Cheryl & Lance Drink Wine: The Livermore Wine Festival 2012

Lance and I like to drink wine.  We like to go and taste different wines because it's yummy (and doesn't make Lance sick like beer and mixed drinks) and usually leads to some pretty interesting conversations with people.  

In the barrel room - where we
managed to snag a free barrel
tasting (they were charging extra
for that) because I think we
looked confused to whether
we should do it or not.  The guy
at the door took us over to one
of the pouring stations like we
were old friends and we got
 hooked up!

It was my job this year to plan something for us to do for our anniversary.  So when I learned that the Livermore Harvest Wine Festival was over Labor Day weekend, and that our friends could watch our kids during it, I decided that we would just celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary a couple of weeks late.  

Livermore is about 20 minutes away from Tracy, where we live and it's home to about 50 different wineries. It's not nearly as large as Napa or Sonoma, but 50 wineries is a lot to taste our way through without having to drive an hour and a half to get to the more well known areas - and the wines are good, so I don't feel that we're suffering on quality by not making the trek North.

The Harvest Wine Festival is a two-day event, where tickets include tasting at about 40 participating wineries, access to the shuttle bus taking you to the wineries, commemorative glasses, and discounts, etc.  Some of the smaller wineries actually bring their tastings to booths set up at the larger wineries, so if you hit the larger wineries, you can taste from many wineries selections. The larger wineries also hosted more food options from local restaurants, as well as craft booths (Lance bought me a wine glass holder necklace from one!), and live music.  

Yeah, I was tipsy

It was a nice relaxing event for us and while we were planning on splurging and taking a cab all the way home (with plans to retrieve the car the next day), the cabs were so busy with the event that by the time one came for us, Lance was actually sober, so we just had the cab take us from the winery to our car (we had missed the final shuttle, opting to stay longer at the winery rather than take the shuttle and take the cab from the parking lot) to head back to Tracy.  I, being a complete lightweight, was still a bit tipsy when we arrived at our friend's bbq, where our children were busy playing with their friends.

The second day of the Wine Festival is typically a little calmer, they don't run the shuttles, and some of the

Dancing!

 smaller wineries pour at their own facilities. Since tickets were good for both days, we thought we might find a winery in the program that would be okay to take the kids to.  Fenestra Winery fit the bill with live music and a lawn, and also happened to offer a port (which I LOVE) for tasting.  This was also tons of fun because the live band was incredible, playing lots of Classic Rock, with a hilarious drummer. The kids enjoyed dancing around and were good for us, making it a nice afternoon.

 

Listening to the band

Logan rolling to the music

RJ snuggling Daddy