A Fine Birthday Was Had by All!

Wednesday was my birthday and Mom decided to take me to Temecula to go to the Callaway Winery.

 

Fountain Close Up

 To the right of this picture is the restaurant. We decided to have lunch before the tour and wine tasting.

 Mom had two colors of fingerling potatoes with her chop.

 

My steak had a gogonzola sauce. The asparagus were huge but tender and not woody at all. I had never seen such big spears on asparagus. They advertised everything as 'farm to table' and the waitress informed us they don't even have a freezer in the kitchen. Personally, if it's treated correctly, I don't care if food has been previously frozen ...

The tour began outside with LOTS of wine and wine making facts narrated by our guide, Monica. She also told us the history of the farm which is pretty uninteresting except to note that the wine they make and sell here is 'more special' than the Callaway wines in stores.

 See that beige hill? That's chaparal. It's vegetation 'consisting of tangled shrubs and thorny bushes,' according to Google. That's what all of the land looked like until they began the winery. (There are now many vineyards in the area, but this was the first and the only reason for people to settle in Temecula.)

 The glass area above is where the wine tasting bar is located.

 Since it is winter, the vines look like dead sticks. They will start to leaf in May and harvest is late summer. They are watered by the drip method.

 In the summer, Temecula gets to 115 degrees Farenheit. Consequently, the workers begin to harvest at 3 and 4 in the morning. The trucks that they dump their pickings into have huge light bars to illuminate the are so they can see what they are doing.

 This farm started with 120 acres.

 If you look at the W in the mountains, about 15 miles beyond that is the ocean. So ... moisture comes in on the winds, along with cooler air.

The trucks full of grapes dump them into here and the augur pushes them up a "ladder" to be further processed. Nobody's stomping grapes: once they are loaded into a certain vat, there is a giant paddle which squishes them against the side of the vat. Only one variety of grape is loaded per day. No mixing!

These fermenting vats each hold 3,020 gallons of wine. Each inch of wine (a slice of the vat) weighs 14 pounds. The indentations are (vertically) one inch apart.

On our way into the barrel room. Sample of red wine is on center vertical barrel. Each barrel holds 32 bottles of wine.

Yes, we got to taste the red wine. All of the wine is fermented for at least two years.

We got to taste 6 month old wine. It was more like grapefruit juice. Yick. Did you know all grape juice is white, no matter what the variety of grape? It becomes red or rose if they add some red grape skins. 

After tasting 4 wines (1 oz. samples), we were very mellow. I was fascinated by the clouds and took these pictures through the car window.

Mom was shocked that I took this picture of the moon -- there's another one with more visual clutter that I didn't care for as much as this. I told her it was my homage to Edward Hopper. (See: Nighthawks, 1942) 

Today is my Emily's birthday. She's a good kid, I'll keep her!

We played two games of Scrabble with Opal today. Mom picked her up and we had fun. Of course, Opal won both times. Nobody beats Opal.

Cheers!