Your guide to a ROMANTIC GETAWAY!!! (Day one)

This year for my birthday and Valentine's Day, all I really wanted was a trip to Fredericksburg! Spring Break was the perfect time for us to get away, because there would be no rush and no pressure for Travis to be studying. It was WONDERFUL and totally relaxing!! Sunday morning, we dropped Colby off at Travis' parents house and were on our way. We decided that day one was going to be all about winery hopping. We went to a few new ones and a few of our favorites from before. I decided that for each winery, I'd write down our favorite things about it and our favorite wine, so here it is!!

#1 Pedernales

First stop- Pedernales Cellars. It's a little ways off the main highway (right next to Rose Hill Manor where several of our friends have stayed before) and the scenery is beautiful! The wine tasting room is very nice and new (they just started doing tastings a year ago) We split the 9 tastings and really liked all of them. Our favorite was the Merlot.

We didn't spend much time at Pedernales. It was early in the day and a little awkward because we were some of the only people there, but the wine WAS good and they had a really cute porch where we could have stayed to enjoy a glass if it had been later in the day.

#2 Woodrose

Woodrose Winery was our FAVORITE stop of the day for so many reasons! They may not have had THE best wine, but it was very good, and the atmosphere made up for it.

Here's what we loved...

1.It was the most relaxed place we stopped

2. instead of standing at a bar and chosing the wines you want to taste, you sit at a table and they come to served you

3. the back porch scenery is beautiful (tons and tons of trees),

4. Our server, Scott, was SO informative. He told us about all of the wines in a non-stuck-up way. We learned alot of new info about wine!! (grapes grow best in really cruddy soil because they have super deep taproots, and the longer the grapes sit with their skins on, the darker the wines will be...interesting...)
5. SOL PATCH, a bluesy jazz duo was playing on the back porch and they were AWESOME! I could have sat and listened to them all day!

We actually decided to buy a cold bottle of Texas Rain wine to enjoy an glass while we listened to the music and soaked up the beautiful weather. It was perfect!!

Our favorite wine from Woodrose was actually the Red Zinfandel, but we chose to purchase the Texas Rain because it was more refreshing for us to drink on a sunny day.

#3 Becker

Becker Vineyards is definitely the biggest and busiest of the wineries, and they had done some remodling since we were there a few years ago. It was beautiful and the wine was really good. Our favorite was a sweet wine called Gewershtemeiner (similar to Riesling).

The best part about Becker was that we got a tour of the winemaking process- very cool!

#4 Torre Di Pietra

Torre di Pietra was a really FUN place the last time we were there. They have live music on Saturdays, frozen wine drinks and really sassy wine names like my personal favorite, DIRTY GIRL! On Sundays it's a little more low key, but the people working there were really funny and gave us a few of the extra "premium" wine tastes even though we were cheap and paid for the non-premium ones. Our favorite wine was the Black Spanish which was REALLY good, but of course, we had to purchase the bubbly dirty girl for our wine collection...it's a tradition! (we also got a frozen peach bellini- you MUST try one of these when you go!!)

#5 Grape Creek

Grape Creek was the last stop of our winery tour. It is a BEAUTIFUL tuscan style winery. It was pretty busy, but the wine was great! We bought a bottle of Merlot, and met a really sweet girl who played softball with a friend of Travis' in college. Grape Creek is probably the most "upscale" of all of the wineries.

After a full day of wine tasting, we went to check into our bed and breakfast and found out that Travis' sweet mom had already paid the balance on our room!!! The day just kept getting better and better!! (Thank you Kathy!!)

We would definitely recommend the Cherry Street Bed and Breakfast to anyone looking for a cozy and quiet spot in the middle of town. We booked it through Absolute Charm...I LOVE this booking service. They have tons of options in any price range depending on what you're looking for. The Cherry Street B&B that we stayed in was basically a room attached to someone's home. The owners happened to be out of town, so we had the driveway, backyard and HOT TUB to ourselves! It was very nice and we would definitely stay there again!!

For dinner, thanks to Rebecca's wonderful recommendation, we tried August E's. It's an extremely modern sushi/steak/wine kind of place and it was WONDERFUL! The wine that we had there was our very favorite. It was Axis Red Zinfandel- yum! I'll let you know if I find it locally because you need to try it. Thank you Rebecca for the perfect dinner spot!!

We ended our day in our private hot tub solving all of the problems of the world. :) It was nice to have a night without the day-to-day distractions of the tv, dog, baby, house cleaning, cooking, etc. We just got to relax and catch up, and I think that's exactly what we needed....