Wine tasting is one of our favorite activities with our group of friends! We're lucky to have dozens of wineries about 30 minutes drive from our home.
For our one friends birthday, we scored an awesome deal on a wine tour and tasting package from travelzoo.com. Our wine tasting and tour was at Keyways Winery in Temecula, California.
Our wine tour included a walk through the vineyard with an explanation of how the vineyards are maintained. We even got to pick some of the grapes right off the vine. Our visit to the winery was perfect timing because the grapes were about to be harvested in a few weeks. The vines for full of bunches of grapes. It was beautiful to see.
Inside one of the cellars, we saw dozens of barrels stacked on top of each other. The barrels made of different types of wood. The diffrent types of wood, of course, affects the flavor of the wine. It was interesting to learn about the maintenance of the barrels and the challenges of wine making when things don't go quite as planned.
The biggest surprise of our tour is when our guide explained the aging of wine. He explained that wine is best at about 2 to 3 years old. Pretty much the game of old wine is prestige not really the flavor of the wine.
Throughout our tour we tasted over 10 different wines, half white and half red. I have to say I enjoyed the whites a lot more than the reds. My husband's favorite was the ice wine.
Our two and a half hour wine tasting and vineyard tour at Keyways Winery was a relaxing way to spend a beautiful Saturday!
