Having bought 50% off vouchers for the All Star DC tour we booked our winery tour for today. We set off to meet the tour in front of the Postal Museum at 10:30AM. There we met the tour owner and the driver along with another couple going for the tour.
After driving about 40 minutes out of DC and into Maryland we were in farm country Maryland and it was an absolutely gorgeous drive. The view interchanged between corn fields, fruit orchards, Christmas tree farms and rolling hills with cows and horses. After the farms, for a while we were driving through homes with vast land, these were interspersed with numerous trees, tiny winding roads, ponds, streams of water...it felt so far removed from the city. So perfect to escape to! :)
After driving about 40 minutes out of DC and into Maryland we were in farm country Maryland and it was an absolutely gorgeous drive. The view interchanged between corn fields, fruit orchards, Christmas tree farms and rolling hills with cows and horses. After the farms, for a while we were driving through homes with vast land, these were interspersed with numerous trees, tiny winding roads, ponds, streams of water...it felt so far removed from the city. So perfect to escape to! :)
Farms on the way: top to bottom: orchards, corn, Christmas Tree.Sorry for blurryness. Photos taken from moving van!
The first vineyard we went to was Linganore Winecellars. It produces a lot of the wine for the East coast...but barely a drop in the ocean when compared to Napa Valley wineries. We got a tour of the winery (how they make it blah blah. I have started to find this wine making tour thing rather boring. I wish they'd take us out to see the vines and fruit) Their wines were nice, but nothing exceptional. However, their fruit wines were really nice. We especially enjoyed the plum one, which we bought. The strawberry wine was really good too and we bought that as well. The raspberry wine tasted absolutely fantastic with chocolate. If I baked, I would have bought that one.
After the winery tour and the wine tasting, Saurabh had some camera fun. Then we sat and had the picnic lunch we brought with us (Sabuda khichdi). We sat with the owner and the driver and it was nice talking to them and finding out more about them and their business. They were really nice and added a personal touch to our experience. They carried fruit with them (strawberries and cherries), which they happily shared with us. It was refreshing to see such people.
After the winery tour and the wine tasting, Saurabh had some camera fun. Then we sat and had the picnic lunch we brought with us (Sabuda khichdi). We sat with the owner and the driver and it was nice talking to them and finding out more about them and their business. They were really nice and added a personal touch to our experience. They carried fruit with them (strawberries and cherries), which they happily shared with us. It was refreshing to see such people.
You can see the wine levels in the pipe outside these chambers
Photographer doing his thing + lone treeAfter lunch, we headed to the other vineyard, Black Ankle. This was a really nice vineyard, sort of a specialty vineyard. They only hade 4 wines to taste (we tried 20 at the other one).We were sat at tables as opposed to standing at a bar for the wine tasting :). The entire building we were in was built from material got from the land. I will write another post detailing more on this. We didn't buy any of the wines from here. After exploring the area a bit and sharing some bread and cheese with our tour group owner and driver we headed back to the city :)
Black Ankle Winery
Black Ankle VineyardsOn a side note, I would like to mention a really pretty sighting. A stream. with a house on one side and a cow grazing. One the other side, 5-6 more cows, all grazing. All the cows facing the stream. Really really pretty. I wish we weren't in a moving car and I could have photographed it.
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