Well, I have to say, I really enjoy to city life that I've been leading, but it is so nice to get out into the country every once in a while! Fort, Mama, and Littlest Cloudy's all took me along to a family owned and operated winery, Linganore Plantations, out near New Market, Maryland. Mama and Fort have been really getting into Maryland wines at our weekly Pasta Sunday Dinner.Linganore Planations produces about 125,000 gallons of wine per year and offer a variety of dry, semi-sweet, and dessert wines, as well as an awesome selection of fruit wines (I think we all decided that the Strawberry was out favorite). The wine tasting was really neat, we were able to sample almost every wine that they offered, plus we picked up some really great tips! Cooking tips like replacing the water in your brownie mix with the raspberry wine, mixing tips like combining their Skipjack wine with the blueberry one, serving tips like pouring some wine over your ice cream when eating, eating certain wines with chocolate to enhance favor, and my favorite, placing frozen grapes in the bottom of your wine glass instead of ice cubes to prevent diluting the wine while keeping it cold.
The tour was really great too! We saw (a picture of) the machine they use to gather the grapes (which they've only had since 2000 before that they did everything by hand?!?), the slicer which pierces the skin, the squisher (which is so effective at getting the juice out of the grape that by the time its done you would be unable to get a single drop of juice out of the skin), the large holding tanks where the wine ferments, and the bottling and corking room.
After the tour we finished the wine tasting and headed for the racks. About 12 bottles later and meeting Mrs. Linganore Plantions, herself, we were ready to head home and pop open a bottle of wine that best suited our Italian themed dinner.
In a few weeks we'll be checking out the Solomon's Island Winery! I think we're all excited for that one!
