Wine a Little

There's so many good wine puns that I figured I'd title this post with one...cause wine not? ...See what I did there? That was another pun and you didn't even see it coming. Anyway, last weekend I got to do one of my most favorite things in Arizona (as evidenced by this post and this post) and head down south to go wine tasting. It was the 36th Annual Blessing of the Vines Festival and my mother-in-law, a family friend, and I were ready for wine, and vines, and festivals. So that's what we did - we wined, and vined, and festivaled. I made up all of those words but you get the idea.

The day looked mostly like this:

The end.

I'm kidding, that's not the end. And that's not really what I did all day either...they wouldn't let me open the thing so I was forced to drink out of my souvenir glass all day. If I was paying attention during the wine tour when they were explaining how they make the wine I would know what the name of "the thing" is, but all that science just goes right over my head. I just like wine. 

We partook (I think I just made that word up too) in all the festival activities at Sonoita Vineyards including food and wine pairings, wine tastings, BBQ pulled pork sandwiches for lunch, and the actual blessing of the vines. Except it was so violently windy on Saturday that they had to do the blessing inside, which you can imagine was cramped. And you can probably imagine lots of people in one small space. But you probably can't imagine my mother-in-law being "shh'd" by some grumpy old lady next to her. Literally, this woman says "SHH! I'm trying to hear." Clearly homegirl needed some more wine. 

After we exhausted all the free wine we could at Sonoita we made our way to the next stop, which is my personal favorite, the Village of Elgin Winery.

Not only do they have the best wines (in my personal opinion), but I just love the atmosphere. The area in southern Arizona where all the wineries are is very rural, so it gives each place a real down-to-earth, unique, quaint feel, and Elgin is no exception. Also, did I mention their wines are fantastic?

Sherri put me to shame with her studious wine tasting approach - recording her results and hypothesizing her next tasting. I'm just like, "I'll try that one! Mmm yum! Now I'll try that one! Mmm so good!" and so on and so forth. It's like she's a professional wine taster or something. I need to step up my game.

After Elgin we stopped at a couple other wineries, but not before we sat in the car and ate a bag (or two) of Cheetos cause you know...so. much. wine. Also, Cheetos go well with wine, no? That should be a food pairing sample at the next festival. You know what other realization I had after a day of wine tasting? The descriptions of each wine (i.e. what they taste like) call for so many "that's what she said" jokes. Like, so many. Including but not limited to: 

"Deep and powerful in the mouth, with full flavor expression through the mid-palate and finish." Wait, what? We're tasting wine right?? 

"Fleshy, sexy wine." Hold on, there's flesh in this wine?? 

"...Mouth-filling with some textural sweetness." Alright that's it, I'm uncomfortable.

I didn't let a couple of graphic descriptions ruin my wine tasting though. I just tried to think about like, grapes and stuff. You know, all the stuff I thought would normally describe wine.

We didn't get back to the Valley until about 8pm, which means we literally had an entire day full of drinking wine. And that's a good day if you ask me.