we didn't have a wonderful enough weekend with good friends, we got to enjoy this bad boy on the way home

4 stars and two thumbs up for this weekend.