Saturday we decided to visit a couple of wineries. Kelly and Franklin (Joanna and Billy's friends) came with us. The first winery we went to was the Windy Winery. Joanna, Kelly and I decided to pay for the wine stomping experience. It included a hayride to the winery, a t-shirt, grape picking and stomping, and then the wine tasting. The guys had planned on just sitting in the air conditioned wine tasting area, but at the last moment decided to join us on the hayride. The tractor pulling us moved VERY slowly and I imagine we could have walked to the grape picking area faster. As it turns out, we stopped to pick our grapes and the driver couldn't get the tractor moving again. So, we did end up walking back to the tasting room. Joanna, Kelly and I all stomped our grapes. Not what I expected but cross that off my bucket list. We then went inside to taste the wines. We got to taste 7 or 8 wines. None of them were very good. Needless to say we didn't buy any there. We left Windy Winery about 5 and decided we would just drive by the Pleasant Hill Winery to see if it "looked" any better. We got out of the car and I think all of us said, "we should have come here first." The whole atmosphere was more appealing. They also had a small "flea market" going on. The guys went inside and Joanna and Kelly went shopping. They each bought some cute tops and dresses. Then they did they wine stomping at this winery. What a huge difference in experiences. PHW had a guy that actually spent some time talking to us, posing all of us and trying to get some good pictures of it all. All we got from the Hispanic kids that took the hayride with us at Windy Winery was, "we take tips." Hmmmm......you'd think they would have tried to do something to earn a tip. Anyways, once Joanna and Kelly were done stomping grapes we went inside for our wine tasting. They actually had some pretty good wines. I wish we had had more time to just sit and enjoy the ones we tasted, but they were getting ready to close and it was our fault for going to that other winery and wasting so much time there. I'm not much of a white wine person, but they had one that our server said she uses for marinating fruit. The wine was good by itself, but marinated fruit sounded really yummy. So, we bought a bottle of that to bring home. When we got back to Joanna and Billy's house we got busy fixing dinner. Joanna had bought some flank steak Friday and we had marinated it for dinner. Si fixed rice, Joanna fixed mashed potatoes, Billy fixed the bread and grilled the steaks and corn. We had lots of good food and Billy opened one of their nicer bottles of wine for us to drink. It was so much better than anything we had tasted earlier. After dinner, Joanna made us some chocolate ice cream in her VitaMix blender. The recipe called for 2 frozen bananas and unfortunately, the ice cream tasted more of banana than it did of chocolate. But it really wasn't that bad. Just not chocolaty enough for me.
Sunday, Si and I headed back to Grand Prairie. Hated to leave, but all good things must come to an end. We had a really fun weekend and enjoyed our time with Joanna, Billy and Parker.
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