20 bottles of wine and a sunburn

Our journey began last Thursday, traveling from Jackson, MS, headed to Jamestown, NC. This was our first long car trip with the kids.

We stopped overnight in Gwinnett, GA, just outside of Atlanta. The next morning, we continued on to NC, where we visited with some old friends from Forest, MS.

The purpose of the trip was a wine festival featuring 19 wineries from North Carolina. The Taste Carolina Wine Festival was a one-day event held at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market in Colfax, NC.

To say we enjoyed ourselves was an understatement. We were without the children, with old friends and sampling a wide variety of wines. (I’ll share my observations on the wine in a separate post.)

Because of baseball practice for one of the Howell children, we decided to start our tasting after lunch. We arrived about 1 p.m. Despite a crowded event, little time was wasted getting through the gate.

The pourers also kept people moving through the various tents, as well, without skimping on the discussion of the wines and vineyards.

About halfway through, my wife was already feeling the effects of the tasting. (This is a combination of her low tolerance and the fact that she has drunk very little in the past three years between being pregnant with and nursing our two children.)

We were standing, the Howell’s and the Hall’s, discussing the number of bottles we were going to purchase. Tara, my wife, wanted to make sure we were not going to go overboard.

My estimation was 15 bottles for us (five for Tara and 10 for me — I’m the wine lover).

“Fifteen!” she explained with bugged eyes and a slight look of shock. “I was thinking more like five total.”

Then something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye.

“Ooooh. Are those desserts?” she asked her friend as she turned toward the neighboring tent. “Come on, Denine.” And the two were off, all discussion of how much we were to buy gone from her mind.

We ended up with 20 bottles of wine per family. The festival threw in the sunburns for free. And though I’m sitting shirtless for most of today (nothing can touch my neck), it was a great time. We hated to leave and travel back.