Friday, October 21, 2011

Wine Tasting

Probably the most popular thing to do in Temecula is wine tasting.  Temecula doesn't have any really big wineries, mostly "boutique" wineries, but good wine is good wine, right?  And coupons for 2-for-1 deals are sweet.  Temecula has 37 wineries (as opposed to over 600 in Napa) and we tried them all.  Okay, no not really.  We went to 3.

The favorite wine I had was at a small winery called Churon.  It was actually a Rose wine, which I normally don't like at all.  This one was called a "white merlot".  It tasted like there was no alcohol in it at all.  Could get in some big trouble with that one.  But since we brought carry-on luggage here, there was no wine bottle buying by us and Churon doesn't even sell in stores, so oh well.  We shared a tasting there (of 5 wines).  Braden's favorite there was the cabernet. 

Next up was a slightly bigger winery called Falkner.  We each got our own tasting there.  Falkner also had a restaurant, so we ate a really nice meal and lingered on the patio for a while.  The weather here is gorgeous!  Falkner also sits up high, so the views up there were pretty good.  Here is a pic of me standing near the patio of the restaurant.

With our tummies full of food to soak up the alcohol, we headed to another winery.  This time Thornton Winery.  At this one, the tastings are outside and you sit like at a restaurant.  We each got 4 with our tastings and each tasting pour was 3 ounces, so 12 ounces of wine later we were all tasted out.  Headed back to the hotel to relax....ahh.

To finish off the day, we headed to Pechanga Casino.  The place was GINORMOUS.  We played slots for a little while, but putting money into a machine that just takes it all away gets old after a while.  Braden was dying to play blackjack, but from what we could tell in all our searching, there were only two $5 minimum bid tables.  The rest were $10 or higher.  The $5 tables were full.  So just when we were about to leave, Braden decided to play the $10 tables and got chips for his $20.  He got up to $40 and cashed out.  So, we ended up winning at the casino and called it a night.

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