Spring Barrel Tasting in Colorado Wine Country (yes, it does exist!)

We are so fabulous :) Almost every place we went people would ask if we are sisters!

Jolea and I headed to Palisade, Colorado last weekend for "Spring Barrel Tasting." As you may recall, I officially discovered Colorado Wine Country while on our way out to Moab last month. Once it was determined that Jolea and I needed a getaway ala Mexico from last year, we decided the Spring Barrel Tasting was just the ticket. It is a weekend event where 8 wineries let people taste directly from the barrel and they have tons of great food to go along with all the wines.

We started at Canyon Wind, the only vineyard in the area with a true wine cave. One of my all-time favorite things was going to the wine caves at some vineyards in Napa, so this was a treat. We tasted three wines, including an '08 tempernillo and '08 syrah. Both were quite delicious...mild for reds, especially "raw" reds. It wasn't too far into the tastings that we realized the downer of this is that most of these delicious wines won't be available for purchase until next year.

The tempernillo in the wine cave. We spilled a little!

Plum Creek did a great job at their tasting...they had a "smelling" table where you could smell all sorts of different wines and they were labeled. They did an interesting Merlot tasting where you tasted a Merlot, then a Merlot with something like 10% Cab Sav to help with the "finish" and then a Merlot straight out of the barrel. I bought a 2008 Chardonney here that isn't yet available to the public...I like to be exclusive.

Another memorable stop was the Meadery of the Rockies. In case you didn't know (I just learned last month), Mead is honey wine and smells and tastes awesome. Honey wine means it is made from honey, not grapes (duh!)...they also had the most delightful collection of jellies and honeys to take home, the strawberry champagne variety went home with me!

My new favorite winery was Garfield Estates. They were just so NICE there. I mean, their wines were great, they even had cute wine dogs. But seriously, I felt like I was part of the family! We chatted with one of the owners for a bit out overlooking the vineyard eating snacks that were served by their cute daughter...we then went upstairs to the tasting room and I had my first experience with ice wine (Jolea has frequented Michigan wineries where ice wine is more prevalent). We also tasted a flight of Syrah (an '06, '07 and the '08 from the barrel downstairs). I joined the wine club so now, every quarter, two bottles of delicious Garfield Estates wine will be delivered to my door...seriously though, check them out. They are awesome.

Lucky, the cutest wine dog (at Garfield) you ever did see. He has a good gig.

Carlson Vineyards was also fun. I purchased some fruit wines while visiting here before the half marathon, so I was anxious to try some of their other wines. They had a few varietals where you would taste the wine, then taste the grape juice from the same grapes. I think more vineyards should sell grape juice, that stuff was DELISH! The true highlight of this was the food...they had a wheel of parmesan that they would soak noodles in before putting them on your plate. Best thing ever. Too bad wheels of parmesan are NOT cheap, so I won't be trying this at home.

They told us at the beginning of the day we should do 4 wineries per day. We ended up doing 7 in one day, 5 that were on the "tour", the meadery, and one other rogue winery because someone told us they had pomegranate wine (which they did, it just wasn't that good). The day started at 10am and about 3:30pm it was NAP TIME. By the time our hotel wine tasting rolled around (great little hotel, that Wine Country Inn), I'm not sure if the wines really weren't that good, or if I had hit my wine quota for the day. Either way, the whole thing was well worth the trip!

Best pic of the day!

[all the pics here]