Believe it or not, I've never been to a real winery, only that wine bar I went to a year or so ago (which, by the way was awesome, and I'm sad it closed down). Since I didn't really dip my toes into the wine pool until a few years ago, wineries weren't my thing. Nor did any of my friends really go to wineries back in the day. After I started drinking wine, I was really only limited to Rieslings, so it's taken awhile for me to really enjoy other wines. And now that I've expanded my repertoire, I was finally able to make it happen.
We headed to Southern Illinois, south of Carbondale this morning to the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail. There are a dozen wineries all within minutes of each other, nestled down back country roads. It took us about an hour and a half to two hours to get to the first one, StarView Vineyards, and we arrived right at lunchtime. And it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I guess I had in my head that wineries were huge, acres and acres of grape vines and vast, spralling estates sprinkled with numerous buildings. Nope. This first vineyard had only two main buildings, a small section of grape vines and little pond out back. I never would have guessed it was a winery on first glance. It was cute though and I was excited to have a look.
StarView!
The main building.
The barn out back.
Upon entry, there was a bar dotted with people having their tasting, so we walked around for a few minutes. There was the main entry hall with the wine bar and gift shop, a side room filled with tables and chairs that could serve as a dining hall during the chillier months or a reception hall for an event. And off the back was a nice deck overlooking the pond and grapevines, filled with umbrella tables. Once the hall cleared out, we took our turn with our tasting. As I've stated before, I much prefer sweeter wines than the dry, so I took the sweet route, along with Natalie and Kelly, while Betsy and Crystal went with the dry route. Our tasting included 5 wines and our first was Vidal Blanc, a semi-sweet wine with nothing special. I mean it tasted okay, but I wasn't blown away by it. Next was the Venus and it was slightly sweeter, and rolled around on my tongue a bit more. (I have no idea what that means, but it sounds cool.) The third was my favorite, the Moonlight White, and I immediately took to this one. Natalie and Kelly agreed that it was their favorite so far as well. The fourth, Silver Star, knocked me over when I smelled it. It was bad, I mean like dirty socks bad. Okay, so it didn't smell like dirty socks, but it wasn't a great smell. I couldn't imagine it tasting very good, but I gave it a shot anyways. And I was surprised that it tasted a lot like grape juice. The lady explained to us that this wine was made with the same grapes used to make white grape juice. How could something smell so bad and yet taste like something as good as grape juice? The taste of it was good, but I knew I'd never be able to make it through an entire bottle. It was just too sweet.
Inner dining hall.
Grapes!
Pond off the back deck.
The final thing we all tasted was their Sangria and it was a little party in my mouth. It was light red with a sweetness that wasn't overpowering and it was heavenly. The minute we tasted it, we all agreed to split a pitcher of this angelic nectar. We ordered some appetizers and then headed out to the patio to relax. We nibbled on (and by nibbled I mean engulfed) our spinach and artichoke dip, bread and oil and olive tapenade. The amount of bread they gave us could have fed an entire village. But, considering the way we were pounding Sangria, it's a good thing we had all that bread.
Mmmm...oil and bread.
Spinach artichoke dip and bread.
Crystal, Kelly, me, Betsy & Natalie
After finishing our Sangria, and you know, the food, we decided to make our way to the next winery on our list. But not before Kelly, Natalie and I all purchased a bottle of the Moonlight White. Next on our list was Owl Creek Vineyard, and it was just a short hop skip and a jump away from StarView. Owl Creek was smaller in scale than StarView, but it was charming and quaint and didn't come across as cheesy even though they played on the owl theme. We had a quick tasting here that once again consisted of the Sweets. Betsy joined Kelly, Natalie and I on this route, whereas Crystal stayed with the dry theme. The first was Whooo's Blush, a rose wine with a strawberry undertone. It was kind of dry, but not too bad. The lady serving us said that it was the second most popular of the sweets. Next was the Water Valley White and it used two grapes, tasting a lot like the Silver Star from Starview. Except this one wasn't as overly sweet like the other one. It still tasted a lot like grape juice, but it was a bit more tarty (this is why I will never be a wine conossieur. I use words like tarty to describe wine.) I really liked it. Number three was Ruby Red Concord and tasted a lot like the Water Valley White as well, but I didn't like it as much. It was almost too grape-juicey for me. Fourth was Zengeist, named after two of their owls, that was a dessert wine. This one was pretty fantastic as well. Finally we tried the Framboise, another dessert wine with raspberry and brandy undertones that packed quite a kick at the end. I found out why when she told us this wine had the highest alcohol content of all of the wines. Right-o. That one'll knock you on your ass.
This was smaller than StarView.
More grapes!
Me & Betsy by the cool sign.
Nat & Bets
We didn't spend a lot of time at Owl Creek, mainly because it was smaller and didn't have as much room to spread out. We quickly finished our tastings, each bought a bottle of wine (I bought the Water Valley White) and headed out. Oh and we also kept our tasting glasses because they were awesome. I ended up with a total of 3 tasting glasses for the day. I now have some random additions to my tiny wine glass collection.
Von Jakob Vineyard was third on our list and it was about 20 or so miles from Owl Creek. All that wine and good food made me nap for a bit during the drive. At first glance, Von Jakob looked less like a winery than the first two. It wasn't nestled among the trees and situated by a little pond off the beaten path with charming little buildings. Nope. It was a giant tool shed right off the road. The grape vines were out back, but it definitely didn't look like a vineyard. It could have been a biker bar for all I knew. We saw enough of those in the tiny towns we drove through to get to each winery.
The back deck of the tool shed.
The scenic view.
