Texas: Wildseed & Wineries

In which we encounter a wine tasting...control freak. 

{I'm trying to be nice here, but remember that one Seinfeld episode about the Soup Nazi?}

 

On day 3 we hit up a sweet little place on the outskirts of Fredericksburg called Wildseed Farms. For those of you who are from Colorado, it's basically like Hudson Gardens times a hundred. 

 

A gardener's dream, a landscaper's dream, they have a plant shop and a seed shop and a gift shop, as well as fields where they grow beautiful plants. 

 

{Sorry, Kellee, another photo of the back of your head ;-) }

Look, if it weren't for TSA's rules I would have tried to sneak much of this greenery on the plane. Next time I visit Fredericksburg it will be on a road trip with a trailer so that I can take some of this home with me. 

 

Here is a photo of Jan & I, a self-portrait, at Wildseed Farms. 

 

I wish I could redo my wedding and have it here, it'd be the perfect location for such an event:

 

Through the shop they have lush gardens with paths you can walk through. 

 

I took a lot of these self-portraits in Texas. I think I might just have to do a collage of all these shots just for fun...

 

If nothing else, Wildseed Farms provided a tranquil, beautiful place for us girls to chat and get to know each other a little more. It was a calm, uneventful outing, but I think it was just what we needed. 

 

Here we all are, except for Jan, who took this picture...

 

But of course, after a nice relaxing stroll through Wildseed, we all had an urge to wet our whistles. What we needed was a winery. 

 

While we were originally planning on hitting up the countryside for good wineries, toward the end of the day we decided that it might be better to stay in Fredericksburg itself and visit a winery located in town...

 

So we ended up at the Fredericksburg Winery on the main street...and we had a bit of an interesting experience.

 

I have to say, this was my first official wine tasting at an actual winery. 

We were traveling with Gretchen, who writes food & wine articles, and most of the other girls had been to a winery, I think. As for me, I had no idea what to expect. Upon first inspection, the winery looked interesting...

 

This winery offers tastings for free--you can sample five of their wines, but there is a catch...

 

Sidetracking, here is a photo of Kellee & me at the winery.

 

I have to admit, I hesitated about posting this. But after reading so many reviews on this winery's Yelp page that mirrored our experience {and go read some, they are amusing}, I decided that you know what? It's already out there, so I'm going to tell it like it is. 

Our first wine tasting in Fredericksburg went like this: We walked in, were greeted and encouraged to sample their wines. The employee at the counter informed us that we must taste wines in order from dry to sweet, we cannot deviate, we cannot taste a sweet wine and then go back to dry. We must only progress from DRY to SWEET. There will no jumping around! {Keep in mind, this is my first time at a winery...}

 

So we started tasting wines... but when one of us asked to taste one that was drier than the one before, we were reprimanded, "This is why I told you you cannot go backward!!!" 

Wow, I thought, this wine tasting business is intense!

As we tasted our first and second wines, we were moved down the counter, left to right, just like the Mad Hatter insisted on in Alice in Wonderland--we had to move down the table, and we were ordered to do so. 

But then, another party walked in behind us, and they made the very grave mistake of heading toward the right end of the counter! Oh no! They were starting at the WRONG END! What were they thinking?!

Obviously, our ever-legalistic winery employee jumped on them right away. "What are you doing down there? You need to start over here! You cannot go backwards! No sweets before dry!!!" Then she snapped at her co-worker while pointing at the group, "Get them away from there!"

It. was. intense. 

Just when I was thinking that I really should have done more research on proper winery etiquette before this trip, Lauren and Gretchen started leading us out. 

"Let's go, this lady is crazy..." they said. 

"You mean this isn't normal?" I asked with relief. 

Apparently not!

So we did, in fact, drive out to the country after all. 

We ended up at a wonderful little winery called Messina Hof.

  

Here am I, at Messina Hof:

 

It was much classier, and had less of a boot camp feel and more of a yay-we're-on-vacation feel. Perfect. 

 

A charming man with a big personality greeted us from behind one of the bars, and we told him about the experience we'd just had with the...ahem...very uptight winery we'd just been to. 

 He responded with a smile, and told us many a customer had come to Messina Hof after experiencing the craziness at the Fredericksburg winery. Well, shoot...

 

While the tasting wasn't free (only $10) at Messina hof, it was just so worth it and so much better. And you know what? We went from dry to sweet and back again, and no one yelled at us! I am still in shock over how good their sherry tasted, and how impressed I was with their private reserve port. Their wines were SO good. 

I brought a bottle of the port home with me, in fact.

 

Now I can say I've been wine tasting, and I know it's actually not supposed to be scary at all.  

I don't regret the first wine tasting experience at all, it gives us a funny story to tell and something crazy to reminisce about. But, I'm very glad we ended up at Messina Hof, too. 

It was wine-derful. 

Haha. Get it?