29 December – Grapevine

We slept in – still catching up on our lost sleep inflight. After a lazy brunch, we set out to walk into main street, Grapevine, about 3 kms away. One of the RV park staff gave us a lift half way, so it was nice to stroll the rest of the way. Grapevine is a historic village, now swallowed up into the suburban sprawl of Fort Worth, but retaining its small town charm. It claims to be the “Christmas Capital of Texas”, so we were keen to take a look and soak up some Xmas cheer (and some wine tasting).

Main street is a collection of historic buildings, with high end shopping mixed with winery tasting rooms, restaurants and specialty shops. We stopped in the square for some Christmas – displays, trees, lights and animated singing snowmen. We had a sneaky kiss under the mistletoe, and checked out a log cabin that was occupied until the 1940’s.

We hit the “Urban Wine Trail” and our first winery stop was Messina Hof Grapevine Winery, in a lovely old hotel. The wines were really good, especially the ports, and we thoroughly enjoyed the tastings. We followed on with Sloan & Williams, and shared a tasty cheese and meats platter with their 4 Californian Reds flight. Again, some really good wines, and we have noted that thus far, Texan and Californian Malbecs seem to be our preference.

The main street is really lovely – all the buildings are decked out in Xmas cheer – lots of wreaths, lights and animated Santa decorations. Some have gone the whole hog and it is hard to see the building under the decorations!

We byassed about 3 more tasting rooms and reached the end of the Main St strip, and crossed the road to start tasting again at Bingham Family wines. They make mostly blends, reds and whites, and most of the varietals were unknown to us, so we were interested to see what they were like. Again, we enjoyed the Malbec and Merlot the best.

By this stage we had reached our wine tasting limit. The locals are VERY generous with the tasting pours, some of them were a good half glass for each tasting. Sadly,even though there were many, many more wineries, we had to quit while we could still walk in a straight line. On the way back up the street we dropped into a Christmas shop and bought some more items for our Xmas village.

It was a bit of a hike back to the RV park, but the fresh air and exercise did us good and helped walk off the fuzzy heads. Now for a steak and salad for dinner. Love holidays!