Our tasting was completely free here, where both the other wineries charged a few bucks and only let us try 5 wines. At Von Jakob, which I swear I kept calling Von Trapp all day, they let us try as many wines as we wanted. And try we did. I couldn't even keep track of how many I tasted. Not that I was drunk, but there were so many coming at us so quickly. I have no idea what order I tried these in, but here ya go: Hillside White - semi-dry, Jonathan Apple - sweet, Late Harvest Vidal - sweet, Hillside Red - semi-dry, Honey Peach - semi-sweet, She's a Peach - sweet. I think I tried more than that, but these I know for sure. And I loved every single one of them. Even the red wine. Probably because it was only semi-dry. I knew that this place could be very dangerous since everything tasted so good.
The outside may have looked like a tool shed, but the inside was rather large and the back patio area was huge. They let us take food outside, so we bought a pitcher of the Jonathan Apple Spritzer to take with us. The spritzer was a bottle of the JA wine, 1/2 can of Sprite, orange juice, pineapple juice and sliced oranges and apples. Again, I think this is what angels' sweat tastes like. The girls had packed cooler upon cooler of food for us to eat so we wouldn't have to pay for winery fare. And eat we did. You'd think we were staying for three days. We had 5 different kinds of dips/spreads, 4 different kinds of cheeses, 3 different kinds of crackers, grapes, watermelon, celery, M&M's, you name it. We tore into that food like a pack of vultures on a fresh kill. Seriously it was kind of out of control.
Some of the food.
This is part of the wine label. The bottle was sweating due to the heat and the label came right off. And I had the bright idea of sticking it on my arm. Yeah, I'm brilliant. Until I tried to pull it off my skin.
Somewhere during our feast, Kelly purchased us some wine to drink, and I believe it was the Honey Peach. I liked it during the tasting. At first sip it was light, refreshing and sweet. At 54th sip, it was little too overpowering it its sweetness and I think it made me a little nauseous. (But that could have just been because of the 8 pounds of food I just pounded.) Also at some point a rowdy group of hoosiers (not the kind from Indiana) sat at the table a few feet from us. And about 4.5 seconds later some girl dropped her wine glass in her rowdiness, causing them to move to the table directly behind us (and blocking the fan. A$$holes.). Seriously the guy behind me was sitting so close that I could hear his little brain cells crying out in torture. Every time he got up (which was often), his plastic chair would ram into the back of mine. "Oh sorry, if we're bothering you ladies, just let us know." You think? A few of the girls were more plastic than organic material and one girl was keeping a stick in her purse. Seriously. A stick. They told us they were riding around in a dilapidated bus, and Natalie swore it was the rusty old bus we passed at another winery a few hours before. We never did confirm this, but I believe she was right.
We spent quite a bit of time at Von Trapp, oops Von Jakob, and it was an incredible amount of fun. You can't beat gorgeous weather, good company, good food and good wine. On our way out, we passed through their inner hall and discovered the funniest thing of the day. Granted, we were all a bit tipsy at this point (some more than others), but there was a lovely version of "Born to be Wild" being sung. By a guy slightly stuck in the 80s with gray hair and the patchy facial hair of a teenage boy. It was probably the most unenergetic version of that song. Ever. But the best part? There were about a half dozen silver-hairs boogeying their little hearts out. It was absolutely hysterical in the best possible way. I hope when I'm a grandmother, I can still shake my money-maker to Steppenwolf by a washed-up wedding singer.
Oh yeah, and rather than walking around the dance floor and the group as a whole, Natalie decided to walk right through the middle, causing everyone to gape at her in horror. It's amazing none of those people took a switch to her.
Our final destination was to be Rustle Hill Winery and this place was gorgeous. This was a bit more of what I was expecting. It's main hall was intricately decorated with indoor seating, an outdoor patio, a terraced hill dotted with picnic tables and benches all facing a stage, flanked by a pond. Up the hill were cabins that could be rented. It was stunning. Our tasting here consisted of 6 wines and we could choose anything they had. I started with Vignoles, a semi-sweet white that was pretty good. Next was Chardonel, a semi-sweet white that I didn't like at all. The Sweet Seyval Blanc was a sweet white that was pretty darn tasty (but, who am I kidding. About this time of the day, they really all started to taste the same). I tried a dry red, Cabernet Franc and it tasted a bit like how I think a cotton ball would taste if I dipped it in grape juice and sucked it til it was dry. Then, we tried their Sangria, of which they had two varieties. The first was their red, made with Chambourcin, a dry red. I actually really liked this. Next was the peach, made with their Chardonel. I liked this even better, which is shocking, since I didn't like the actual wine itself. Then, ohhhh, she suggested we mix the two together, and it was an explosion of awesomeness in my mouth. That's really the only way I can describe it. It was the last thing I tasted of the day and they definitely saved the best for last. We all agreed again to snag a pitcher of this, and we headed back outside to end our day. It seemed to be a Sangria kind of day.
We had the munchies again, so we snacked on some of our remaining stash and listened to some of the live music wafting our way. It was such a great end to a wonderful day. The weather was perfect, the company was great, and the wine (especially the Sangria) was exactly what I needed on a nice holiday weekend.
Our final stop.
The drive back was interesting though. Natalie's husband was our DD, and the poor guy had to listen to 5 drunk girls ramble on for an hour or so until the sun went down. As soon it started to get dark though, we were all passed out in various states of inebriation until we made it back to St. Louis. I call that a day well spent.
I seriously think you missed your calling as a journalist! This was hilarious, the pics were great, but your writing is just so I can imagine you doing everything your describing! Sounds like ya'll had a great time! Julie
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