Baking Boy: Fenn Valley Winery Tour

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Fenn Valley Winery Tour

I've been meaning to post this blog for months. Back in October Rob and I went to Saugatuck Michigan for my birthday weekend getaway. The entire weekend was picture perfect. The leaves were at their autumn peak and the weather was amazing. Aside from all the miscellaneous wine tastings and good foods my absolute favorite part was the winery tour at Fenn Valley Winery. When we arrived in Saugatuck we stopped for a bite then headed to the bed and breakfast to check in. When we walked into the room there was a bottle of champagne and tickets to the winery tour at Fenn Valley. Rob had set it all up as a surprise...I had no idea! It was the best birthday present.

The tour consisted of a tractor ride through the winery with 12 different samples (some of us snuck a few extra smaples...shhhh) and some frolicking in the vineyard. There were maybe about 18 people on this particular tour and it happened to be the last tour of the season. What luck! We headed over to the Grape Train Station...choo-choo....

All the people on the tour were friendly. I think some of them had been doing some tasting prior to the tour, particularly this group of 3 friends. They were rather loud gals and they were ready to chug some samples. Whoo hoo! We also met a lovely couple that knew the owner of the winery. They had been on the tour like 500 times and knew everything by heart. If there are winery tour trophies I'm sure they have a whole shelf of them. There was also another couple that honed in on us from the moment we stepped into the Grape Train Station. Coincidentally they are from the Chicago area and we found out they were staying at our bed and breakfast. I wish I could remember their names....Heather and Keith maybe...or Brad and Angelina...or...hmmm well anyway she reminded me of Sarah McLaughlan-just the way she looked. She chatted with us the entire tour and had lots of witty remarks. She was quite fun. Later that night they were hanging out at the bed and breakfast when we came back. They were drinking Dom Pérignon and playing some board games. They insisted we share the bottle of Dom. We couldn't pass that up! We had some good conversation and hung out for quite a while. Then off to bed we went and we didn't see them again. I guess we were just two ships that passed in the night...ahhhh...okay back to the tour...

We stopped and checked out some vines. Isn't this thrilling?! Well it is after about 4 samples....

Adjacent to the vineyard was a little pine forrest, also quite thrilling!

The obligatory photo of the Fenn Valley sign:

And, the most amazing part was the sunset! Just as we were leaving and after many samples I couldn't resist snapping photos left and right of the beautiful sunset. An amazing way to end the tour!